by Kate McFarland | May 27, 2016 | News
Former CIA officer Bryan Dean Wright says that the “smart spies” all recognized that, within the lifetimes, many would be “out of a job, too old to re-train, or struggling in a ‘shared economy'” due to automation.
In an article in Congress Blog, the “forum for lawmakers and policy professionals” at The Hill, Wright describes the problem and proposes a solution: data mining royalties, or “money paid from Big Data companies like Facebook who mine and sell your personal data.”
Wright compares his idea to the Alaska Permanent Fund — which provides a small annual income to all Alaskans, funded from royalties paid by oil companies when they extract natural resources from Alaskan land.
In Wright’s words:
“The ‘Data Permanent Fund’ would work in a similar way: each year, all full-time U.S. citizens earning less than $250,000 would get a tax-free check. How to calculate the check’s amount should be subject of rigorous debate. For instance, it could be based on a percentage of the amount charged by Google (or Facebook, or Apple) to advertisers when they sell your data. But the bottom line is still the same: You get paid when you get mined.”
Bryan Dean Wright (February 10, 2016), “Surviving the robot revolution,” The Hill: Congress Blog.
Image Credit: Arbeck, Wikimedia Commons
by Kate McFarland | May 17, 2016 | News
Left Forum 2016 will be held from May 20-22 at John Jay College in New York City.
As the annual conference describes itself, “Left Forum convenes the largest annual conference of a broad spectrum of left and progressive intellectuals, activists, academics, organizations and the interested public. Conference participants come together to engage a wide range of critical perspectives on the world, to discuss differences, commonalities, and alternatives to current predicaments, and to share ideas for understanding and transforming the world.”
The 2015 forum included over 4000 participants and 1350 speakers.
This year, Left Forum will include a “collaborative chat” on Basic Income as a Method to End Oppression.
Panelists will include social worker Diane Pagen (NYC Department of Education), Baltimore politician Ian Schlakman, NYC social entrepreneur Joel Cabrera, and sociologist and author William DiFazio (St. John’s University). All speakers are previous participants in US Basic Income Guarantee congresses.
The Basic Income session will be held on May 22 at 10am EST.
Left arrow graphic from Mysitemyway.com, via Wikimedia Commons.
by Kate McFarland | May 12, 2016 | News
Tuesday, May 17, 2016, Professor Guy Standing will deliver the RSA Scotland’s prestigious Angus Millar Lecture.
In the lecture, “Professor Standing will explore the concept of Basic Income, particularly in relation to Scotland, which has gone from being a fringe political concept to one being discussed and piloted around the world.”
Guy Standing is a Professor of Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and co-founder and honorary co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network.
The RSA, a British think tank, has been active in promoting the idea of a basic income, and developed a detailed model for a basic income last December.
See the event details here for more information, or to register for the free public event.
Too late to a book a trip to Scotland? Great news: Standing’s lecture will also be streamed live on YouTube!
Image Credit: Stan Jourdan, BIEN Congress 2012 (flickr)
Thanks to my supporters on Patreon. (Click the link to see how you too can support my work for Basic Income News.)
by Andre Coelho | May 11, 2016 | Opinion
So the basic income implementation process in Namibia was halted1. Is that surprising?
After an amazing effort by minister Zephania Kameeta to get a basic income implementation program for Namibia up to the (minister) council, it was just swept away and replaced by a program intended to alleviate poverty through economic growth. The progressive approach was replaced by the traditional economic orthodoxy of endless growth and continued inequality. This program, named “Harambee Prosperity Plan”, also includes the creation of a food bank and grants for young people conditional on participation in this food bank and a few other community activities.
Let’s not forget that Namibia was one the few places on Earth where a basic income experiment was actually carried out (at Otjivero), and with excellent results. Among the positive results were better nutrition, clothing, and transportation, more savings and a rise in entrepreneurship. You could now be thinking: Ok, so they tried basic income in a pilot project with excellent results, and they had a minister who was a champion of the basic income who could take it on to national-level implementation. So what’s stopping them now? The answer seems simple, but it is also hard to deal with.
The answer is this: big corporate interests need poverty. And it so happens that Namibia has plenty of poor people2. In a recent essay, a tentative connection was established between poverty (in economic terms) and the refusal/denial of the South African government to test for basic income, let alone implement it at the national level. Basically, the argument entails that government officials deny the proven advantages of basic income, delaying its development, to protect corporate interests. These interests profit massively from the cheap labour that a mass of helpless poor people can provide.
The economic structure of Namibia, as related to income, is not much different from the South African, as can be seen in Figures 1 and 2. The similarity is striking, hence the same unwillingness of the Namibian political elite to try out the implementation of basic income, despite all the theoretical and proven practical advantages it provides for the people.
Figure 1 – The spread of households within the income distribution in South Africa, 2008
Figure 2 – The spread of households within the income distribution in Namibia, 2015
A clear image starts to appear. In these countries, poverty is an asset for big industry, which has, to a great extent, bought political power. So what can be done about it? Well, two things can happen: poverty-dependent corporations automate up to a great extent3, and/or Namibians put pressure on their elected officials – through democratic processes – to get basic income implemented, despite the corporate grip on regime politicians. The first one is highly probable, and so we will be watching a fading interest of corporations in financing political power, since with mechanical machines and Artificial Intelligence they can get their way even without resorting to poor human labour. The second one, less likely but entirely possible, may grow from the first one, when political leaders get less engaged with corporate power – and although remaining eager to please them, no longer have the same financial incentive, thus becoming more susceptible to democratic pressures.
Anyway, automation may actually not be a deterrent but rather a spark for some sort of basic income implementation. We seem to be facing a win-win situation for basic income: automation and/or democratic pressures will guarantee that basic income becomes a reality in the next few years in Namibia, and elsewhere. At this point, only ruthless autocratic power can dismiss it and keep it away for much longer. The time for change has come.
More information at:
Claudia and Dirk Haarnann, 2015. “Relief through cash: impact assessment of the emergency cash grant in Namibia”, July 2015
Claudia and Dirk Haarnann, 2015. “Piloting basic income in Namibia – critical reflections on the process and possible lessons”, Paper delivered at the 14th Congress of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) Munich – 14-16 th September 2012
André Coelho, “On why basic income has not yet been deployed”, Basic Income News, 17th March 2016
Notes:
1 – At the beginning of April 2016, the Namibian president presented his state of the nation address as well as the “Harambee Prosperity Plan”, which focuses on combating poverty by the creation of jobs through economic growth, plus the introduction of a food bank.
2 – According to the Republic of Namibia National Planning Commission “Poverty and deprivation in Namibia 2015”, the account for poverty is that 26,9 % of the population lives under the official poverty line.
3 – According the report “Technology at work v2.0”, it is estimated that in countries like Ethiopia the risk of job automation covers 85% of all jobs in the coming decades (other examples like China and India rate at 77% and 69% of automation risk, respectively).
by Toru Yamamori | Apr 30, 2016 | News
Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greece finance minister, encourages the Swiss people to vote ‘yes’ for universal basic income (UBI) at the national referendum scheduled on 5th June.
In the video interview with the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute, the Greek economist argues that the future picture of technological progress could be either the Star Trek version, in which the progress can make us equal and free, or the Matrix version in which the progress enslaves us.
In another interview, with the Swiss newspaper Tagesanzeiger (the translation of which is available here), he says:
Because Switzerland is doing so well, it is ideal for experiments with the basic income. But don’t forget, in spite of the wealth, the quality of life is decreasing. What good is a well-paid job if you are scared to lose it? This constant fear paralyzes people and makes them ill. Switzerland should see the basic income as an investment in the future.
Varoufakis, first spke out in favour of basic income in an interview published for The Economist.
Varoufakis will be one of speakers at the UBI event on 4th May in Zurich, Switzerland.
