The North American Basic Income Guarantee (NABIG) Congress will take place in New York, June 15-16, 2019. The deadline for presentation proposals has been extended to March 1. Asked about the Congress, former coordinator Karl Widerquist said, “I’m going for the 18th time in a row. If you can make it to New York this summer, meet me there.”
Thomas Piketty. Picture credit to: Books Live (Sunday Times)
Details are being fed into Rahul Gandhi’s promise of a minimum income guarantee to poor Indians, an announcement made earlier this month. Thomas Piketty, an authority in economics, and particularly in inequality analysis, is assisting Ghandi’s Congress party in designing the policy onto the Indian context.
Although Piketty has a particular vision on basic income, he has supported a universal, unconditional basic income. At some point the particulars of his proposal may have generated confusion, but it seems his contribution to what can be a real shot at implementing (a kind of) basic income in India prove his resolve on this matter. “It is high time to move from the politics of caste conflict to the politics of income and wealth distribution”, Piketty has stated. MIT professor Abhijit Baerjee is also helping to materialize this idea on the Congress manifesto for the upcoming elections. Economy Nobel prize winner Angus Deaton was also contacted by party officials, but hasn’t apparently been involved in the scheme’s design.
The Congress’s proposal for its “minimum income guarantee” was told, by party officials, to be “anything above 10000 Rupees per month” per household. For a typical family, that would amount to 66% of the family’s net living wage, which contrasts with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) most recent promise for implementation of a basic income-type of policy (6000 Rupees/year, per small farmer).
More information at:
André Coelho, “India: Basic income is being promised to all poor people in India”, Basic Income News, February 1st 2019
Expenditure and Living Wage calculation in India
Scroll staff, “Minimum income guarantee: Economist Thomas Piketty confirms he is helping Congress with the scheme”, Scroll.in, February 7th 2019
Thomas Piketty, “Is our basic income really universal”, Le blog de Thomas Piketty, February 13th 2017
Genvieve Shanahan, “FRANCE: Piketty’s comments on basic income cause confusion”, Basic Income News, February 3rd 2017
D.K. Singh, “Thomas Piketty & Angus Deaton help frame Rahul Gandhi’s minimum income promise”, The Print, January 31st 2019
André Coelho, “India: The Indian government also promises basic income to farmers”, Basic Income News, February 12th 2019
The 18th annual North American Basic Income Guarantee (NABIG) Congress will be held next June 15-16th, 2019, at the Silberman School of Social Work of the Hunter College in New York City. The Congress Major Theme is: Basic Income on the Policy Agenda, and the call is out for proposals. The deadline for proposal submissions is February 18th, 2019.
Submissions can be made here.
Fifty years after a basic income bill was first introduced in the U.S. Congress, basic income is once again on the policy agenda in North America. Pilot programs, controlled trials, documentaries, and debates are bringing basic income into mainstream policy conversations. The 2019 NABIG Congress invites participants to consider how to advance basic income on the policy agenda at local, national, and regional levels.
More information at USBIG’s website.
The plenary sessions of the BIEN Congress 2018 are now available to view, here (all).
Individually, the recordings can also be watched in the following embedded links.
Philip Alston, “Should We Frame Basic Income as a Human Right?”
Louise Haagh, “The Ethics and Economics of Basic Income Revisited”
Lena Lavinas, “Can Basic Income Resist the Financialization Logic?”
Evelyn Forget, “The Basic Income Path to a Healthier Society”
Roundtable Plenary on basic income experiments with Jamie Cooke, Sarath Davala, Evelyn Forget, Loek Groot and Olli Kangas, moderated by Philippe Van Parijs
After reporting on the two first days of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) Congress in Tampere, Finland, 24th and 25th of August, a second and final part is here lay forth, covering for the event on the last day (26th). (Note 1)
Jamie Cooke, Sarath Davala, Evelyn Forget, Loek Groot and Olli Kangas all sat together at the University of Tampere main auditorium to speak and discuss basic income experiments. These stood for, respectively, the Scottish feasibility study (not yet a functional pilot), the Indian Madhya Pradesh basic income pilot (concluded – ran through years 2011 and 2012), Canadian experiments (past “Mincome” experiment and the interrupted Ontario pilot), the Netherlands transfer schemes (several Municipalities) and the Finish ongoing two-year experiment. The session was chaired by Phillipe van Parijs.
Jamie Cooke
The speakers were asked to freely describe each case. Olli Kangas assured the audience that the Finish experiment is going on as planned, and that results will start to be collected and organized after the ending date, in December 2018. He also confirmed that the studied variables were essentially related to paid work and related job market interactions, adding that survey data would be published at the beginning of 2019 at the latest. As for Evelyn Forget, she reminded that basic income experiments in Canada have been more focused on health outcomes, although work-related results have also been captured. She believes the Ontario pilot – six months into its planned duration – was cancelled for ideologic reasons (the new conservative government arguing that people should get jobs, instead of depending on unconditional transfers). In his turn, Loek Groot informed the audience that experiments in the Netherlands are not testing basic income, but several ways of managing people on benefits. He also added that the social benefits system in the Netherlands is decentralizing, hence the Municipalities initiatives to start these experiments which, generally, measure work-related variables, plus health and life satisfaction data. Finally, Jamie Cooke explained that the basic income idea in Scotland has very much gained from BIEN’s affiliate in the region (Basic Income Scotland) and its actions to spread the word about it. That and the work of RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce), both in the United Kingdom and the local Scottish RSA, has helped in gaining traction for the (basic income) experiment. Jamie noted that the language used when presenting and discussing basic income must be clear, because people need to understand what is being done or planned.
At this moment, van Parijs introduced a provocative question: What, if any, would be the results of a basic income experiment that would lead you to give up on the basic income idea? Olli Kangas recognized that there could be such a result, taking on a cautious approach. However, he added, experimental results could always be “spun” politically in several directions, according to ideologic agendas. Evelyn Forget didn’t oppose to that view, although, contrary to Kangas, she thinks the outcomes of such experiments are already more or less predictable (drawing from past experiments analysis). Sarath Davala wouldn’t quite imagine himself not being a supporter of basic income, and so returned a more passioned answer: “I don’t know, and I don’t want to think about it!”. He added, however, that basic income experiments also test if trusting people is good or not (he believes that it is good). Near the end of the session, Evelyn concluded that people love stories, caring much less about numbers and statistics. That is why she worries about eventual social destructive behaviours which may occur during (basic income like) experiments.
Parallel sessions during this last day of the Congress were widely varied, although only lasted through the morning period. Papers on freedom and (social) reparation, trade unions, work, rights, alternative currencies and the relation of all these with basic income were presented.
Evelyn Forget
The last Plenary Session was featured by Evelyn Forget, who explained in further detailed what happened with the Ontario experiment. She informed that first the new government argued that the experiment had “failed”, which could not be true since there was no data to justify that statement. In a subsequent argument (for having cancelled the experiment), the same government alleged that 25% of the recipients had dropped out, which was also false, for the same reason (no data). The true reason for slashing the basic income pilot finally came, when an official from the newly elected government stated that they did not believe in “free money”, but in people getting jobs. Forget was further concerned about this situation, aggravated by the fact that recipients were getting more or less twice then they would have from regular benefits (and now had to return to their original earnings, with no previous warning). The need to ease these recipients out of the experiment has motivated an insurgence of activity by Canadian social activists (mainly basic income advocates and anti-poverty organizations), to try and restart the experiment or at least to help people transition from their income support during the experiment to their former earnings.
Forget concluded the Plenary with more general considerations on income, welfare and basic income. According to her, income security is not only linked to precarious employment, but also with welfare bureaucracy, which has gotten so complex that people have difficulty in knowing what their earnings will be from month to month. Hence basic income would introduce a kind of income regularity that most people nowadays cannot really expect from the market nor from the State. She ended on the note that the goodness of basic income very much depends on its financing mechanism, which could turn an output of social solidarity into one of societal disintegration.
Closing the Congress, Annie Miller shared a few last words, emphasizing that BIEN Congresses have greatly expanded since their inauguration in 1986. All the same subjects are covered nowadays, as were before (ex.: poverty, social justice), but now including issues such as (basic income) experiments, environmental issues and cryptocurrencies. For her, the importance of research, dissemination of knowledge and activism for basic income cannot be overstated. Finally, Miller is confident that, although present-day world is (mainly) governed by sociopaths, the time has arrived to replace them with empathy, kindness and honesty.
Note 1 – Mistakenly, Lena Lavina’s Plenary Session was held on the 26th (first in the morning), but reported on part 1 as having been on the 25th. So now, the last Plenary held on the 25th, on basic income experiments, is reported on in the present article (part 2).
More information at:
BIEN Congress 2018 website
André Coelho, “BIEN Congress 2018 (part 1)”, Basic Income News, September 3rd 2018
