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World Prepares to Celebrate 10th Basic Income Week

by Kate McFarland | Sep 11, 2017 | News

The 10th annual international Basic Income Week will be September 18 to 24.

Basic income organizations throughout the world have organized events and activities in honor of the advocacy and awareness week. These include, but are not limited to, the following:

In Canada, BIEN’s affiliate Basic Income Canada Network, is collecting answers to the question “How might a Basic Income Guarantee affect your life and/or your loved ones?” to compile and send to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other federal cabinet members. Responses will be sent during Basic Income Week.
In Germany, political comedian and basic income supporter Anny Hartmann will deliver a series of performances of her routine “NoLobby is perfect!”. Basic Income Week advertises “Grundeinkommen inside!” in describing her solo show.
BIEN’s Dutch affiliate, Vereniging Basisinkomen (VBi), is hosting a workshop on the first day of Basic Income Week, featuring talks by VBi chairperson Alexander de Roo, independent researcher Sjir Hoeijmakers (who was an advisor for the Dutch social assistance experiments), and others.
In Melbourne, Australia, the Kevin Club will host “A Conversation About Basic Income”, in which supporters of the idea will gather to discuss the possibilities for basic income in Australia.
Rutger Bregman will present his book Utopia for Realists in Oslo, Norway, where he will also join a panel discussion on basic income.
In Denmark, Erik Christensen (Aalborg University) will hold a presentation of his new book, På vej til borgerløn (“On the way to basic income”) and, on the following day, debate “Basic Income: Emancipation or Cost-Savings Measure?” with Kristian Kongshøj, a postdoc in political science at Aalborg.
In Brussels, Belgium, a debate will be held between representatives across the political spectrum–Liberals, Christian Democrats, Socialists, and Greens–who profess “a minimum of sympathy” for basic income. Although the debaters all claim to be sympathetic to basic income, one question at stake in the debate is whether these individuals of diverse political views are really talking about the same concept when they speak of “basic income”.

Interested individuals may subscribe the calendar on the official site of Basic Income Week to see new events as they are added, and interested groups may add new events to be seen.

Basic Income Week is independently organized and not affiliated with BIEN, although many BIEN affiliates choose to participate. (In fact, Basic Income Week defines ‘basic income’ in a stricter manner than BIEN; Basic Income Week’s definition, unlike BIEN’s, stipulates that a basic income must, by definition, be high enough in amount to “prevent material poverty and provide the opportunity to participate in society and to live in dignity”.)

Photo: “Globes” CC BY 2.0 Jayel Aheram

KENYA: GiveDirectly’s Guaranteed Monthly Income Expands to 200 Villages Fall 2017

by Ashley | Sep 10, 2017 | News

Pictured: Kenyan village to receive GiveDirectly’s guaranteed basic income Source: Nichole Sibecki for NPR

GiveDirectly offers to give every adult in a Kenyan village a guaranteed basic income of 27,258 Kenyan Shillings- or 264 US dollars- per year for the next 12 years without any conditions. Providing unconditional cash transfers directly to people has proven to increase economic outcomes and psychological well-being.

GiveDirectly, a US-based nonprofit, is challenging the traditional structure of international aid by shifting the power dynamics between donors and people who receive aid. In our current structure, donors decide what people receive since most aid provided by governments, nonprofits and individuals is given as an in-kind donation. Instead, the purpose of GiveDirectly’s donation structure is to trust the expertise of people experiencing poverty to choose how best to spend the money. GiveDirectly will be measuring the long-term outcomes.

According to the first part in an NPR series on emerging aid models to redress global poverty, GiveDirectly will provide every adult in a village in Kenya a guaranteed basic income of 2,271.50 Kenyan shillings per month, or 22 US dollars for the next 12 years. Typically, adults live on less than 206.50 Kenyan Shillings per day, or 2 US dollars. For two-parent households, this donation boosts their monthly income by 50 percent. The money is wired to a bank account connected to each villager’s phone. Some families have used this additional income to better support household nutrition and education outcomes for children. The US-based nonprofit plans to expand the guaranteed income to 200 villages in Fall 2017 and assess the long-term impacts by comparing the outcomes with 100 villages that do not receive the payments.

Already, a study published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics discovered how, in Kenya, unconditional cash transfers (UCTs) have a significant impact on economic outcomes and psychological well-being in communities. UCTs contribute to local economic development by increasing consumption rates. They also improve social and emotional development in communities that heavily rely on social networks for supports and services that may otherwise be inaccessible.

Research from Canada’s Mowat Centre also shows that providing money with no strings attached can help support social entrepreneurs that may be experiencing financial hardship to get their ventures off the ground. For example, one Kenyan family that is a beneficiary of GiveDirectly’s donation, is focused on investing in an entrepreneurial venture to grow a forest of eucalyptus trees and sell the fuel from the plants. Profits from the family’s venture would be used to fund high school tuition for four children as an investment in breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty.

In contrast to GiveDirectly’s aid model, Zambia’s government is choosing to filter who receives aid and under what conditions. Originally, a government program gave families in a rural west Zambian village 164, 628.31 Zambian Kwacha, or 18 US dollars, every other month for the past five years. The program proved to be successful: families used this additional support to invest in creating multiple business ventures to multiply their capital. To help aid these business ventures, the usage of related software can make this a lot easier, and with advancements in technology, businesses are able to conduct remotely accessing Sage software services so they are always on point with what they require. The government has therefore decided to scale up the program to increase the population receiving this cash aid. Simultaneously, the government has decided to limit the cash transfer to exclude people such as those who initially received the money in the pilot program: two-parent households, people who are employed, and people who are able-bodied. Instead, Zambia will provide aid only to single-parent households, people with disabilities, seniors, and people who are unable to work. This limitation on providing aid based on who is deemed eligible is what GiveDirectly is challenging.

GiveDirectly’s guaranteed income in Kenya is increasing access for all with the goal of improving health outcomes and building towards financial security. It can be particularly valuable for people with disabilities who often experience job discrimination and barriers to financial self-sufficiency. For them, this monthly influx of cash provides a foundation for independence. People with disabilities often struggle to afford medication and rely on financial support from other family members to sustain themselves. This additional monthly income will help to mitigate the costs of medication and basic necessities for everyone.

Grassroots savings clubs in low-income communities are another asset to consider when measuring the long-term impacts of GiveDirectly’s guaranteed income. Some people do not have access to banks or struggle to save money when it is easily accessible from an electronic savings account. Savings clubs are typically groups of 10-15 community members who collectively pool their resources each month. The total amount is then provided to a different individual from the savings club to look after for a month. This community-based savings account relies on faith in the community members to manage the money for everyone else. Some villagers have noted how critical this social bonding is to allow them to maintain their savings since they know the community is depending on them to effectively manage their budget. Researchers have found in case studies around the world, from Bangladesh to Central/South America and West Africa, that savings club serve as a common element of the economic infrastructure in low-income neighborhoods.

Giving cash directly to children and families, with no strings attached is being shown to improve the quality of life in a number of communities, particularly in boosting economic, health, and education outcomes. As more organizations begin measuring the long-term impacts of unconditional cash transfers and basic incomes, we will continue to gain evidence on whether these are viable solutions to deeply entrenched social issues like global poverty.

More information at:

Ashley Blackwell. “CANADA: Mowat Centre Report Shows Impact of Basic Income on Social Entrepreneurship.” BIEN. 28 July 2017.

GiveDirectly. “Basic Income.” 4 September 2017.

Johannes Haushofer and Jeremy Shapiro. “The short-term impact of unconditional cash transfers to the poor: Experimental evidence from Kenya.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics vol. 131 (4). 1 November 2016.

Nurith Aizenman, “How to Solve Poverty: Why Not Just Give People Money.” NPR. 7 August 2017.

“Cash Aid Could Solve Poverty- But There’s a Catch.” NPR. 9 August 2017.

“How to Buy A Goat When You’re Poor? Join A ‘Merry-Go-Rund’.” NPR. 19 August 2017.

Financial Times: “Why Facebook should pay us a Basic Income” by John Thornhill

by Sara Bizarro | Sep 8, 2017 | News

On August 7th, veteran writer and Innovation Editor at the Financial Times, John Thornhill, wrote an article entitled “Why Facebook should pay us a Basic Income”. In the article, Thornhill argues that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg should put his money where his mouth is and dole out a Basic Income to its users. In July, Zuckerberg visited Alaska and raved about its Permanent Fund. As Zuckerberg explains, in Alaska “every year, a portion of the oil revenue the state makes is put into a fund. Rather than having the government spend that money, it is returned to Alaskan residents through a yearly dividend that is normally $1000 or more per person. That can be especially meaningful if your family has five or six people.” Zuckerberg concludes that: “Alaska’s social safety net programs are in a way that provides some good lessons for the rest of our country.”

In his article, Thornhill makes an argument stating that “data is the new oil” and that “data could do for the world what oil has done for Alaska”. Alaska re-distributes the income from its oil so, Thornhill argues, should companies such as Facebook and Google, they should also redistribute the income accumulated by the use of data. Furthermore, this data is provided by its users, “often unwittingly” to be sold later to advertisers. Thornhill concludes: “It seems only fair that Facebook makes a bigger social contribution for profiting from this massively valuable, collectively generated resource.” Zuckerberg explicitly defended Basic Income in his Commencement Address at Harvard, when he said: “We should explore ideas like Universal Basic Income to give everyone a cushion to try new things.” Thornhill makes a good argument: don’t just preach it, live it.

Even though it is in principle a great idea, if we look at the numbers, Facebook’s revenue per user would hardly amount to a Basic Income. In 2016, The Telegraph estimated that Facebook makes about $4 per quarter worldwide from each of its users. Quartz estimates that in the USA and Canada, Facebook made around $41 per user in 2015:

So even in the best of scenarios, the amount of revenue to be redistributed per user if only Facebook was involved, would be minimal. However, the idea that data usage could be used to create a data permanent fund to be redistributed like the Alaska permanent fund is something to look into. If we consider that every time we are made to watch an ad online, someone is making a profit, the data revenue could indeed be significant. Basic Income advocates have explored many different ways to finance Basic Income, including a carbon tax, land tax, wealth tax and so forth, so why not add to that a “data tax”? Thornhill makes a sound argument in his article, “data tax” is one more possible source when thinking about financing Basic Income.

More Information

Kate McFarland, “US: Mark Zuckerberg recommends “exploring” UBI at Harvard graduation speech”, BIEN News, May 26th, 2017.

John Thornhill, “Why Facebook should pay us a basic income”, Financial Times, August 7th, 2017 [for subscribers only].

Cure health inequality by reducing income inequality

by Guest Contributor | Aug 30, 2017 | Opinion

The relationship between health and social context includes a range of factors influencing overall well-being. Social status, class, lifestyle, education, and environment primarily shape these factors. Age, gender, race, and ethnicity are structural variables of equal importance to health outcomes. Health is being facilitated or inhibited by the socioeconomic, cultural, and political backgrounds, in which one is born and raised. The people that view these data points and makes correlations between socioeconomic status and backgrounds to health issues have an interesting career because they constantly have to adapt to the understanding of new societal groups and focus on why a certain group would make a certain decision, for example.

In the last few decades, we have seen growing income inequality between the poor and rich. Since the 1980’s, the United States of America has seen a shift in wealth from the middle class towards the wealthiest people and transnational companies. The top one-tenth of 1 percent owns as much as the bottom 90 percent. Firebaugh and Beck argued economic growth would automatically benefit the masses, which in hindsight seems questionable.

As health outcomes and life expectations closely liaise to within-country income inequality, policies should aim at finding appropriate actions to address this phenomenon. Meaning, getting basic family urgent care, in terms of medical needs cannot be compromised. Currently, in some countries, those who earn more are able to find medical treatments to treat their injuries or illnesses, whilst those who don’t have as much money are having to cope with their illness or find other treatments. For example, those who suffer from digestive problems would have to pay a significant amount to get their illness looked at, so people on lower incomes will find supplements to help them instead. The bio complete 3 supplement can deliver prominent improvements for people’s digestive systems, so people are able to treat these problems. However, not all problems can be treated with supplements. This is why changes have to be made.

Wilkinson and Pickett found health issues to be strongly correlated to income inequality within a country. To support this finding, they used two different measurement tools. The first index, applied to Western countries, was a ratio of the 20 percent top incomes in relation to the 20 percent of the bottom earners. For different states within the USA they used a second index, the Gini-index, which adopts a different methodology. Where ‘Gini = 0′ represents perfect equality (same income for everyone) and ‘Gini = 1′ is total inequality (if all income goes to one person). The outcome of these results showed that the widening income gap led to an increase of different health issues related to mental disorders, life expectancy, infant mortality, obesity and teenage births. Societal problems that correlated to income inequality included: lower levels of trust, less educational performance, more homicides, higher imprisonment rates and a lack of social mobility. Some authors found Wilkinson and Pickett’s dismissal of poverty in relation to health outcomes incorrect as they did not measure it. On the other hand, research by Beckfield and Bambra confirmed the correlation between life expectancy and health stating that the lagging welfare state in the USA led to an average loss of 3.77 quality life years in comparison to other OECD countries. The USA has an income gap of 8:1 (the average biggest earners have 8 times the wage of those at the other end of the spectrum) leading to a life expectancy of 78.7 years, which is in contrast with Japan reaching an average of 83.0 years with an income gap of 4:1. The same age dependent relation has been found in Scandinavian countries having similar income gaps as Japan.

Goda and Torres Garcia looked at the rise of global inequality and confirmed previous results by stating that within-country inequality is responsible for 70 percent of the global inequality, suggesting 30% is due to in-between country inequality.

Taking national and local figures into account for the UK, the Office for National Statistics observed a life expectancy for new-born baby boys to be 83.3 years in the Kensington and Chelsea area. Meanwhile, the life expectancy for the same cohort in Blackpool is merely 74.7 years. Nationwide, the female life expectancy is 86.6 years in Purbeck and the lowest in Glasgow City with an expectancy of 78.5 years. The authors conclude that inequality has increased over the last two decades despite improvements in these local areas.

Medical technology has improved greatly over the past two decades, with many illnesses that were fatal twenty years ago proving simple to treat now. Simple technological breakthroughs such as RFID labeling and instant messaging have meant that medical practices can be streamlined, saving time and money which can then be invested back into treating patients. With all these improvements in technology, why is there still little improvement in life expectancy in some areas? The answer lies again with income inequality, with areas that suffer from low income also suffering from lower government funding. This directly impacts the access local hospitals have to new technology, meaning they have fewer new technologies to utilise for their patients.

We may assume a strong relation between income inequality and health outcomes on a global scale as Dorling in recent research concludes there are overarching arguments. Dorling (2007) confirmed a strong relation between income inequality and negative health outcomes on a global scale after an observational study performed in 126 countries.

The academic world has provided alternatives to deal with the widening gap between poor and rich. Reformed minimum wages, living wages, basic income or a global ‘fair tax’ and redistribution are only a few austerity counter-proposals to ensure overall well-being by reaching or transcending the poverty line. Minimum wages have proven insufficient and a basic income is still globally debated. An international fair tax may even prove more challenging as this requires global political support.

Minimum wages and living wages have the same aim; raising income for the least fortunate to reduce the impact of a growing income gap. A minimum wage is defined as a minimum market valued income, imposed by law and paid by employers. A living wage is a locally liaised and negotiated pay rate that a fulltime employee needs for a household of four to reach the poverty line. For the latter, societal context is important, as living in a metropolitan area is more expensive than living in the countryside. The Basic Income Earth Network defines basic income as “a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means, test or work requirement”.

A locally implemented living wage project in the UK, facilitated by the General and Municipal Boilermakers Union in 400 councils, has proven to be successful in reducing (health) inequalities as well as being beneficial for government tax income. Awareness within the community influenced policy in a way that living wages became accepted as a benchmark for society. In this regard, a living wage clearly will contribute to individual well-being and social cohesion – both factors improve health within communities.

Proposals for a Universal Basic Income (UBI) are slowly reaching the minds of global policymakers, but this process will take more time in achieving broader support. In developing a short-term response tackling inequality, a living wage appears to be a possible solution for developed countries yet remains a huge challenge for developing countries.

Emerging new technologies will demand economical strategies that are able to cope with less job certainty and keeping up with growing demands in healthcare.

A redistribution of capital, as proposed by Thomas Piketty in his book ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’, in combination with a UBI may prove to be the best strategy in the long-run to counter income-related health inequalities on a global scale. We must urge politicians to finally face transnational companies and the top one percent in order to obtain a globally acceptable taxation rate.

About the author:

Sam Brokken hails from Belgium and lives near the city of Leuven. He studied physiotherapy, sports physical therapy and manual therapy practicing these areas for years in private practices within local communities. He lectures in musculoskeletal disorders in relation to manual handling and ergonomics for healthcare service providers.
He is currently engaged in postgraduate work at the Robert Gordon University (Aberdeen – Scotland) within the MSc Public Health and Health Promotion course.

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Papers from North America Basic Income Guarantee Congress online

by Kate McFarland | Aug 8, 2017 | News

The 2017 North America Basic Income Guarantee (NABIG) Congress was held June 16-18 in New York. Some papers are now available online.

Event Recap

The annual NABIG Congress is jointly organized by BIEN’s North American affiliates, the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network (USBIG) and Basic Income Canada Network (BICN).

In 2017, the 16th NABIG Congress was held at Hunter College’s Silberman School of Social Work in New York, New York, from June 16 through 18.

The event was the largest NABIG Congress in its history, drawing over 100 attendees and featuring over 50 speakers. Keynote speakers including Frances Fox Piven (Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology, CUNY Graduate Center), Andy Stern (former President of SEIU), Juliana Bidadanure (Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University), Joe Huston (Give Directly), and Chris Hughes (Facebook co-founder). Plenary sessions were also held on Welfare Rights and the basic income movement in Canada, including the guaranteed minimum income pilot soon to be launched in Ontario.

Parallel sessions covered a diverse range of context. As USBIG Chair Michael Howard describes in his summary of the congress (see the July 2017 USBIG NewsFlash), “Quite a few sessions focused on movement building, from local to global levels, including two sessions on grassroots organizing, and sessions on cultural and conversational contexts, communication, and messaging. Other topics discussed included child benefits, women, inequality and economic rents, basic income experiments from New Jersey to Africa, costs and financial aspects of basic income schemes (including blockchains), growth and degrowth, and philosophical and religious arguments for basic income.”

The 2017 NABIG Congress also featured two musical performances. Singer-songwriter Brandy Moore revisited her song “Just Because I’m Alive,” which she originally performed at the 2016 NABIG Congress in Winnipeg. Additionally, John Mize closed the conference by performing his new song “B.I.G.” with his son.

A full schedule of the event can be viewed here.

For additional perspectives on the congress from participants, see “(IDEA/Child Find)+ Basic Income = Equity” by Chioma Oruh (June 20, 2017) and “Recap: North American Basic Income Guarantee (NABIG)” by Ryan M Harrison (June 20, 2017).

Content Available Online

Several papers and presentations from the conference are now available in the USBIG discussion paper archives, including (as of July 2017) the following:

– Barbara Boraks: “Consensus or Discord- It’s Our Choice: A Values Based Framework For a Basic Income Model”

– Karen Glass: “Ontario Basic Income Pilot”

– Rachel Presser: “Why UBI Should Make the Earned Income Tax Credit Obsolete”

– Steven Pressman: “A LITTLE BIG: The Case for Child Allowances”

– Steven Pressman: “Ecology vs. the Economy: Lessons from Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century”

– Sheila Regehr: “Dignity or Degradation: What should be the value base for building a benefit system?”

– Cameron Weber: “The Actually-Existing Welfare State in the USA and One Possible Transformation to a Basic Income”

– Karl Widerquist: “The Cost of Basic Income: Back of the Envelope Calculations”

Additional papers may be uploaded later.

Photo: Mingling after Plenary (credit: Basic Income Guarantee Minnesota)

Reviewed by Russell Ingram