by Guest Contributor | May 28, 2018 | Opinion
A step to a future of solidarity and sharing
For hundreds of thousands of years, men and women lived in tribal groups, practicing mutual cooperation and solidarity. In the present we live in capitalism, competing among ourselves, driven by individual ambitions to ‘have’. This is not doing us any good. However, we can see it as a painful but necessary civilizational phase, a means of developing the capacity to produce all that’s necessary for the material life of all. The age of capitalism has only lasted 200 years. A better future could be drawn with the re-establishment of an economy of solidarity between people. We propose a process of systematic, automatic and unconditional transfers of money between people, from those who have more to those who have less. We call it Unconditional Basic Income of All for All, or ‘UBI-AA’.
The Past – from Ancestral Economy to Capitalism
Human societies in which all men and women have lived on Earth since people here exist, and until the formation of the first sophisticated civilizations, were tribal groups. They functioned through cooperation and solidarity between their members in tasks such as obtaining and distributing food, building shelters and family dwellings or taking care of community assets; tasks that today we would call ‘economic’. In fact, over hundreds of thousands of years of human presence on Earth the whole economy was cooperative and supportive. And it was sustainable then.
After the emergence of the first sophisticated civilizations and empires – about 6,000 years ago – things began to change, and the forms of economic organization put into practice came to vary from then. Today, however, all the economic diversity that has existed over those 6,000 years is virtually nullified, and a unique model has once again consolidated. It is called capitalism, and it has been going on for about 200 years.
While the ancestral economic mode was based on solidarity and cooperation between people, on a harmony between them and nature and on an orientation towards the mere satisfaction of their needs, capitalism is characterized by competition among peers, by the predation of the Earth and by an orientation of its agents towards unlimited material accumulation. Both models are hegemonic, each in its own time. But that’s all they have in common; as for everything else, it is difficult to find more opposing realities.
Can, like its ancestral homologous form, also this present ‘state of the art’ in economic organization – capitalism – last for hundreds of thousands of years? It doesn’t seem possible, given the condition in which it left us humans, and the planet, after only 200 years. And yet, despite its deeply dark sides, an important merit can be attributed to capitalism: with the demand for accumulation and profit it gave us machinery, techniques and knowledge that can now allow us to have the resources for the material comfort of all. This is only a possibility and not inevitable because although these machines, techniques and knowledge give us the capacity, they alone do not guarantee that we will use it. However, capitalism cannot possibly make any sense in history unless the immense price it charged and still charges us eventually results in the actual extinction of the material scarcity from the face of the Earth. Only then will it be seen as a process of rising human civilization to a higher level, albeit with great suffering.
Thus, the great question of the present is how to accomplish the potential that capitalism offers us, to free ourselves from the ‘fatality’ of material scarcity. The simple progress of the economy, as we have it, does not seem to be the way. Reality shows us very clearly that the mere growth, without any change or innovation in the logic and processes of the present economy, will never raise the condition of all, although it may greatly improve it for some people. Neither the strengthening of the so-called welfare state, in its traditional, bureaucratic, expensive and life-controlling form, can do more than mitigate poverty. Traditional welfare will never eliminate poverty and it charges from its beneficiaries a price in dignity and in humanity that the more unnecessary it becomes, the more intolerable it gets.
No, capitalism does not inherently have a mechanism to guarantee essentials for all. Let us resurrect from our ancestral economic way its essential element: solidarity among people.
A Future – the UBI-AA
Solidarity among people is the essential idea of the alternative distribution model of the resources generated in society we will talk about here: the Unconditional Basic Income of All for All, or ‘UBI-AA’.
To show what it is and how it works we will turn here to an explanation given elsewhere:
The UBI-AA is a revenue redistribution process designed to operate monthly, providing automatic and unconditional transfers among citizens, from those who have higher incomes to those with low or no income at all. Built, supported and leveraged by them, the process will invite the participants to take responsibility and engage in their communities, which will reinforce them.
It works in two stages:
1) As it is acquired, each member of the community discounts to a common fund – a ‘UBI Fund’ – a proportion of their income, at a single and universal rate;
2) At the end of each month, the Fund’s accumulated total is equally and unconditionally distributed by all members of the same community.
This simple process of treating everyone equally puts those who in each moment have above-average incomes to deliver to the UBI Fund more than they receive from it, and those who have below-average incomes would receive more. Thus, the process operates a joint distribution between the participants of part of their individual incomes. In addition, to reduce inequalities between them, this solidarity between peers creates an unconditional guarantee of income for all, that is, an Unconditional Basic Income.
It follows from the action of the UBI-AA process the loss of available income by some and its gain by others. For those who lose money, it is important to limit the loss, while maximizing the gain for the rest to ensure broad acceptance of the policy.
The demand for this double result should not, however, mean a devaluation of the possibilities of mutability of all individual positions. With the passage of time and with the exercise of the options that the process itself will open to the participants, the situations of income “winners” or “losers”, in which each of them will at each moment be, should always be seen as circumstantial.
To make possible its intended effects, the implementation of the UBI-AA should be accompanied by the release of its participants from the burden of personal income tax. Such tax relief will compensate them for the contributory effort required by the UBI-AA process, although, for those above a certain level of income, such compensation may turn out to be merely partial.
Abolished the personal income tax, the moderation of loss for citizens with higher incomes and, at the same time, the material significance of the gains to those in the opposite condition, will be possible if the rate of contributions to the UBI Fund is set at an optimal level, balancing the two outcomes. [1]
A more complete description of the UBI-AA process, as well as a simulation of the financial effects it would have produced, both in individual citizen spheres and in the State budget, hypothesizing it in force in Portugal in 2012, can be seen here.
UBI-AA differs from most of the traditional redistributive processes in operation because it is unconditional; and from most of the unconditional alternative processes for being a construction of common citizens instead of the policy of a government, a central bank or any other ‘power’.
What is proposed with the UBI-AA is not directly the creation of an unconditional guarantee of income for all. The proposal is the institution of an alternative form of organization of the economy in its distributive side. This will be accomplished with the income distribution process described above; a process that will favor the rehabilitation of values such as solidarity and voluntary cooperation between people, and of which the creation of an unconditional guarantee of income for all will be a corollary.
We hope that may contribute to the flourishing of a new culture, less marked by the centrality of material goods. Who knows if making everybody’s access to essential material resources as simple as the possibility of breathing, will not end up instilling in us the same attitude towards those resources – money and things it buys – as that we have towards the air we inspire: no matter how valuable it may be to us, we do not quarrel with each other for it; we use the quantities we need. Accumulating it would no longer be necessary.
Such cultural shift would certainly be a great step forward for us, human beings, and very good news for Earth.
[1] This stretch is an English translation from Projeto de um RBI – Local – Solidário – Voluntário, [Project of an UBI – Local – Supportive – Voluntary], by Miguel Horta, 2017, available (in Portuguese) from: https://pt.scribd.com/document/341205904/Projecto-RBI-Local-V-2017.
Written by Miguel Horta
by Andre Coelho | Apr 28, 2018 | News
“There will always be hope”. Picture credit: Alex Gi.
On the 11th and 12th of October 2018, the University of Freiburg, in Germany, holds an interdisciplinary Conference titled “Basic Income and the Euro-Dividend as Sociopolitical Pillars of the EU and its Member Countries”. It will be organized by the Department of Economic Policy and Constitutional Economic Theory and the aim is to gather relevant leading researchers and thinkers in Europe to discuss an EU wide approach of a basic income.
In Europe, the public debate about a universal basic income (UBI) is usually a national one. In recent years a European version of a UBI has attracted more and more attention – primarily pushed by the suggestion of Philippe Van Parijs titled a “Euro-Dividend”. This conference aims to shed some light at pros and cons of a EU wide UBI regulation and its relation to national approaches from an interdisciplinary perspective. Both UBI approaches shall be analyzed and discussed with respect to justice, economic and migration effects, legal aspects, creation of solidarity in the EU, and political viability. On the first day, the conference will address general issues about UBI, while the schedule of the second day contains EU-related concepts just like the Euro-Dividend.
Papers are invited from areas such as Philosophy, Sociology, Political Science, Law, and Economics and even Technical Sciences addressing one or more of the following topics:
o UBI and arguments of freedom, solidarity, social and gender justice
o Changing time allocation and shifting time sovereignty, voluntarism and creativity
o Legal aspects of UBI
o Experiments and microsimulations on UBI’s level and impact
o UBI in the digital age / Robots, AI, Labor, and the Welfare State
o The European Pillar of Social Rights, UBI, and Euro-Dividend: Creating European
Solidarity
o Financial feasibility of a UBI and financing concepts of a Euro-Dividend
o EU labor market effects and migration (on international level and within the EU)
More information at:
The “Basic Income and the Euro-Dividend as Sociopolitical Pillars of the EU and its Member Countries” Conference website
by Guest Contributor | Mar 28, 2018 | Opinion
Written by Michael Laitman
Michael Laitman
Sadly, 33,000 Toys ‘R’ Us employees are about to be let go. They’ll pack that family vacation picture from their office wall in a brown cardboard box, take a toy or two for keepsakes, and, begrudgingly, go home. They will be joining a growing list of hundreds of thousands of people who are losing their jobs, not because they need to improve their performance or their work ethic, but simply because they are no longer needed.
More and more products are being manufactured using robots, which is more cost-effective for companies, as well as cheaper for consumers, who can order online with a swipe of a finger. Toys ‘R’ Us is only one example of the virtual-technological tsunami that is washing over the business world. It appears in the form giant corporations such as Amazon, Alibaba, Google and their trade partners, trampling every area of commerce possible: retail, banking, clothing, food, advertising and more. This wave doesn’t stop at the private sector; it’s washing away the public sector as well. For instance, Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos and Jamie Dimon are already on a joint venture to reinvent healthcare.
While it may seem like a silent revolution, these changes promise a socio-economic earthquake the likes of which humanity has never seen before. The virtual-technological future is gradually taking over the very foundations of the global economy and businesses are having to adjust to the change. From small things like providing virtual collaboration training for their employees to implementing more efficient computing operations, technology is changing every industry.
It is becoming normal to talk about robots replacing human labor, but we still have not yet acknowledged the magnitude of this change. Many politicians, economists, and analysts are seeing this as another industrial revolution that comes with labor pains, giving birth to a whole slew of new professions, and are predicting that a newly booming economy will emerge as a result. The use of machinery is always needed in manufacturing circles, that is why universal mills, CNC machines, lathe machines, etc. are constantly evolving to assist in as many areas as possible, hopefully not to entirely take over jobs just yet. Machines play a huge part in this industry, no matter how they are used, so it is important for them to function as a unit and provide what is needed of them. When they have to be moved, fixed, or changed, the use of equipment like Custom Skates as well as other supplies, are needed to keep everything efficiently moving along.
Surely, this is an encouraging view, but it is based on a limited understanding of new technologies being developed at an exponential speed. Even today, we could automate 45% of the activities people are paid to perform in the U.S. with existing technologies.
It’s not about the advanced machinery that replaces our hands and feet at work. It’s about the artificial intelligence being developed to gradually replace human intelligence. AI will think creatively, produce, analyze, develop, program, and work many times more efficiently than the most gifted employee, all the while being many times cheaper and easy to operate.
Artificial intelligence can learn and self-upgrade much faster than a person’s ability to retrain, and will eventually replace human labor everywhere: scientists, doctors, programmers, designers, financial experts, human resource managers. Only a fraction of the workforce will be required to operate and calibrate the various smart machines and advanced software.
Let’s Revolutionize Society – Without the Pitchforks
If you can fathom the future of technology, you can immediately spot the upcoming social crisis. Masses will go into indefinite unemployment, and modern economics will have no answers for them. Current economic models can hardly deal with a 15% unemployment rate. What’s going to happen when we hit 30%, 40% and 50% unemployment? That is unaccounted for in current economics.
If we settle for positive thinking, hoping this upheaval will somehow result in a new booming economy, we run the risk of a mass unemployment crisis. If masses of people have no hope of providing for their basic necessities, they will not sit calmly at home. Without hope, people could default to violence, extremism and support of radical leaders who will offer economic safety in order to come to power, as we have seen in the past.
Alternatively, if we plan in advance, we can revolutionize society – without a revolution. The sooner we acknowledge the inevitable redesign of our socio-economic infrastructure, in a way that jobs will no longer exist in the same sense as before, we will come to grips with the necessity to provide for the basic needs of all members of society.
Whether we do it through some form of Universal Basic Income, or any other technical mechanism, we must understand that a change of social values is the core issue at hand: Every country’s leadership must acknowledge that looking out for the basic needs of every citizen-food, shelter, clothing, education and health-is their top priority.
But what will people give back to society? If only few man-hours will be necessary to maintain the machines, what will human beings do? They will be busy “being human,” which means developing themselves, their families, their societies and all that makes us human rather than robots.
The Real Driver of Technology Is Human Evolution
The so-called “technological revolution” is not accidental, and it’s not actually technological. It’s an evolutionary revolution. Its purpose is the evolution of human society. It will help us step out of the endless rat race, fueled by a material obsession that doesn’t actually make us happy; a chase around the clock that has created a society of little cogs in giant corporations, accumulating stress and rust, while losing touch with one another and ourselves.
Instead of investing our collective energy into working like machines, we could be engaging in the only work that makes humans different from machines. In a society freed from the cyclical chase for material acquisition, we would invest a large portion of our time on a daily basis, investigating, exercising, and developing the sense of the natural human connection that binds us together. One method to realize our potential as human beings at the workplace is to engage in a variety of activities that are not directly related to work. Let’s say you’re at an event hosted by Uniqueworld destination management companies or something similar, and you get a glimpse of how employers function outside of the office. This could give you an outlook on what all you can do as an employer that might benefit your company.
When masses of people are doing this regularly-as their new job-a new society will undoubtedly emerge. Its product will be the positive social energy required to preserve societal balance. It will be a society whose members’ daily work is to maintain the sense of unity and solidarity that prevent violence and extremism, allowing human beings to live together in productive peace.
This work can be done in unlimited creative ways, where people can apply their passion and desire, as long as they contribute to a warm social climate. But it has to start from fundamental training and education on the science of human connection, learning how positive social connections make us healthier, happier and better at everything we do.
Surely, all of the above sounds foreign in a world where we have been trained by advertisers to chase things we don’t need in order to impress people we can’t connect with. But when material needs are taken care of, human nature demands a deeper, more meaningful type of satisfaction. It’s no coincidence that happiness studies show time after time that healthy social relations are the number one predictor of human flourishing.
Our evolutionary social development pushes us to utilize our wiring for human connection, to distill it through constant work on our relationships, and evolve to a new social reality. Rather than competing with robots for an old school job, let’s make our job the only function that no robot will ever replace, and find the kind of happiness that money will never buy.
Michael Laitman is a Professor of Ontology, a PhD in Philosophy and Kabbalah, an MSc in Medical Bio-Cybernetics, and was the prime disciple of Kabbalist, Rav Baruch Shalom Ashlag (the RABASH). He has written over 40 books, which have been translated into dozens of languages.
Featured image from Wikipedia.
Editing by Dawn Howard
by Andre Coelho | Jan 24, 2018 | News
The province of Quebec, in Canada, has been fostering conversations around basic income and even, at a certain point in 2016, has appointed a long-time supporter of basic income, François Blais, as Minister of Employment and Social Solidarity. Although the term “guaranteed minimum income” has been used in an indiscriminate fashion ever since 2014, there has never been an actual mandate for Blais to implement basic income in Quebec.
In fact, what is being implemented in Quebec at the moment differs considerably from a basic income, as defined by the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN). According to Dorothée Boccanfuso, Chair of Quebec’s Expert Committee on Guaranteed Minimum Income, the new plan’s definition is presented as “any system that offers a guarantee of monetary resources for all, with the amount of those resources being related to a minimum threshold”. This expert committee has been tasked to make recommendations to François Blais, on income support, having produced a report. The proposed scheme has, therefore, kept existing social security system’s properties of means-testing and incentives to work, the latter strengthened through “a greater reward be provided for work efforts, through a major increase to the work premium”.
The enhanced economic support scheme is intended to widen its coverage, aiming at defining a “benchmark threshold”, a means-tested minimum guaranteed income to support “persons with no employment restrictions, for persons 65 and over and for people with disabilities”. There has been, clearly, an effort to cover more people with social support, trying to fill in the gaps and effectively reduce poverty levels, but still not embracing unconditionality. As the Expert Committee on Guaranteed Minimum Income puts it:
“The Committee wants a society that is free of poverty, but this wish can only be achieved by helping persons who are able to re-enter the labour market, pursue education and training or, more generally, better integrate into society. In the Committee’s view, poverty is not a status, but rather a situation and those who are in it must be helped to get out. The income support system must guarantee the minimum resources required for vulnerable persons to meet their immediate needs. Above all, it must eliminate barriers preventing these persons from escaping poverty.”
So, the social security program sought is not an unconditional basic income. However, some media sources are portraying it in misleading headlines such as “Quebec to offer basic income for 84000 people unable to work” and “Basic income to be given to 84000 people in Canada”. One the other hand, a few anti-poverty groups have clearly criticised the support scheme, calling out for a true unconditional support system. According to Serge Petitclerc, representing the group Collectif pour un Quebec sans pauvreté, the “guaranteed minimum income (…) should be unconditional and it should apply to the entire population”.
More information at:
Kate McFarland, “Quebec, Canada: Liberal Party’s Ideas Forum to address Minimum Income”, Basic Income News, September 18th 2016
Stanislas Jourdan, “Québec, Canada: Minister of Employment appointed to work on basic income”, Basic Income News, February 4th 2016
Yannick Vanderborght, “Québec, Canada: Minister of Employment for the provincial government reiterates his support for basic income”, Basic Income News, July 17th 2014
Loulla-Mae Eleftheriou-Smith, “Basic income to be given to 84000 people in Canada”, Independent, 11th December 2017
Karina Laframboise, “Quebec to offer basic income for 84000 people unable to work”, CBCNews, 10th December 2017
Malcolm Torry, “What’s a definition? And how should we define Basic Income?”, BIEN Congress in Lisbon, 2017
by Guest Contributor | Nov 22, 2017 | Opinion
Portuguese basic income activist Miguel Horta is pushing for a basic income “for all.” Horta wants to ensure that the people control their basic income, not the government.
Horta is an employee of Portugal’s Finance Ministry, where he deals with tax avoidance issues. He originally heard about the “gratuity of life” from Agostinho da Silva. Eventually he came across basic income, and believed there was a close connection between the two ideas.
From there, Horta developed a financing scheme for Portugal.
In October, Horta was interviewed by Basic Income Korea Network’s Hysong Ahn. The interview was originally published in Korea’s The Times. The full interview can be found below.
Miguel Horta, on left. Hyosang Ahn , on right.
First, can you tell us about your previous employment, and your current role in the UBI movement?
I worked as a tax inspector for the Portuguese government since 1995.
My position in the movement Basic Income of All for All is that of a member equal to all the others. Our movement does not assign specific functions to its members, nor does it have any kind of hierarchy.
What are your personal and group activities since you adopted the basic income idea in the early 1990s?
Despite being ready for it since the 1990s, as I said before, personally I had no activity related to basic income before 2013. That’s when I heard about an organized activist group on the internet for the first time, and I joined it.
In the first two or three years of activism, my activity was essentially to participate in public discussions about basic income, especially on the internet, and to study the question of its financing.
Later, we founded our local movement in Lisbon and began to organize public events to discuss the idea; to get in touch with other organizations and activist groups from other causes, to show them the basic income proposals; and, whenever we have the opportunity, organize debates on basic income with students in secondary schools.
We are also active on the internet, with a blog, a YouTube channel and a Facebook page.
Explain the differences between the movement “Basic Income of All for All’ and the other groups or persons in the basic income movement in Portugal.
Other groups and individuals generally conceive of basic income as the demand for a “right” made by the people from the State or, if not from the State, from central banks, the financial sector, or large corporations. This is a conception of basic income as a “top-down” program, a program of power, be it political, monetary, or economic power.
In contrast, our movement conceives of basic income as a construction of ordinary people, who will emancipate themselves and make a different society happen, by their own efforts and for their own good.
So, our basic income model is different because it is a people’s program. This has important implications. One is this: we are convinced that a basic income made by any of those “powers” I mentioned will probably end up being put to the service of that same power. In a matter of time, a basic income offered by a government will eventually be used by that same government, or, if not the same, by other future governments, for their own electoral purposes or, in a worse scenario, to keep population under its control. Similarly, a basic income offered by an economic power will likely be put at the service of the economy; one offered by a monetary power will most probably be used as a mere tool to manage inflation rates, and so on. The basic income we propose, on the contrary, being directly financed and controlled by ordinary people, is much more likely to remain at the exclusive service of the people.
Moreover, the basic income models other groups and individuals advocate are often shaped to fit in and to be friendly to their previous ideologies or causes. For instance, that’s the case of a basic income financed with taxes over capital, as a way of favoring the working class; or with taxes over speculative financial operations, as a way of favoring a moralization of financial practices; or with taxes over alcohol, as a way of favoring people’s health, and so on.
Our movement is different here too. For us, basic income should not be the way to serve any other cause apart from everybody’s freedom and dignity. For that purpose, we focus only on people, not on particular population groups (such as the rich and the poor, workers and capitalists, “good consumers” and “bad consumers”, etc.), and the goal is everyone to be treated absolutely the exact same way, as equal peers, through the process of solidarity we conceived, which requires the same effort from all and gives the same benefit to all.
So, the idea that animates our movement differs from others also in this: we do not want basic income to favor one social or economic group over another. We want to benefit all individuals, and we like to see our proposal as a way to reconcile interests and promote the best for absolutely everyone in society.
Is the Portuguese government likely to accept the plan your group proposed?
The Portuguese government doesn’t seem ready to accept it at the moment. I hope that will happen in the future, but it will depend on the support we can find within the Portuguese society, and perhaps abroad.
Of course, we are aware that it will probably be easier for a government to please their citizens by offering them some sort of “helicopter money”, without requiring any active role or effort from them, than to allow a scheme that assigns such role and demands such efforts, as ours does.
Either way, we will be doing our best to present our idea and to encourage people to consciously decide the solution they will support.
What began your interest in Basic Income?
I was ready to adopt the idea since the early 1990s, when I heard an old man declaring on TV: “Men were not born to work, but to create”. The man’s name was Agostinho da Silva, a Portuguese mystic and poet, who used to talk and write a lot about a future in which machines would do all the work, while people would create, contemplate, improve themselves or do whatever they wanted. His message made total sense to me, and so, many years later, when I first heard the name “basic income”, I understood it immediately as the path to the future that Agostinho da Silva used to talk about, and I joined the cause that same minute.
What aspects of Basic Income do you focus on?
When I first started working on the idea, my first focus was on the financial question: how to finance a basic income, from what source, and what financial effects it would have, both for people and for the State sphere.
But I’ve shifted my focus since then. Now my main interest is to understand the profound implications of different models of basic income on people’s freedom, sense of purpose and attitude towards material goods.
Explain the current situation of basic income movement in Portugal. And what is your evaluation?
The movement seems to be growing slowly but steadily. The number of activists and the public actively involved in the discussion, both on the internet and in face-to-face events, have grown in recent years.
And the movement is growing not only in numbers but also in maturity, as people involved become aware of the wide variety of different things “basic income” can potentially become (being possible to classify as “basic income” not only different but even opposite schemes, in their essential features).
This is what enabled us in Lisbon to create an organized group to defend a single one of all these possibilities, something impossible two or three years ago. I’m talking, of course, about the movement “Basic Income of All for All”.
What is the political and philosophical background of your basic income scheme?
It is the conviction that solidarity among people is the right foundation for a society.
A community where people are bound by mutual solidarity will promote the best possible life for all. Although you might say that this is a mere personal inclination – in the sense that I just prefer to believe in this rather than the opposite – the idea is nevertheless reinforced by the recognition that all ancient human societies were based on solidarity. In the tribe, the hunted animal did not belong to its hunter, but to all in the group. In the tribe everybody shared the same luck and resources, and looked after each other. This is how humankind lived for hundreds of thousands of years – the most of our time on Earth – until the rise of the first sophisticated civilizations and empires, and, mostly, before the emergence of the “empire” of capitalism; which now rules everywhere, shaping human societies with the values of competition rather than cooperation, and accumulation instead of sharing. Clearly, this is not fostering our freedom or happiness as the “old” solidarity would.
Do you have any strategy to introduce the basic income scheme in Portugal?
In fact, I developed a plan for that purpose a few months ago, and together with my fellow members of the movement Basic Income of All for All, we took the plan to the Portuguese Minister of Labor, Solidarity, and Social Security.
In very simplified terms, the plan is to create a governmental pilot program, allowing small local communities to apply and, in those accepted, exempt voluntary members from national personal income tax, provided they begin to share a part (half) of their income between them.
So, this would begin to be applied in voluntary communities and, in these, by volunteer persons. In these communities, a common fund would then be created, and the volunteers would start putting half of all their incomes, of any source, in it. At the end of each month, the fund’s accumulated total would be equally and unconditionally distributed by them, creating for the participants a basic income based on local solidarity.
The government would manage the scale of the pilot program at will. It may start with one or two communities and then, if the results turn out to be good and there are other communities willing to do the same, expand the program in succession until, in the limit, it becomes a nationwide program.
In the Portuguese reality, the impact on the State budget of such a scheme should not be negative, mainly because the creation of the universal income guarantee would render a wide range of social programs useless, thus allowing savings of amounts close to the lost revenue of the personal income tax for the State.
As for the Portuguese government’s response, we are still waiting for it…In any case, the plan does not depend exclusively on that answer; it can be applied anywhere in the world.
Interview by:
Hysong Ahn, Basic Income Korea Network
Edited by:
Tyler Prochazka
André Coelho (contributed to introduction)
