by Jurgen De Wispelaere | Jan 18, 2018 | News
The 2018 Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) Congress has extended the deadline for submitting proposals for papers, themed panels or roundtables that cover any aspect of the justification, design, implementation, or politics of universal basic income. Send us your proposals (including a title, a short abstract of up to 250 words, and personal information) by the END OF FEBRUARY via our
online submission. The new date is February 28th, 2018.
The 18th BIEN World Congress will take place on 23 – 26 August 2018 at the University of Tampere (Finland). The theme of the Congress is “Basic Income and the New Universalism: Rethinking the Welfare State in the 21st Century”. The international BIEN Congress takes place on 23-26 August. The first day will be a Nordic UBI Day on 23 August 2018.
Confirmed plenary speakers at the 2018 BIEN Congress include:
* Phillip Alston (USA)
* Jamie Cooke (Scotland)
* Evelyn Forget (Canada)
* Loek Groot (Netherlands)
* Louise Haagh (UK)
* Renana Jhabvala (India)
* Olli Kangas (Finland)
* Lena Lavinas (Brazil)
More info is available at our congress website, or follow us on Facebook or Twitter. For questions, email us at biencongress2018@gmail.com.
by Karl Widerquist | Jan 17, 2018 | Opinion, The Indepentarian
This essay was originally published in the USBIG NewsFlash in April 2007.
Republican Presidential Candidate Tommy Thompson has endorsed BIG—at least in a foreign country. On his campaign website, the former Wisconsin Governor calls himself “the reliable conservative in the 2008 presidential race.” The first reason he gives is, “Tommy Thompson is the father of welfare reform.” Thompson has a good claim to that title. Since 1996, welfare reform, also known as “workfare,” replaced conditional cash support for single mothers with work requirements, sometimes for less than minimum wage, without providing daycare. The plan was modeled on an earlier Wisconsin program initiated by then-governor Thompson. Workfare is usually motivated by the belief that poor people have a responsibility to take whatever jobs are offered, even if they have substantial childcare responsibilities.
Thompson is literally the last America one might expect to endorse BIG—a plan to provide unconditional cash benefits to every citizen. But Thompson has not only endorsed BIG, he has made it a major initiative in his campaign. He has discussed it in numerous interviews and speeches and at the Republican presidential debates. He hasn’t endorsed BIG for the United States but as part of his strategy to win the war in Iraq. The BIG element in Thompson’s Iraq strategy is that one-third of Iraqi government oil revenues will be reserved for a fund to provide every Iraqi with a small income guarantee modeled after the Alaska Permanent Fund (APF). USBIG Newsletter readers will recall that the APF was the initiative of another Republican Governor, Jay Hammond. It provides a small but significant income guarantee to every Alaskan resident.
Of course, both the APF and any likely Iraq proposal fall short of the goals of most BIG supporters because they are not large enough to cover the recipient’s needs—a “partial BIG” rather than a “full BIG.” But Alaska experience has show that even a partial BIG can make a great difference to the needy and sets the right precedent.
Thompson’s plan is rather far from implementation, however. To introduce it, the U.S. would have to be continuing its involvement in Iraq two years from now, when a president Thompson would take office. At that point the U.S. will have been at war for nearly six years. Even then, Thompson could only recommend the plan to the Iraqi Parliament, which is formally recognized by the U.S. government as the sovereign government of an independent country. If the whole of Thompson’s plan is adopted, United States would likely remain at war in Iraq for four more years while we find out whether the military elements of his plan work.
Thompson has not discussed extending the Alaska-style plan closer to home, nor does he seem aware of the possible conflict between the goals of an APF-style BIG and his pedigree, Workfare.
What’s the big deal if a politician in one country supports BIG in another country where he may have little influence even if elected? It show that framed in the right context, BIG can have a great appeal even to work-ethic conservatives, and it demonstrates the growing appeal of the APF precedent. The APF is so obviously successful, so popular, and so cost-effective that it appeals even to the father of workfare. Much of the motivation for workfare has been popular American resentment against people who receive direct government payments. But there is little resentment in America for people who receive property income whether or not they work and whether or not they received their property through work. The APF makes some part of Alaska’s oil revenues into part of the personal property of every Alaskan. It’s theirs; they own it. It is quite natural to infer that if it is right for every Alaskan to own a share of their oil, then perhaps every Iraqi should own a share of their oil too. But once you have endorsed that principle it is quite natural to infer that every South African should own a share of their gold. Every Botswanan should own a share of their diamonds. Every Welshman should own a share of their coal. Every Bolivian should own a share of their tin. And the full inference is that everyone should own a share of all natural resources. If we put that principle into practice, single mothers would not need workfare at all.
-Karl Widerquist (Michael Lewis contributing), New Orleans, LA, April 2007
by Tyler Prochazka | Jan 17, 2018 | Opinion
Universal Basic Income (UBI) is gaining more traction in mainstream discourse, but the academic debate has been heating up for years. One scholar with a sympathetic but critical eye towards basic income still believes it is not the best priority for activists.
Philip Harvey, a professor of law at Rutgers, wrote that a job guarantee could eliminate poverty for a fraction of the cost of UBI — $1.5 trillion less.
Harvey argued in 2006 that the focus on UBI may be crowding out more realistic policies that could achieve the same ends.
“[Basic Income Guarantee] advocates who argue that a society should provide its members the largest sustainable BIG it can afford – whether or not that guarantee would be large enough to eliminate poverty – are on shaky moral ground if the opportunity cost of providing such a BIG would be the exhaustion of society’s redistributive capacity without eliminating poverty when other foregone social welfare strategies could have been funded at far less cost that would have succeeded in achieving that goal.”
When I interviewed Harvey this month, he said his views have largely stayed the same and he still sees a fundamental difference between the advocates of UBI and job guarantee.
“The most important driver of that difference is the inherent attractiveness of the UBI idea. It really is an idea that captures the imagination and admiration of all kinds of interested parties with different kinds of agendas. The job guarantee idea, on the other hand, attracts people who are more into the weeds of policy analysis.”.
There is a big debate about which type of cost calculation is most relevant for UBI, since wealthy individuals would have most or all of the basic income taxed back.
Basic income scholars such as Karl Widerquist argue it is more accurate to calculate UBI’s “net cost” which subtracts the portion of the basic income that is taxed back, as individuals are essentially paying back the benefit.
Harvey argues that, from a political standpoint, people will not view UBI in such a way: “The problem with Karl’s argument is that he that he thinks that people will think the way he does, when there’s no evidence to support that given the way they think about other analogous government benefits.”
Harvey notes that, since the gross cost of UBI proposals is typically a high percentage of a country’s overall GDP, there are tradeoffs that must be considered when pushing for basic income.
“On a practical level, that’s the biggest problem that UBI advocates face is that they don’t have a good answer to why it’s worth spending that much money on this kind of benefit as opposed to spending that much money or a far lesser amount of money on other benefits that would serve the same purpose.”
Many basic income proponents have argued that the job guarantee would have much higher administrative costs than the basic income, and thus say it is a less attractive proposal.
Interestingly, Harvey argues the high administrative costs actually serve the purpose of the guarantee because the administration of the program also creates new jobs: “The goal of the job guarantee is to provide jobs and as long as the jobs you provide are helping to achieve your goal, it doesn’t matter whether if they’re administrative jobs or non-administrative jobs, they still count.”
The plan he proposes is for the government to offer grants to nonprofits and government agencies to create jobs that fulfill their mission to help the community. For example, installing rooftop solar panels and advocacy work.
“Why not give not-for-profit organizations the opportunity to compete head-on with government agencies to see who can do the most good with the resources made available to them through the program?”
Allowing for this competition would avoid the criticism that the government cannot create productive work.
“You can design a job guarantee program to avoid the relative incapacity or possible incapacity of governments to create meaningful jobs.”
Harvey has designed the ‘Jobs for All’ congressional bill with former Congressman John Conyers, who recently resigned amid sexual harassment allegations.
When pushing for basic income, Harvey believes the opportunity cost, both in the time spent advocating UBI and then financing it, may be too great.
“Unless you can argue that you are prepared to provide a UBI that is really adequate to eliminate poverty, you’ve no business advocating a program that would leave people in poverty because it was inadequate.”
Author’s editorial note: I plan to write a follow-up article to discuss and analyze some of the points made by Dr. Harvey.
by Citizens' Income Trust | Jan 12, 2018 | News
Image credit to Nathaniel Houghton, on Medium.
The Guardian has published a podcast of a debate on Citizen’s Basic Income (start to listen at 16:00 minutes):
Could a universal basic income be a solution to precarious work, automation and a happy, healthier society? It has enthusiasts from Silicon Valley to the Labour party, but would it actually work?
We hear from Marjukka Turunen, from the Finnish welfare agency Kela in Helsinki, which is trialling a basic income scheme.
On the expert panel: Torsten Bell, director of the Resolution Foundation, the Observer’s Sonia Sodha and the chair of Compass, Neal Lawson.
by Toru Yamamori | Jan 1, 2018 | News
Sonia Sodha (Twitter account image)
Sonia Sodha, lead writer at the Observer, urges the British Left not to support UBI. According to her latest opinion piece for the Guardian, UBI will not cure any social disease that UBI advocates claim will be alleviated, and rather, it is currently a fatal distraction from other battles on which the British Left should focus.
Sodha charted the rationales for UBI in the following three categories: tech utopians’s prophecy of a decrease of jobs, Ken Loachian welfare critics’ blame against inhumanely complex welfare system, and.labour market dystopians’ poverty backstop against insecurity.
Sodha dismisses the tech utopian’s argument by insisting it falls ‘lump of labour fallacy’. According to Sodha, ‘[f]ar from robots stealing jobs, the reality is that many firms are underinvesting in technology, suppressing productivity’ in Britain, and ‘technology will radically reshape the world of work without reducing its sum total’. She also dismisses the argument of what she calls ‘Ken Loachian-welfare critics’ (though Loach himself has never argued what Sodha labels under his name) and states:
“We could fix the caring issue simply by increasing the generosity of the stingy state benefits paid to those who care full-time for older people or adults with disabilities. If we were so inclined, we could get rid of punitive benefit sanctions and replace them with a welfare-to-work system that puts much more emphasis on training and support for people to find the job that is right for them, not the first that comes along.”
Finally, Sodha opposes the labour market dystopians, by accusing them of not fighting for labour rights but for ‘a dribble of cash’. Similar points to Sonia Sodha’s were made by Bo Rothstein in a recent Social Europe article, ‘UBI: A bad idea for the welfare state’ A response followed, ‘Universal Basic Income: Definitions and details’. The same detailed response would apply here.
Behind her accusations, there is a recent move for UBI inside the Labour party. See the articles below for more on Labour Party activity regarding UBI support:
Toru Yamamori, “UNITED KINGDOM: Jeremy Corbyn, candidate for Labour Party leader, recruits Basic Income advocate to draft economic plan”, Basic Income News, August 8th 2015
Toru Yamamori, “United Kingdom: Labour Party considers universal basic income”, Basic Income News, February 21st 2016
Kate MacFarland, “UK: Labour Leader to Investigate Universal Basic Income“, Basic Income News, September 15th 2016
Genevieve Shanahan, “UK: Labour Party sets up working group to investigate UBI”, Basic Income News, February 10th 2017
More information at:
Sonia Sodha, ‘UBI is no panacea for us – and Labour shouldn’t back it’, The Guardian, 18th December 2017.
