by Kate McFarland | Aug 10, 2017 | News
Launched in February 2017, the Basic Income Lab (BIL) at Stanford University’s McCoy Family Center for Ethics and Society aspires to provide information and advice to researchers, policy makers, and other individuals and groups engaged in the design and implementation of basic income experiments or policies.
Already this year, BIL has held a panel discussion on basic income experiments, in which Joe Huston described the large-scale experiment to be conducted in Kenya by the New York based non-profit GiveDirectly, Elizabeth Rhodes discussed the plans to Silicon Valley’s Y Combinator to run a basic income experiment in the United States, and Guy Standing reviewed the results of a pilot study in eight villages of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. It also hosted a presentation by Philippe Van Parijs of his new comprehensive book on basic income, Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy (with Yannick Vanderborght). Now, BIL is preparing for both public and private events to be held throughout the upcoming academic year.
In September, BIL will co-host the Cities and Universal Basic Income Workshop, working aside the Economic Security Project (ESP), the McCoy Family Center, and the National League of Cities, which recommended investigation of city-level basic income programs in its 2016 report The Future of Work in Cities. This private event aims to inform city leaders and other researchers about the latest developments regarding current and planned basic income experiments, and to investigate the possibility of implementing municipal-level basic income policies. Additionally, BIL has scheduled two co-sponsored public lectures on the relationship of basic income to issues of gender and race: in October, Almaz Zelleke (NYU Shanghai) will visit Stanford to speak about how basic income can impact gender justice; then, in January, Dorian T. Warren (Roosevelt Institute, ESP) will speak about basic income in relation to racial justice.
Juliana Bidadanure in audience at BIL panel
BIL is led by Faculty Director Juliana Bidadanure, a philosophy professor who last year designed and taught a graduate seminar on basic income. Describing the mission of the lab, she states, “There is an increasing need for in-depth academic research on various policy designs for UBI and how to evaluate its implementation – assessing the visions that underpin unconditional cash, the political and economic feasibility of various proposals, as well as its strengths and weaknesses as a measure to alleviate poverty and inequality.”
In addition to her work with BIL, Bidadanure is preparing to teach an undergraduate course on basic income during Stanford’s winter term.
To stay abreast of BIL’s activities, subscribe to its mailing list and follow BIL on Facebook.
Reviewed by Dawn Howard and Juliana Bidadanure
Photos from the Basic Income Lab’s “Experiments in Unconditional Basic Income” panel; credit: Christine Baker (at EthicsSoc).
by Hilde Latour | Jul 17, 2017 | News
Investopedia published an article in May this year, “The Long, Weird History of Basic Income – And Why It’s Back”
In this article, written by David Floyd, the history of support of UBI is described from the period of hunter-gatherer societies and how the networks in those societies took care of people who could not provide themselves with a basic standard of living. The article then describes how agriculture and urbanization made an end to such networks and how problems were not handled well by the institutions that took the place of the original networks, referring to Charles Eastman who described this problem in 1915.
Thomas Paine was one of the famous people who noticed the creation of poverty, caused by cultivation, which did not exist before. He was the first to propose a UBI (Paine called it a “groundrent”) in the late 18th century, as a compensation for the dispossession of the majority of inhabitants of their natural inheritance. Cole first used the term Basic Income in 1953.
From Paine, via Henry George, Huey Long, G.D.H. Cole, Martin Luther King, Mc Govern and Nixon, the current boost of support for UBI in the 21st century is explained as a reaction to poverty and inequality, predominantly used as an argument by proponents on the left political spectrum, and inefficiency of the welfare state, used as an argument on the right wing.
In addition to the political perspective, a distinction between “reformers” and “futurists”, which cross-cuts left and right, is described in further depth.
The group of “reformers” is described as a group of basic income supporters who is mostly concerned with addressing problems in society as it is now, mostly caused by the broken welfare system, such as:
- “Employment traps” (where people are kept form leaving their job out of fear and bad employers are supported as a result of that)
- “Unemployment traps” (“earn a dollar from work, lose a dollar in benefits”)
- “Welfare cliffs” (where the effect tax on additional income even exceeds 100%)
- Stigma associated with public benefits
- Bureaucratic inefficiency
The group of “futurists” is described as supporters who see technological unemployment as a main threat in the future and offer basic income as a solution or who see a basic income as a cornerstone of an eventual utopia.
The two main criticisms of a universal basic income are its cost and the expectation that it would reduce or eliminate incentives to work.
This discussion is described with calculations of “The Economist” and views of Bill Gates, Karl Widerquist, Guy Standing, Philippe van Parijs and others. Brief attention is given to Alaska’s “Permanent Fund Dividend” and the outcome of experiments, such as Manitoba and India. Furthermore, the definition of ‘work’ is discussed, the effects of UBI on poverty and even the experiments in Finland, Oakland and Ontario get attention.
Floyd summarizes his article with a question: “Could doing away with poverty, sweeping away patronizing bureaucracy, neutralizing the threat of mass unemployment and increasing the value society places on worthwhile, but unprofitable, pursuits really be as simple as handing everyone cash?” He then uses Confusius’ quote to guide us towards the answer:
“The way out is through the door.”
Info and links
Full article at investopedia.com
Photo: Money! by Hans Splinter, CC-BY-SA 2.0
Special thanks to Dave Clegg for reviewing this article
by BIEN | Jul 15, 2017 | News
Credit to: AT Kearney.
Courtney McCaffrey and others from AT Kearney published an article on the debate around Universal Basic Income (UBI) in markets throughout the world. Politicians, in both Europe and North America, are winning on campaign trails with talk about returning control to the common people from the economic system in the globe.
But one of the big worker displacers is automation and new technologies. Oxford University reported 47% of US jobs will be taken over by automation in the next two decades. A UBI is being offered as an economic buffer for such workplace and technology transitions.
Such a UBI would be universal and unconditional in the application. Past UBI experiments such as Mincome in Canada, projects in Seattle and Denver (USA), and Namibia produced real, positive results empowering those politicians. McCaffrey and her collegues also mention recent major endorsements for UBI, for instance from such luminaries as Elon Musk, Tim O’Reilly, and Marc Andreessen.
Two books are recommended: 1) Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman, and 2) Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy by Philippe Van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght. Other notable cases reported on were Finland, India, and Ontario.
The article discusses pros and cons of UBI, in a general sense. It was noted that citizens with a UBI will spend more time on family and school. The sources of funding for the UBI could be revenues from natural resources and/or more taxes. Some views of critics are following their own political lines, but the major concern revolves around people’s availability to work when they get a UBI covering their basic needs.
Finally, the article summarizes views agains UBI on the political Right and Left. On the Right, the main argument is cost. On the political Left, detractors view UBI as “regressive” because it could dismantle current welfare systems, and that it may not capture different living costs in different areas.
More information at:
McCaffrey, C.R., Toland, T. & Peterson, E.R., “The Best Things in Life Are Free?“, AT Kearney, March 2017
by Cordelia Holst | Jul 5, 2017 | News
Organized by the Universal Income Project, the goal of the Create-a-thon is to spread awareness and raise support for the idea of basic income. Forty people attended the weekend-long event in March, including filmmakers, artists, entrepreneurs, technologists, songwriters, and activists.
The weekend kicked off with speakers from the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, the Insight Center, HandUp, and the City of San Francisco, the focus of their talks being inequality in society and how basic income could address these issues. After this first session, attendees were invited to pitch their project ideas to the group, work groups were formed and the scope for the work to be produced over the weekend was discussed. The teams worked in conference rooms with whiteboards and flip charts, face-to-face and through Slack channels. The weekend was filled with work sessions from morning to evening, with discussions, exchanges of ideas, and debates ongoing throughout the project processes, as well as on lunch and dinner breaks. The participants got to know each other better and shared diverse viewpoints on the most important issues in societies both in the US and around the world.
According to Shandhya, one of the organizer of the Create-a-thon, “These participants came up with over 20 project pitches, which coalesced into eight inspiring projects that ran the gamut from podcasts to public displays, and included a legislative scorecard as well as plans for a basic income board game.”
The Economic Security Project provided extra motivation by offering a cash stipend of up to $3000 to projects that would spread awareness and raise support for the idea of basic income. The Economic Security Project is “a two year fund to support exploration and experimentation with unconditional cash stipends”. Several of the weekend’s projects received funding for further development.
As Philippe Van Parijs, co-author of Basic income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy, highlights, “In the effort to achieve Basic Income in our society we will need Visionaries, Machiavellian Thinkers and Indignant Activists.”
The Basic Income Create-a-thon is a forum that can provide a framework for activists to gather and cooperate.
See interviews with participants in this video.
by Kate McFarland | Jul 2, 2017 | News
Photo: Political Laboratory on Basic Income at The Alternative’s convention (credit: Louise Haagh).
“The Alternative Facts”
Denmark’s green political party The Alternative (Danish: Alternativet) has adopted basic income as an aspirational goal and established a working group to investigate a precise model and implementational strategy for the policy.
These decisions were formalized at the party’s 2017 convention, which took place May 27-28 in Odense, where basic income was a prevailing theme. Since its founding in November 2013, The Alternative has developed its policy positions through what it describes as a “political open-source process,” centered on political laboratories [link: Danish] at which party members and other interested individuals discuss and debate proposed policies. Its initial party program, for example, was influenced by the contributions of over 700 people who participated in political laboratories and workshops in early 2014. The recent convention in Odense featured such a political laboratory on the topic of basic income, which was attended by over 300 delegates.
Haagh at the Alternative’s political laboratory on basic income
The political laboratory began with presentations of opposing views on basic income.
First, BIEN Chair Louise Haagh laid out reasons to support the policy, including, fundamentally, the idea that basic income is a democratic right. Haagh emphasized that basic income can be seen as a natural extension of the Nordic welfare model, an enhancement of the existing welfare state rather than its replacement. She also argued that, among other advantages, a basic income could provide an improvement for unemployed job seekers, as Denmark’s existing job centers are inefficient, producing a low employment rate and forcing customers to spend a large amount of time in administrative processes.
Following Haagh’s presentation, Kristian Wiese, Director of the think tank Cevea, offered reasons to be skeptical of basic income. Wiese worried that basic income is merely a palliative that fails to address the underlying problems of unemployment and precarious employment, and expressed concern regarding the policy’s support from neoliberals and Silicon Valley technocrats.
After the presentations, participants broke into small groups to discuss the relative merits and drawbacks of basic income. The discussion was framed around several questions–whether a basic income is a good idea if it can be introduced without extra cost, whether a basic income is likely to lead to more socially productive activity or less, and what new policies and procedures could be introduced alongside basic income to promote community and entrepreneurship–and responses from each group were collected. While no formal vote was taken, the general consensus of delegates was favorable to basic income, and the party decided to proceed with the development of a precise model to adopt as party policy.
To the latter end, the assembly established a working group tasked with the project of drafting a policy proposal on basic income for the party within one year. In addition to the proposal of the working group, The Alternative will await precise calculations from the Ministry of Taxation before endorsing any model of basic income as party policy. (Basic Income News will publish a follow-up report on the activities of the working group later in the year when more details are known.)
The Alternative’s current political program endorses the provision of benefits without work requirements or other conditions to uninsured social security recipients as well as to those covered by insurance through union membership. Basic income will be the third and final step in the party’s social policy reform. Even prior to the recent convention and political laboratory, party leaders such as MP Torsten Gejl have described The Alternative’s advocacy of the former policies as steps toward its eventual promotion of a universal basic income for Denmark (cf., e.g., Gejl’s talk at the book launch of Philippe van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght’s Basic Income).
Torsten Gejl at UBI Nordic Conference (credit: Michael Husen)
The party has shown increasing interest in basic income in recent years, and has established close ties with BIEN-Danmark, BIEN’s Danish affiliate. The party was the official host for the two-day Nordic Conference on Basic Income Pilots, held at Christiansborg Palace, the seat of the Danish Parliament, in September 2016. Leading members of the party have continued to participate in basic income events in 2017. For instance, party leader and cofounder Uffe Elbæk spoke at the world premier of the basic income documentary Free Lunch Society, Josephine Fock participated in a debate at a seminar on basic income and the future of work, and Gejl spoke at BIEN-Danmark’s annual meeting, in addition to the aforementioned book launch.
The Alternative currently holds 10 out of 179 seats in the Danish Parliament, making it the sixth largest party in terms of representation.
Thanks to Louise Haagh and Karsten Lieberkind for information and suggestions for this article.
Post reviewed by Dave Clegg.
