by Karl Widerquist | Jan 14, 2015 | News
U.S. Representative Chris Van Hollen (a Democrat from Maryland) has proposed introduce a small financial transactions tax (essentially a tax on Wall Street speculators) to finance a $1000 per year tax credit, which will be added to the paychecks of all workers earning under $100,000, or working couples earning under $200,000. This proposal would come in addition to the existing “Earned Income Tax Credit,” and it would be closer to universal, probably reaching a substantial majority of the population.
A proposal reaching so many people can be seen as a step in the direction of a basic income. However, the proposal has several differences with a basic income, most notably, it is conditional on labor. This cuts out some of the most needy people in society including the disable, children, people with fulltime care responsibilities, and people who can’t find an acceptable job. Being conditional on labor, some of the benefit of the tax credit is likely to be captured by employers who might have an incentive to reduce wages or foregone raises because the government is now paying the first $1000 of most of their employees wages. The overall effect is likely to be higher living standards for the average work, but by less than the full $1000 economists would expect from a lump sum payment such as a basic income.
The plan is not likely to gain much support in the Republican-controlled Congress. But if it gathers support among Washington policymakers, perhaps a debate will form on ideas related to basic income.
For more information on the proposal see:
Richard Kirsch, “Van Hollen Tax Proposal an Economic and Political Home Run.” The Huffington Post. 01/12/2015
Budget Committee Democrats, “An Action Plan to Grow the Paychecks of All, Not Just the Wealthy Few.” Budget Committee Democrats (website). Accessed January 14, 2015.
by Liam Upton | Dec 28, 2014 | News
In recent months, there have been two online efforts to get the idea of Basic Income in front of lawmakers, both in the USA and the UK.
The first one is an e-petition, launched in October by UK Independent politician Pete Higgens, which was reported on previously by BINews. After a slow start, the petition was mentioned by the popular British blog Another Angry Voice and as a result became the most trending petition at least twice. The total amount of signatures currently stands at over 3,000 with 100,000 needed for it to be discussed by lawmakers in the House of Commons. The petition lasts a year and will end in October 2015.
Another effort in the USA is a result of the Big Ideas project, a project launched in December 2014 by the Progressive Change Institute and has the aim of getting crowdsourced ideas in front of US lawmakers. 30 members of Congress have already comitted to taking a ‘serious look’ at the top 20 most voted ideas on the site. Currently there is an idea which quotes Martin Luther King and proposes a Jobs Guarantee or ‘if impractical’, a ‘Guaranteed Annual Income’. This idea has trended repeatedly since the launch of the site and is currently the fifth highest voted idea with over 4,000 votes. There is also another idea which mentions just a Universal Basic Income Guarantee which has over 1,500 votes and was previously in the top 20 but despite trending a number of times, has since fallen below that number.
For more information see:
Pete Higgens, “Replace the Benefits System with a Universal Basic Income for all”, HM Government, 30 October 2014
Progressive Change Institute, “Big Ideas Project”, Progressive Change Institute, December 2014
by Stanislas Jourdan | Dec 1, 2014 | Opinion
Yoland Bresson (1942-2014), one of the prominent advocate for basic income in France passed away during the summer.
A tribute by Jacques Berthillier originally published in French. Translated and adapted by Stanislas Jourdan.
In 1971, Yoland Bresson worked as an economist for the Concorde aircraft project, and observes a surprising fact: those who have more control over time and personal schedule are those with more financial resources (and those who are more likely to book flights on Concorde airlines). Moreover, people’s resources increase over time because freedom and time allow to take advantage from commercial discounts, and get access to social conditions which allow to escape from constrained social time.
Yoland started to dedicated himself into studying those notions until he found the theory linking spare time with income, which he published in 1981, and developped in the book ‘Post-Salariat’ in 1984. A conclusion emerged from this theory: the value of time is the value of the minimum income, the poverty line from which individuals become economically integrated. Therefore, we should distribute to people the monetary equivalent of the unit of time.
In 1986, Yoland Bresson was invited by Philippe van Parijs to participate to the very first meeting in Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium) where BIEN was founded.
Later on, he was contacted by Henri Guitton, reknown economist and very enthusiast reader of Bresson’s books. They decided together to found a working group around those concepts. After a series of meetings at the Polytechnic University, the “association for an existence income” (AIRE) was created. They insisted on the notion of ‘income’ as opposed to ‘allocation’ [allowance] because an income is linked with the contribution to the creation of wealth, while a social allwoance is refers to the notion of assistance. Indeed, every single exchange of time contributed to the creation of wealth, as Bresson proclaimed.
First, Henri Guitton was president of the AIRE, then Yoland Bresson replaced him after Guitton died. The association was striving for the instauration of an ‘existence income’, it explored the idea in order for all citizens and politicians to embrace it.
Since then, the AIRE kept spreading the idea. It notably organised a BIEN Congress at Paris Saint-Maur in 1992, a colloque at Cedias on june 12th 1996, and two other ones at the French National Assembly: one on November 26th, 1998, with more than 300 participants. Finally; and the second one on june 23rd 2004 with the sponsorship from Christine Boutin (Christian-Democrats leader).
In 2012, when the European Citizens’ Initiative for Unconditional Basic Income started to be organised, Bresson immediatly supported the efforts deployed by a new generation of activists. He partners his association with the launch of a new website revenudebase.info which resulted in the creation of the French Movement for a Basic Income, a new association which broadly federates all those who push for the idea of a basic income. Yoland Bresson had the wisdom and open-mindness necessary to trust the young new blood who made the movement grow.
Yoland Bresson also played an international role in the promotion of basic income, notably through his interventions in the french-speaking african countries, and until recently in Bulgaria. Shortly before he died on august 22nd 2014, he was invited for a conference at the Polish Parliament.
His contribution as an economist also include his last proposal: the creation of a eurofranc, a new national currency complementary with the euro currency. His idea was to unleash the possibility to finance a basic income with money creation, without transgressing the Lisbon Treaty – which would result in leaving the eurozone. Such scheme was set to be temporary, allowing a smooth transition for the introducion of a basic income.
If this very innovative (and even revolutionary) proposal was adopted, the introduction of a basic income would be facilitated, and the economic activity would be simultaneously stiumulated.
Following Yoland Bresson’s decease, we have received a very large number of letters expressing sympathy, esteem and gratitude to Yoland and his family. It would not be possible to publish all of them, but there is one we would like to communicate. The one from BIEN’s founder Philippe van Parijs:
Yoland was present at the founding Assembly of BIEN in 1986. Until now he remained a loyal camarade of thoughts and struggle. Like others before and after him, he passed away without witnessing the achievement of a proposal he kept believing. Nonetheless, the day when his country as elsewhere eventually will implement the basic income, we will owe him and others with such personalities »
by Harry Pitts | Oct 13, 2014 | News
[F. H. Pitts]
In Iceland, the Pirate Party have tabled a congressional statement calling upon the welfare minister to consider the institution of a basic income on a national level. Three of the party’s MPs have asked the minister to begin mapping ways in which such a scheme can be rolled out. They were motivated to do so by the moral and ethical arguments of Thomas Paine and Bertrand Russell in favour of such a measure, and the growing body of evidence on the changing economy and the effects of automation upon the workforce. More details can be found here:
Haukur Már Helgason, “Pirates Propose Guaranteed Basic Income”, Grapevine, 8th October 2014
by BIEN | Oct 9, 2014 | News
The leader of the Centre Party of Finland, Juha Sipilä, proposed on September 10th regional basic income experiments to be run in some highunemployment rural and urban areas. The proposal was part of the interpellation on poverty made by the Centre Party and the Left Alliance. Paavo Arhinmäki, the leader of the Left Alliance thanked Sipilä for taking up the issue of basic income. The next day the National Coalition party MP Lasse Männistö expressed his support to Sipilä’s idea on his blog. The rightwing National Coalition is currently the leading party in Finland.
Basic income became one of the topics of parliament’s discussion on the interpellation on poverty on September 23th. Several MPs, among them Prime Minister Alexander Stubb, expressed their support to the idea of basic income pilots.
The Centre Party, which is currently the fourth largest party in Finland, has included the concept of basic income in many of its programmes during the 1990s. However, in its formulations, basic income has often been conditional and granted only to the poor. The Green League and the Left Alliance, which both are mediumsized parties, support unconditional basic income and have released their own models of it (the Green League 2007 and the Left Alliance 2011). The Green League is currently updating its model.
For more information, see the following links:
The Centre Party: “Sipilä Proposes Regional Basic Income Pilot”
Kansan Uutiset, the journal of the Left Alliance: “The Left Thanks Sipilä’s Opening on Basic Income”
The National Coalition Party MP Lasse Männistö’s blog: “To a Basic Income Journey”
Finnish Parliament Plenary Sessions.
The basic income model of the Left Alliance, a paper presented in the BIEN2012 Congress in Munich by Jouko Kajanoja and Pertti Honkanen (in English)
The basic income model of the Green League from 2007 (there is a link to the English version below the graph).
