SUMMARY: Oil tax revenue funds Alaska’s Permanent Fund, which distributes dividends equally to state residents. Peter Barnes wants a nationwide dividend system (or basic income) based on shared assets like our atmosphere.
Peter Barnes, “Why you have the right to a $5K dividend from Uncle Sam.” PBS Newshour, August 27, 2014
Photo by Flickr user EricaJoy via PBS Newshour
The Basic Income Subreddit
The Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) has announced the list of speakers for its “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) series of internet interviews, which will take place on the Reddit website. The interviews will be text only and open to everyone. Anyone in the world can type in a question. The AMA series will take place during the Seventh Annual International Basic Income Week, September 15-21, 2014.
Reddit is one of the world’s most popular websites, last year receiving 731 million unique visitors and 56 billion page views. The Basic Income community on Reddit has recently experience enormous growth, rising from 50 users last summer to over 16,000 today
Participants in BIEN’s AMA series include:
The Basic Income Subreddit is online at: https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/
Information about the grown of the BI Subreddit is online at: https://redditmetrics.com/r/BasicIncome
The IAMA subreddit is online at: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA
More information about the AMA series will be announced soon.
-Foreign Affairs
SUMMARY: Without using any familiar terms for Basic Income Guarantee, this article argues for a temporary BIG as a response to the Great Recession (or recessions generally). The U.S. Federal Reserve usually tries to stimulate the economy during recessions through monetary policies (such as reducing interest rates or increasing the money supply). These policies favor large financial institutions and according to authors, Mark Blyth and Eric Lonergan, “stimulating the economy in this way is expensive and inefficient, and can create dangerous bubbles — in real estate, for example — and encourage companies and households to take on dangerous levels of debt.” Instead, the authors argue that the government should simply give cash unconditionally to citizens. They argue, “In the short term, such cash transfers could jump-start the economy. Over the long term, they could reduce dependence on the banking system for growth and reverse the trend of rising inequality. The transfers wouldn’t cause damaging inflation, and few doubt that they would work. The only real question is why no government has tried them.”
Blyth and Lonergan suggest building up a sovereign wealth fund (SWF) capable of paying dividends, much like the Alaska Dividend, funded by its SWF. They claim, “The Bank of England, the European Central Bank, and the Federal Reserve already own assets in excess of 20 percent of their countries’ GDPs, so there is no reason why they could not invest those assets in global equities on behalf of their citizens.” They even suggest that government could take advantage of current near zero interest rates to spend another 20 percent of GDP buying equities, which would be likely to return 100 percent in 15 years. It is uncertain then whether the fund would pay dividends regularly or distribute them only during recessions. In either case, this plan would be a significant step toward a BIG.
Mark Blyth and Eric Lonergan, “Print Less but Transfer More: Why Central Banks Should Give Money Directly to the People.” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2014 Issue.
Macau, the former Portuguese possession, now a semi-autonomous region of China, is in the process of distributing a temporary Basic Income of more than $1000 to all residents. According to a government press release dated 1 July, 2014, “In order to share the fruits of economic development with the general public, the Macao SAR government had announced the Wealth Partaking Scheme 2014’, under which, local permanent residents would receive 9,000 patacas [US $1,127.46], whereas non-permanent residents 5,400 patacas [US $676.48].” At $1,127, this year’s effective Basic Income in Macau larger than last year’s Alaska Dividend ($900).
Macau has distributed temporary Basic Income’s each year since for the last four years. In 2011, permanent residents received 4,000 patacas [US $501—at August 2014 exchange rates] at the beginning of the year, and a further supplement of 3,000 patacas [US $376] in August. In 2012, permanent residents received $7,000 patacas [US $877] all at once. In 2013, permanent residents received 8,000 patacas [US $1,002]. Non-permanent residents received proportionately smaller figures this year. Thus, permanent residents of Macau for the last four years have received a total of $3883 since 2011. This amount is clearly not enough to live on in an expensive place such as Macao (it cannot be a full basic income, only partial), but it is a significant figure for Macao residents at the low end of the income distribution.
This scheme is a Basic Income in the sense that it distributes an income unconditionally, on an individual basis to all citizens (at least all resident citizens), but it is not a Basic Income in the sense that it is not distributed on a regular basis. The government has now set the president that the Wealth Partaking Scheme will be in effect every year, but each year it has been created with one-time legislation without a promise of renewal. The amount, timing, and existence of the redistribution have to be renegotiated each year. People cannot count on it. Yet, it is something that is already close to a Basic Income and that could develop into a Basic Income in the future.
For more information about the Wealth partaking scheme, see the government websites from the last four years:
2014: https://www.planocp.gov.mo/2014/default_e.html
2013: https://www.planocp.gov.mo/2013/default_e.html
2012: https://www.planocp.gov.mo/2012/default_e.html
2011, supplement: https://www.ap.gov.mo/2011/default_e.html
2011: https://www.planocp.gov.mo/2011/index_e.html
See also the following articles and commentaries form Macao newspapers:
Macau Daily Times, “Cash handout starts in July.” Macau Daily Times, 01/07/2014
Business Daily Editorial Board, “Smoke and mirrors.” Business Daily [Macao], 2014
[Josh Martin]
A minor unconditional basic income scheme has been taking place in Sanya, China, for five years now and has flown very much under the radar. The income is given once every six months and is equivalent to about a month’s worth of minimum wage labor. It compares financially rather well with the Alaskan Permanent Fund in the USA. However, after five years the Hainen Provincial government issued a directive to Sanya to establish conditionality on these welfare payments. Sanya is now faced with a difficult situation where its citizens largely support the basic income, but their provincial government has ordered its termination.
For more on Sanya, read the following article:
Nicole Tin, “Should Sanya city obey directives and stop its unconditional basic income?” Citizen-Ownership Democracy, 10 July 2014.
Sanya, China (Source: Citizen-Ownership Democracy)
