A Stanford University class –available on a podcast replays the 1970s Manitoba, Canada, experiment called “mincome,” on the way to rejoicing in Universal Basic Income.
In the U.S., Silicon Valley entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, who according to some is preparing to run for U.S. President, are promoting universal basic income.
What does basic income mean, students ask? The contentious subject raises many questions, such as: would society fall apart because everyone would just hang out on the couch?
The Stanford class seeks to separate the argument that robots will replace 47% of jobs, a prediction that fuels much of Silicon Valley’s support of basic income, from the “paradigm of work” dialogue, according to Juliana Bidadanure, Assistant Professor in Political Philosophy at Stanford University, who is teaching the class.
The podcast studies the observations of many “experts” on culture, race and gender in an effort to separate jobs (wage-work) from understanding the true nature of work. Several contributions are under analysis, such as the following:
– Doug Henwood — Journalist, economic analyst, and writer whose work has been featured in Harper’s, Jacobin Magazine, and The Nation, says if robots were really taking over, there would be a strong productivity growth in the U.S., which is not true, so far;
– Rutger Bregman — Journalist and author of “Utopia for Realists: The Case for a Universal Basic Income, Open Borders and a 15-hour Workweek” thinks that if basic income were accomplished by the government printing money, that situation would definitely lead to inflation. But no inflation fears would be attached to a taxation process;
– Kathi Weeks — Marxist, feminist scholar, associate professor of women’s studies at Duke University in North Carolina, and author of “The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries” believes that wage-work is not the only meaningful activity. She points to pre-industrial society as a good example of when wage-work took a backseat to the value of non-paid work;
– Evelyn Forget — Economist and professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba and academic director of the Manitoba Research Data Centre, who first reported the “mincome” data. Forget argues that “mincome” made it possible for single mothers to get off welfare and proudly have a profession.
A second podcast will be available that discusses whether universal basic income is the end of capitalism or not.
There was once a town in Canada that essentially eliminated poverty, and at the time no one seemed to know. One filmmaker is doing his best to shine a bright light on the research into this town.
Vincent Santiago is producing “The Mincome Experiment” documentary that looks into the Manitoba experiments in the 1970s, which provided a minimum income guarantee to the entire town of Dauphin. Santiago recently spoke with The UBI Podcast about his project.
“The experiment was completed but there was a change in government in Manitoba and federal level so experiment was never analyzed,” Santiago said.
That is until Dr. Evelyn Forget of the University of Manitoba began digging up these old records. Forget found there was a reduction in hospital visits and instances of mental health issues in the area with a minimum income. Despite worries, there was no large reduction in the amount of work being done, Santiago said.
“The only sector that was affected was the mothers who gave birth and the teenagers who stopped working to finish high school,” Santiago said.
Santiago said any new idea like minimum income guarantee will cause backlash, especially if the research is not explained well.
“Just like when they first introduced universal health care in Canada, there was a lot of opposition,” he said.
In order to explain these results, Santiago said it is important for the basic income movement to focus on public relations. He said his documentary is an important way to show the positive results of minimum income systems.
“I would like to make this documentary to dispel a lot of these misconceptions,” he said.
Currently, Santiago is running a crowdfunding campaign to help cover the costs of production for the film.
The crowdfunding campaign for “The Mincome Experiment” can be found here.
The Mincome Experiment is a documentary that is as much a story about basic income as it is about human socioeconomic evolution throughout the years. Vincent Santiago, the director for the documentary, first heard that University of Manitoba professor Dr. Evelyn Forget was looking for volunteers to digitize the results of the 1970s Mincome experiment. While Santiago did not consider himself an experienced social activist, he was nevertheless keen to study possible measures to prevent government excesses that he believed could lead to growing social inequality and injustices. Santiago was convinced that basic income and open government were foundations that could help prevent social inequality and injustice.
The Mincome experiment and the concept of basic income caught Santiago’s imagination, and he took a passionate interest in seeking out more information. He finally talked to Dr. Forget on April 2014. Another opportunity arose soon after to interview then-Conservative Senator Hugh Segal, a very vocal and strong basic income advocate in Canada. Vincent Santiago read about and researched basic income and talked to economists and others. In the process, he discovered several interesting side stories not widely known, even within Canada.
Santiago wanted to make the Mincome experiment into a documentary. He soon realized there was so much story to be told. He looked into the various forms of basic income and decided the film should be told as an engaging narrative about human socioeconomic evolution. Intertwined into the historical and visionary backdrop is the concept of basic income and its role. Of the film, Santiago said:
While the Mincome experiment is very much the central theme of the documentary, the documentary also looks into other basic income experiments and the various forms and possible implementation. I’ve started calculating the various ways to pay for it and how to implement them.
The promotional trailer created for the crowdfunding campaign asks various questions typically uttered by people who are cynical or against basic income. That is because Santiago did not want to make a film only for those already familiar with basic income. He wanted to create an entertaining and fun documentary that also draws in the skeptics by presenting facts, without shying away from common ridicule and prevailing concerns.
Another project that occupies Santiago’s time is creating a low-cost, no commission fee platform for crowdfunding, curating, and showcasing creative works. With this platform, which first went into development in 2012, Santiago is now launching the crowdfunding campaign for his documentary. The Mincome Experiment project is still a long way from reaching the stated fundraising goal, but the team remains confident the amount can be reached. Efficient use of the funds would allow the project to include more engaging footage and animation for the documentary, ensuring that it will capture and convince audiences worldwide.
The crowdfunding runs until June 15, 2017 and can be found here.
Written by the team behind “The Mincome Experiment.”
In honor of the launch of the book, Van Parijs has delivered several public lectures, beginning with events in Copenhagen, Denmark (March 28) and Stockholm, Sweden (March 30). Copenhagen (Video Below)
The former was part of a workshop on basic income organized by the Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen in conjunction with two political parties, the Alternative and the Social Liberal Party, and held at the Danish Parliament, Christiansborg.
In his talk, Van Parijs describes the origins of his own support for basic income and his discovery of previous supporters of the idea. He goes on to discuss the current popularity of the idea, examining three events that have popularized basic income within the past year: the Swiss basic income referendum, the decision of the Finnish government to conduct a basic income pilot study, and the election of president candidate Benoît Hamon in France’s Socialist primary.
Van Parijs’s lecture was followed by two additional presentations on the topic — a critical perspective from Otto Brøns-Petersen of the think tank CEPOS, and a sympathetic one from Torsten Gejl of the Alternative, who relates that the party is beginning to investigate a model for a feasible basic income for Denmark.
Stockholm (Video Below)
The second launch event was a seminar at Stockholm University, moderated by Institute for Future Studies Director Gustaf Arrhenius.
In this lecture, Van Parijs considers basic income from the standpoint of philosophical ethics and social justice, addressing the common objection that it is unjust to provide money to individuals without requiring some type of work or contribution. In countering the “freeloader” objection, Van Parijs begins with what he calls “ad hominem” replies — accusing the objectors of applying inconsistent principles. He proceeds to provide a positive account to justify the provision of a basic income without requiring anything in return, viewing it instead as a social inheritance. According to Van Parijs, most of the wealth in society cannot be ascribed to the contributions of any particular individuals, and is best conceived as rightfully belonging to all of us collectively. At the same time, he stresses that we still need an “ethos of contribution”, which is compatible with the provision of an unconditional basic income.
Ingrid A.M. Robeyns (Chair Ethics of Institutions at Utrecht University) and Andreas Bergh (Associate Professor in Economics at Lund University) provided comments on Van Parijs’s talk.
Robeyns praises Basic Income, especially for its balanced and sympathetic treatment of critical views. Her comments provide a general critique of the discourse surrounding basic income, arguing that one cannot be “for” or “against” a basic income outright without specifying amount, funding source, and what other programs would be replaced.
Bergh also praises the book, calling it “convincing”, although he too has complaints with the current state of basic income discourse–beginning with the book’s subtitle. According to Bergh, basic income is not a “radical” proposal and, moreover, calling it such is unhelpful with respect to its political popularity. Bergh urges basic income advocates to “get their hands dirty with national politics”.
United States
After the European book launch events, Van Parijs traveled to the United States for additional public lectures. These included a talk at Bowling Green State University in Ohio on April 7, where he was one of three keynote speakers (along with Evelyn Forget and Matt Zwolinski) at the university’s annual Political Theory Workshop–which, for 2017, focused on basic income and the future of work. On April 12, Van Parijs spoke at Stanford University, as the second major event hosted by the university’s newly founded Basic Income Lab.
A new documentary on basic income — Free Lunch Societyby Austrian director Christian Tod — premiered in Copenhagen’s Bremen Theatre on March 20, 2017, to a crowd numbering in the hundreds.
The 90-minute film covers a range of “highlights” of the basic income movement, such as (for example) Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend, Manitoba’s “Mincome” experiment, campaigns for guaranteed minimum income in the 1960s US, the 2008 basic income pilot in Namibia, Switzerland’s 2016 basic income referendum, and current concerns about automation. Along the way, it features interviews with prominent basic income proponents — including, among others, billionaire businessman Götz Werner (founder of the German drugstore chain dm-drogerie markt), libertarian political scientist Charles Murray (American Enterprise Institute), venture capitalist Albert Wenger (Union Square Ventures), Mein Grundeinkommenfounder Michael Bohmeyer, Swiss referendum co-founder Daniel Häni, economist Evelyn Forget, and writer and entrepreneur Peter Barnes.
In an interview about the film (“Curiosity and the desire to improve the world”), Tod explains, “The film takes as its point of departure an ethical justification of basic income founded on the premise that natural resources belong to us all.” Tod’s musical selection — centered around the song “This Land is Your Land” — reflects this orientation toward the subject, as do his cinematographic decisions to include clips of natural scenery interspersed between the vintage footage and talking expert heads. (As he says in the same interview, “What might not come across quite so clearly in the completed film are elements which strike me as extremely important such as the countryside, the Earth, natural resources. I had wanted these aspects to be more prominent, but then the narrative would have suffered.”)
Tod has also acknowledged the influence of the science fiction series Star Trek: The Next Generation on his thinking about basic income and, eventually, the film: “It presents a society where there’s no money, where people only work because they really want to, and where they are driven by human curiosity.” Correspondingly, Free Lunch Society begins and ends with scenes from Star Trek.
About the interview subjects in his film, who were chosen in part to emphasize the political diversity behind support for basic income, Tod notes, “It’s interesting that they are almost all business people: owners of technology companies, CEOs of large or small companies, people who can afford to think about making the world a better place.”
Asked about the most surprising thing he learned while making the film — in an interview following the film’s premiere (see below) — Tod mentioned the discovery that “basic income was such a big thing in the United States in the 1960s,” tested in experiments and nearly voted upon.
Watch the Trailer
World Premiere Event
Most of Copenhagen’s Bremen Theatre 648 were filled at the world premiere of Free Lunch Society on Monday, March 20, 2017.
Director Tod states, “It was a fabulous evening in a tremendous location. It was very special to have the world premiere of Free Lunch Society in Copenhagen, because my film career started in this beautiful city 10 years ago, when I studied at Copenhagen university’s film department. The premiere on Monday was, so far, the peak of my career in filmmaking. Almost 650 people watching my vision and applauding, laughing and apparently liking it, is hard to top.”
The film’s world premiere was followed by short interviews with Tod and Bohmeyer, as well as a panel discussion with Uffe Elbæk (Leader of the Danish green political party The Alternative; Danish: Alternativet), Steen Jakobsen (Chief Economist at Saxo Bank), and Dorte Kolding (Chair of BIEN-Danmark). All three panelists were sympathetic to the idea basic income, although Elbæk explained that The Alternative was not prepared to endorse it — though they would be willing to pursue pilot studies, and though the party’s political agenda includes the provision of benefits to the poor “without specific control measures” (that is, without conditionalities like work requirements, similar in spirit to a basic income). Jakobsen advocates a negative income tax, as proposed by Milton Friedman, as a way to increase the purchasing power of the lower and middle classes and produce a more equitable distribution of wealth. Watch below (panel discussion and debate in Danish).
The world premiere was followed by several other showings in Copenhagen, including one which was held as part of BIEN-Danmark’s Annual Meeting (March 25, 2017), with showings in Austria scheduled in late March and early April.
