by BIEN | Mar 25, 2018 | News
Tom Minogue Hastings. Credit to: Free Folk University
Tom Minogue Hastings has been promoting Universal Basic Income (UBI) in the United States. He has been doing this with a popular website devoted to UBI, also appearing on the USBIG (U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network) website while also writing for the Diane Pagen blog.
Hasting’s version for 2018 includes quotations by individuals, including Dr. Joseph Stiglitz, Dr. Paul Krugman, Dr. David Harvey, Dr. Richard Wolff, and links to Youtube lectures by Dr. Guy Standing, Dr. Yanis Varoufakis, Dr. Robert Reich, Dr. Michael Hudson, Dr. David Graeber, Dr. Paul Mason, Dr. Alex Vitale, Dr. Thomas Frank, Elon Musk and Dr. Barbara Ehrenreich.
The website also includes links to a number of lectures and videos available for free online from the likes of David Graeber, Dr. Paul Mason, and Elon Musk. The website is focused on the 99% of people, the Precariat, or those living more precarious lives than other Americans.
This website is an information resource in order to inform the reader on the important sub-topics within the UBI world.
More information at:
Tom Minogue Hastings, “Universal Basic Income For Everyone””, How to be the Revolution, 2018 (link)
by Donald Brown | Sep 22, 2017 | News
Jordan Peterson, cultural critic, psychologist, and member of the Self Authoring online service, gave his remarks on Universal Basic Income. His concerns seem to be largely drawn from a similar issue critics have with the idea, primarily in the face of leisure time: will people become lazy and unmotivated? Can people handle a life with none of the traditional burdens we normally face with work as it is? Where will people map out meaning in their lives?
All of these are fair questions, and Peterson seems to be open to the idea. A concern Peterson addresses is the rise of relative poverty in developed nations, which has been given terms such as “the precariat,” a term coined by Guy Standing. In addition to this, the rise of technology has made it so that many people who are not tech-savvy are poised to be left behind in this changing climate. This is coupled with the conservative myth that there is an infinite supply of jobs for everyone, and the liberal myth of retraining as a solution, both of which Peterson challenges directly. People might be phased out of the labor force, which is one of the general concerns automation forces us to examine.
In regard to UBI being proposed as a solution, Peterson seems to make some strong assertions. While he admits that a UBI is possible as something we can do, he remains unsure of “what would it do” to help people. In addition, Peterson makes a very strong claim that people in North America do not have issues with starvation due to a lack of income. Children go to bed hungry rather often, so Peterson’s remark doesn’t seem to be substantiated by any current facts or statistics. The most striking remark Peterson makes is perhaps a core view of his entire life’s work: he believes people are at their best when they are “burdened” by something. While one can sincerely entertain the possibility of struggles helping people become better versions of themselves, must it really be because one might not be able to add economic value due to factors beyond oneself, as Jeremy Howard argues? Is this an acceptable burden, given the scope of the problem?
Watch the video below
by Peter Vandevanter | Aug 25, 2017 | News
Guy Standing. Credit to: Lighthouse.
Guy Standing, co-founder of Bien and a University of London professor, in an interview for the Moon magazine says people with a precarious future are preyed upon by right-wing politicians.
Neo-liberal economic policies, “globalization, automation, and outsourcing” have, according to Standing, created a large and rising number of precariats (estimated as 40-50% of world population), who compete for low wages so much so that they can’t “pay off student loans or consumer debt, qualify for mortgages, save for retirement, or make plans for the future.”
The Moon magazine reports that Standing, in his 2011 book The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class “argued that if governments failed to satisfy the precariat class, their societies would witness increasing violence and the rise of far-right politicians – scenarios that appear to be playing out in many countries around the globe,” including the UK and the US.
Standing, whose latest book Basic Income and How We Can Make It Happen is quoted in Moon magazine saying “Right-wing politicians are playing on the fears and insecurities” of precariats by demonizing other groups, such as migrants. In this book, the precariat sits below the 62 richest people in the world (who own as much as the poorest half of the rest of the world). Other population groups are economically divided into an elite (5%, who serve the richest), the salariats (20%, who have long term employment security), the proficians (10%, who don’t necessarily want long term employment, freelancers in the gig economy), the classic proletariat (10%, who a generation ago inhabited unions), and at the bottom an underclass (5%, who are dying in the streets from social diseases).
A universal basic income would eliminate this class breakdown in favor of an economy that works for all.
Standing believes that basically the income distribution system of the 20th century has broken down. He says that societies, if they are to survive, must reduce “the inequalities and insecurities that are the terror of the precariat”.
More information at:
Leslee Goodman, “Guy Standing on an economy that works for everyone”, The Moon Magazine, Interview with Guy Standing, 2017
by Kate McFarland | Aug 24, 2017 | News
On August 30, BIEN cofounder Guy Standing will speak at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand, as part of an event on economic precarity facing the Māori.
In influential books like The Precariat and A Precariat Charter, economist Guy Standing postulates the existence of a new social class that he calls the “precariat,” characterized by unstable and insecure employment. Although the status of the precariat as a “class” is a matter of some dispute among social scientists, the rise of precarious forms of employment, such as short-term and gig labor, is a commonly cited concern among proponents of basic income.
According to researchers at University of Waikato, precarity in employment is a particularly pronounced concern among the Māori, New Zealand’s indigenous Polynesian people.
On August 30, at a public event titled “When Work Hardly Pays: A Conversation with Guy Standing,” Mohi Rua (lecturer in Psychology), Darrin Hodgetts (Professor in Social Psychology), and Ottilie Stolte (lecturer in Psychology) will present their research project “Connections and Flows: Precarious Māori Households in Austere Times.”
As the researchers summarize the project:
We draw on recent scholarship on the precariat as an emerging social class comprised of people experiencing unstable employment, unliveable incomes, inadequate state supports, marginalisation and stigma. Our focus is on the Māori precariat, whose rights are being eroded through punitive labour and welfare reforms. While we document issues of employment, food, housing and cultural insecurities shaping precarious lives, we also develop a focus on household connections, practices and strengths.
After this research overview, Bill Cochrane (National Institute of Demographic and Economic Analysis) and Thomas Stubbs (lecturer in Sociology) will sketch a “demographic silhouette” of the Māori precariat, one of the key components of the “Connections and Flows” project.
These presentations will lay the ground for Standing’s lecture, in which he will discuss his theory of the precariat and its implications.
See the event flyer from the University of Waikato for details.
On the following day, Standing will head to Auckland to speak at an event on basic income convened by the New Zealand Fabian Society.
Reviewed by Russell Ingram
Photo: Māori rock carving, CC BY 2.0 Tom Hall
by Kate McFarland | Aug 13, 2017 | News
On August 31, the New Zealand Fabian Society will host a panel discussion on basic income, led by BIEN cofounder Guy Standing, as part of its seminar series in Auckland.
Standing, who has recently published Basic Income: And How We Can Make it Happen, will be delivering a lecture titled “Basic Income: the case for a significant new policy.”
Two commentators will respond to Standing’s talk: Sue Bradford, a former Green MP, political activist, and founding member and former coordinator of Auckland Action Against Poverty, and Keith Rankin, an economic historian who has written extensively on basic income.
The event will conclude with a 20-minute debate on the issue of whether an income guarantee policy should be targeted or universal.
Details and registration are available on the NZ Fabian Society website here.
The New Zealand Fabian Society, a policy forum devoted to exploring progressive policy and economic reforms, has been active in promoting discussion of basic income.
In February 2016, the organization initiated its 2016 series of events with a presentation titled “A UBI for New Zealand: on the cards, but is it the answer?” by Rankin and economist Susan Guthrie. (Guthrie is the coauthor of The Big Kahuna and other work with Gareth Morgan–the economist and businessman whose new political party, The Opportunity Party, has recently made a basic income for elders and young children part of its campaign platform.)
The NZ Fabian Society has also collaborated with BIEN’s affiliate Basic Income New Zealand (BINZ) by helping to organize some of events held in connection with BINZ’s basic income roadshow for Basic Income Week 2016, and supported past lectures by Guy Standing in Auckland. In March 2016, the NZ Fabian Society hosted Standing at an event in Christchurch, where he spoke on the theme of his previous book, “rentier capitalism and the coming precariat revolt” (video below).
Phil Harington, an active member of NZ Fabian Society and lecturer in sociology and social policy at the University of Auckland, explains that a key object of the Fabians is strengthen public confidence in progressive reforms. The arguments for basic income, he states, “make a plausible argument for rethinking the very principles we need to apply in core policy and economic creativity alongside a concern to rethink the tax side of the income pool to increase social equity and participation.”
Thanks to Phil Harington for information about the upcoming event as well as past efforts of the New Zealand Fabians.
Cover photo: Auckland Skyline
