by Guest Contributor | Dec 6, 2016 | Opinion
Written by: Pierre Madden
On November 12 and 13 I attended a congress of the Liberal Party of Quebec, which is currently in power in the province.
The Minister of Employment and Social Solidarity, François Blais, confirmed that a joint working group, with his colleague in Finance, will issue a preliminary report on Basic Income in the Spring. Our neighbouring province of Ontario (which, together with Quebec accounts for 62 percent of the population of Canada) was just released a working paper on a pilot project to begin in April 2017. Quebec does not seem to be leaning towards a pilot project.
In his talk, Minister Blais placed much emphasis on the principles underlying the development of the government’s project:
- The development of human capital (though education, for example)
- The obligation of protection from certain risks (with unemployment insurance and health insurance, for example)
- Income redistribution
The minister’s speech was highly focused on incentives to work or study (especially for the illiterate or those without a high school diploma).
The principle of unconditionality, a fundamental aspect of Basic Income, will likely not be a feature of the government’s plan.
On the second day of the congress it was the minister’s turn to ask me if he had answered my question. I described my own situation as a case in point. I am 62, three years away from my public pension which here in Canada is sufficient to raise most people out of poverty (works for me!). Why would the government be interested in the development of my human capital? The minister replies: “In a case like yours, we would have to go back in time to see what choices you made.” I have several university diplomas, which doesn’t help his argument. I am still either underemployed or unemployable.
The minister could only answer: “I would have to know more about your individual case.”
And that is what the government does and will continue to do for all those considered “fit for work.” Petty bureaucratic inconveniences for those “unfit for work” will be removed and their inadequate benefits will be improved by dipping into the funds previously used for the “fit” as they return to the workforce. The government sees no difficulty in a law it passed just last week (Bill 70: An Act to allow a better match between training and jobs and to facilitate labour market entry). The government highlights the positive measures it imposes to help participants join the job market. Those who prefer a non-paternalistic approach (“Give me the money and let me make my own decisions”) are penalized.
The irony is that before he entered politics Minister Blais actually wrote a book in support of Basic Income for all. He confirmed to me that he still believes what he wrote 15 years ago.
In Canada, both the federal and the provincial governments partially reimburse sales tax. Here in Quebec, the Solidarity Tax Credit refunds part of the estimated sales tax paid by consumers. The higher your income, the lower the monthly payout, so it works like a negative income tax. The minister was asked about this as a stepping stone towards Basic Income. He simply said it would be “a more radical approach.” Of course, tax credits don’t impact on “human capital.”
You can be sure I will be rereading François Blais’ book when his work-group’s report comes out next year.
About the author: Pierre Madden is a zealous dilettante based in Montreal. He has been a linguist, a chemist, a purchasing coordinator, a production planner and a lawyer. His interest in Basic Income, he says, is personal. He sure could use it now!
by Kate McFarland | Dec 4, 2016 | News
The U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, a non-governmental organization that promotes “programs and policies that cultivate creativity, empathy, and collaboration”, released a new platform on November 19, 2016 — aimed at protecting Americans’ right to culture under a Trump presidency.
The platform consists of 10 policy demands — from a public service jobs program to criminal justice reform to investment in arts education — including a basic income grant.
About the basic income grant, the USDAC writes (pp. 22-23):
[R]ising costs, falling spending-power, the uncertainty of the economy, macroeconomic policies that have placed corporate success above individual well-being. For artists and cultural organizers as for others, the current system mandates overproduction, often exacerbated by under-compensation. For example, existing subsid[ies] for artists operates almost exclusively on a project basis, forcing artists who apply for support to constantly seek novelty and conform to arbitrary deadlines rather than allowing work to evolve and emerge according to a more organic timetable. Competition for scarce resources is incredibly intense and hugely discouraging for those who don’t fall under currently favored criteria …
In virtually every field, decision-makers fail to prioritize necessary time for reflection, restoration, and conviviality. It’s a challenge to discern, integrate, and act on cultural development needs when competition for survival eats what could otherwise be time for creativity, connection, and pleasure. We long for a future in which overproduction and overconsumption will no longer distort our society, with a universal cultural benefit: the ability to live in balance with each other and the life of this planet.
In its abridged platform, USDAC emphasizes that similar challenges confront workers in many occupations and that the organization is not making a “special pleading for artists”.
USDAC proposes a basic income grant large enough to cover basic needs such as food, housing, and medical care, distributed in the same amount to all regardless of other income.
To fund the BIG and other reforms, the organization proposes taxes on advertising and financial transactions, as well as the sell of “social impact bonds” to private investors.
Read the full platform here: “Standing for Cultural Democracy: The USDAC’s Policy and Action Platform”
Reviewed by Dawn Howard.
Cover photo: CC BY-SA 2.0 Edith Soto
by Kate McFarland | Dec 2, 2016 | News
On November 20, Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that Joe Kaeser, CEO of the multibillion-dollar engineering company Siemens AG, has demanded a basic income.
According to the news report, Kaeser, speaking at the Süddeutsche Zeitung Economic Summit in Berlin, said that a basic income would eventually be necessary to protect workers who become displaced due to artificial intelligence and automation. Subsequently, many readers credited Kaeser with support for unconditional basic income (bedingungsloses Grundeinkommen), as endorsed by BIEN.
In later remarks, however, Kaeser clarified that he does not demand an unconditional basic income–as the Siemens Press Office tweeted on November 22:
Source: Siemens Press Office (via Twitter)
While Kaeser believes that the state must offset the hardships faced by those whose jobs are adversely affected by technological progress, he does not believe that the support must be unconditional.
Despite Kaeser’s own subsequent disavowal of UBI, the initial (and perhaps misleading) news report generated a surge of interest in the idea. Süddeutsche Zeitung itself–Germany’s largest subscription newsletter–followed its article about Kaeser with a week-long series on basic income.
One article revisited the ideas of Götz Werner, the billionaire founder of the drugstore chain Drogerie Markt who called for a universal and unconditional basic income of 1000€ per month. Others provided further commentary on Kaeser’s initially reported statement that a “kind of basic income” will be unavoidable in the face of automation.
In comments to Basic Income News, Ronald Heinrich of the basic income political party Bündnis Grundeinkommen described Kaeser’s remarks as a “tipping point” in German media coverage of basic income.
Reference
Max Hägler (November 20, 2016) “Siemens-Chef plädiert für ein Grundeinkommen,” Süddeutsche Zeitung [German]
Joe Kaeser photo CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 CSIS
by Guest Contributor | Dec 1, 2016 | Opinion
By Alexander de Roo
The discussion about basic income has changed completely.
Thirty years ago, it was a very principled debate. High unemployment. No future. Thus, give us a basic income, because the system cannot give us paid work. The counter argument was you must do paid work to receive an income. A basic income is morally unacceptable.
How different is the discussion now: when we go out and hand leaflets in the streets, 50 to 90 percent of the population takes our leaflets (50 percent in rich area’s and 90 percent in poor neighborhoods). The most common reaction is: basic income is a good idea, but how do you finance it? Who pays for it?
A very pragmatic discussion no longer principles banging against each another.
The confidence in the present social system in The Netherlands is shaken compared to 30 years ago. Previously you got five years’ unemployment money and one could easily look for another job. Now even middle class people lose their well-paid job and after two years of unemployment money must ‘eat up’ (meaning sell) their own house to get social assistant money…. five million people have a steady, normal contract. That is ten percent less than ten years ago. Two million people have flexible contracts for bull-shit jobs, two million people live from social benefits (in different forms), one million people are independent professionals without access to unemployment money (ZZP or freelancers), the pension age keeps going up (now 67 years), while people above 50 years have zero (or realistically around 1 percent) changes on the labor market.
But the Netherlands is still one the five or ten richest countries in the world!
The two biggest newspapers held polls about basic income! About 40 – 44 percent comes out in favor. A reliable national poll measured 40 percent in favor, 45 percent against and 15 percent do not know. The majority of the electorate of the green and left parties are in favor. With the two right wing parties it is the opposite: their electorate is against: “we are working hard and do not want to pay a basic income for these (lazy) people that just want to have a basic income”.
Most interesting is that the voters for the Freedom party of Mister Wilders (our local Trump) are divided: 37 percent in favor and 46 percent against, 17 percent don’t know. Almost the same as the national average! Politically we must use this.
But the leaders of the green and left wing parties do not take up the issue of a basic income. They stick to repairing /amending the old social system. They think (and hope) the economy is recovering, unemployment will fall and then this basic income discussion will go away like it did around the year 2000.
But they are wrong we have now one year economic recovery: the result 12,000 new steady jobs and 78,000 flexible low-value jobs. The flexibility of the labor market keeps growing. We will turn back the clock on these flex jobs; providing more jobs is the answer of the green and left wing leaders.
Our answer is to increase our support for the basic income alternative in the upcoming national elections March 15, 2017. Around 60,000 people signed a petition for a basic income in 2018. Demonstrating that 800 € for every citizen in the Netherlands is easily affordable and that even 1,100 € is easily financed.
After the elections, we will work with respectable institutions to come up with a transition route from the present situation to a full basic income.
Annotation: A basic income of 800 € requires 10 billion € more per year then the present situation, 1,100 € will cost around 30 billion euro more. The present government (Conservatives + Social democrats) have cut the state expenditure with 30 billion € and raised indirect taxes with 16 billion euro’s: in total 56 billion in the last 4 years.
Alexander de Roo is a founder of BIEN in 1986, former BIEN treasurer (1986-2004), and now Chairman of the Dutch branch of BIEN.
by Kate McFarland | Nov 28, 2016 | News
A tech conference held in October in Berlin, Germany, included a panel on universal basic income, which featured basic income popularizer Michael Bohmeyer (Mein Grundeinkommen) alongside three AI experts.
The Data Natives conference, which took place in Berlin from October 26 through 28, featured a variety of sessions on data science, AI, machine learning, and related technical topics, as well as sessions on business in a data-driven age [1].
Amidst its panels and presentations on data science, software development, and business, there was one politically-oriented panel: “The Future of AI and Universal Basic Income”.
The panel discussion was moderated by Hans Uszkoreit, scientific director of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (who speaks about his own work in a separate session), and included three panelists: Abdourahmane Faye, a machine learning specialist who works on what advanced data analytics can do for business; NiMA Asghari, UAV applications expert at Drone Industry Insights; and Michael Bohmeyer, founder of Mein Grundeinkommen, a German non-profit organization that has given away dozens of year-long basic incomes to randomly-selected entrants.
Panelists discussed such issues as whether artificial intelligence really will destroy jobs, whether individuals with a basic income would lose motivation to work and help others, and whether it is accurate to extrapolate the findings of basic income pilot studies (including individual trials like those of Mein Grundeinkommen) to a society with a full-scale universal basic income.
While Bohmeyer, of course, is a champion of UBI, others on the panel hold less favorable views. Faye opposed the policy: expressing confidence in humanity’s ability to continue to create new jobs in a digitized, automated economy, he does not see a need for UBI, and he worries that a UBI would undermine work incentives. Asghari seemed to assume a more neutral territory, raising points both for and against UBI throughout the discussion.
Watch the four men speak from really short chairs in this complete video of the session:
[1] The author, being both fond of puns and a big fan the band Einstürzende Neubauten, would like to make special note of a session entitled “Einstürzenden Neudaten“.
Reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan
Photo: nHow (conference venue) lobby CC-BY-SA-3.0 Forster82
