Sri Lanka, one of India’s closest neighbours, is starting to be the stage for a wide campaign to grow awareness about basic income. Talal Rafi, an entrepreneur, consultant and columnist from Sri Lanka is heading this awareness effort, since he is convinced automation will disrupt the economy, particularly by leaving millions of people unemployed.
Associated with Jim Pugh, ex-Director of Analytics for ex-US President Barack Obama, and Scott Santens, prominent international basic income activist, Talal Rafi has been referenced in Daily News, where he is cited for making an argument for basic income based on the onslaught of automation on jobs: “Artificial Intelligence will bring ease to humans, but would take away many of their jobs. Less than one fifth of jobs lost could be replaced. With half a billion people expected to be unemployed in the coming decades, crime alone would reach unprecedented levels. Self-driving cars, growing online shopping and robots for factories, mean millions of jobs taken over by machines. With IBM Watson, even doctors and lawyers are not safe. A possible solution is a guaranteed basic income for all.”
Rafi went on to be interviewed on Sri Lanka’s national TV (morning show, in English), where he was confronted with the usual questions concerning working productivity and financing. The answers surfed between automation and its consequences, results from already performed basic income pilots worldwide, and the prompt elimination of extreme poverty.
Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, was in the UK last November 2018, presenting his findings on this press conference. It seems that the UK, the 5th world economy in terms of GDP, drags on the 55th position as far as inequality is concerned, in a list of 160 countries (Gini coefficient measurements from the year 2000 onward, mostly). He refers that, although many think tanks, civic organizations and even parliamentary groups speak of poverty as a crucial challenge in the UK, government ministers consider that “things are going well”, in an obvious attitude of denial.
Alton’s visit to the UK has spurred the House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee to conduct an inquiry on UK’s welfare system, along with rising evidence of debt, hunger and homelessness across the country. In fact, a recent (June 2018), deep study on British welfare had already demonstrated that the attribution of conditional benefits has more drawbacks than positive outcomes, which turns the present system counterproductive. So, it seems that poverty, social stigma and arbitrary sanctions are not only the product of some filmmaker’s imagination (e.g.: I, Daniel Blake), but real, verifiable facts.
Among the cited evidence can be found the contribution of the Citizen’s Income Trust (CIT). Given the grim scenario of UK’s poorest or most financially insecure social layers – wages below the poverty line, high unemployment, high insecurity within the job market, increasing conditional welfare – the CIT, headed by Malcolm Torry, recommends that UK’s welfare system should be covered with a new level of unconditional income security. Therefore, it has recommended to the House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee the adoption of basic income, in the following terms:
Research at the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex has shown that such a new layer of unconditional incomes would be entirely feasible. By reducing to zero the Income Tax Personal Allowance and the National Insurance Contributions Primary Earnings Threshold, levelling out National Insurance Contributions across the earnings range, and raising Income Tax rates by just three percentage points, it would be possible to pay an unconditional income of £63 per week to every working age adult, with different amounts for different age groups. No additional public expenditure would be required; poverty and inequality would be substantially reduced; almost no losses would be imposed on low income households at the point of implementation, and only manageable losses on any household; a significant number of households would be taken off means-tested benefits; and a much larger number would be brought within striking distance of coming off them. For every household that came off means-tested benefits, employment incentives would rise substantially. Most importantly: every household in the country would experience a substantial increase in its financial security.
It is worth noting that the House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee had already run a formal Oral Evidence Hearing about basic income, on January 12th 2017. At this session were presenting evidence and informed opinions for basic income Louise Haagh (University of York and Basic Income Earth Network), Annie Miller (Citizen’s Income Trust) and Becca Kirkpatrick (UNISON West Midlands Community Branch). On the official summary of that formal hearing, the Committee judged the possibility of introducing a basic income type of policy in the UK as risking “being a distraction from workable welfare reform”, urging “the incoming government not to spend any energy on it”.
Overall, social degradation is happening in the UK, no matter how much governmental officials try to deny it. And that is in the midst of great transformations in the British welfare system, which may raise concerns about what “workable welfare reforms” the House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee had in mind in early 2017. Accepting evidence from the CIT, naturally supporting a thought-through basic income scheme for the UK, it remains unclear whether the appeal for the government to avoid basic income is to be given any credence.
Michael Howard. Picture credit to: University of Maine
Michael Howard, a professor of Philosophy and Political economy at the University of Maine, who also specializes in environmental issues, has published an article on how a carbon fee and dividend might help to solve an impending climate disaster.
In this article, Howard speaks of a recent bill (November 2018), introduced to the House of Representatives of the United States, supported by Democrats and Republicans, “that would reduce CO2 emissions [from the US] by 40% in 12 years, and 90% by 2050”. Called the “Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act”, it aims to impose a 10 US$/metric tonne fee on carbon fuels produced or imported, rising to 15 US$/metric tonne, if the referred CO2 emissions goals are not fulfilled.
The generated revenue would be saved at a Carbon Dividend Trust Fund, and be unconditionally redistributed annually to all US citizens. Estimated point to a US$ 3456/year for a family of four (as an example). Of course, fuel prices would go up, but according to the Regional Economic Models Inc (REMI), “most households would receive more in cash dividends than they would pay in higher fuel costs”. That and an estimated amount of 2.1 million extra jobs over 10 years, and reduced mortality in 20 years (due to declining air pollution).
If the bill is passed, present-day authority of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over carbon emissions will be suspended, but only to be re-installed if CO2 reduction goals are not met. Nevertheless, the expectation is that this Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act will reduce carbon emissions from the US “far more than the Obama administration’s Clear Power Plan”. On social grounds, according to Howard, the bill is progressive, as far as taxation is concerned, and the dividend is fair and acceptable by the public at large.
The Call for Papers for the 19th Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) Congress, in Hyderabad, India, has been released. From the 22nd through the 25th of August 2019, scholars, community organizers and artists are invited to make presentations pertaining to any of the following thematic areas. The abstracts (maximum 500 words) must reach the Local Organizing Committee by February 25th 2019. Please mail your abstracts (in MS Word document between 300 and 500 words) to: 19biencongress.india@gmail.com.
Thematic areas:
1. Ideological Perspectives on Basic Income
2. Basic Income, Unpaid Work and Women in the Informal Economy
3. Basic Income in Development Aid Debate: Is there a Paradigm-shift?
4. Religious Perspectives on Basic Income
5. Basic Income as a Foundation of a Caring Economy and Society?
6. What forms of Freedom and What kind of Community Life does Basic Income promote?
7. Basic Income and Blockchain Technology: Are there Synergies?
8. Basic Income, Poverty and Rural Livelihoods
9. Basic Income, the Commons, and Sovereign Wealth Funds: Is Public Inheritance an emerging issue?
10. Basic Income Pilots: Opportunities and Limits
11. Basic Income and Political Action: What does it take to transform an Idea into Policy?
12. Basic Income and Corporate Philanthropy: Is Basic Income a better paradigm and way forward?
13. Basic Income and Children
14. Basic Income and Mental Health
15. Basic Income and Intentional Communities: What does this Experience Teach us?
Congress Theme: Basic Income as Freedom and
Development
The theme of the Congress is ‘Basic Income as Freedom and Development’. Basic Income is an idea that is evoking curiosity and attention of people from a wide variety of national and cultural contexts, from leaders of different socio-political domains. Irrespective of the generic meaning that we attempt to give it, the groundswell that we witness today is producing its own local meanings. Each of these meanings seems to emerge from its own unique contextual starting point. The year 2019 is virtually being declared as the ‘Year of the Basic Income’, because the idea is reverberating across the world.
In this chaotic multiple renderings and interpretations, we observe that Basic Income is being seen both as Freedom and Development. These two notions are not mutually exclusive or distinctively apart, as often they are made out to be. Development ideally ought to lead to Freedom, and equally so the other way round. In certain contexts, the immediate appeal of the idea of Basic Income seems to be ‘Development’ in terms of addressing hunger and other forms of deprivation, access to education and healthcare. In other contexts, the immediacy may be felt as Freedom from alienating jobs that most of us are forced to do for a living. In either case, what emerges is that an unconditional Basic Income is seen as having tremendous potential to liberate us from the new forms of slavery that the current phase of capitalist economy subjects us to.
BIEN Civic Forum
The Congress will be held for four days. The first day, on the 22nd August, will be India Day which is being organised under the new BIEN initiative Civic Forum. The deliberations of this day will focus on the Basic Income debate and policy initiatives and the ground level experience in India. All the delegates are encouraged to attend the India Day. The main Congress will be inaugurated on 23rd morning and will conclude at 2:45 pm on 25th August 2019. The General assembly of BIEN will be convened at 3 pm on the 25th August 2019.
Registration of Delegates Those who wish to attend the Congress, please register by filling out the online form. The Delegate Fee structure is as follows:
Type of Fee
In Euro
In US Dollars
Solidarity Fee
200 and above
229
Regular Fee
125
143
Delegates from low-income countries
50
57
Delegates from low-income countries are encouraged to attend the Congress, and this fee is at a highly subsidized rate. Those who can afford to pay, please consider opting for Solidarity Fee of 200 Euros and above. Those who have institutional support, please opt for Regular Fee even if from low-income countries.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Picture credit to: The Daily Beast.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a young Democrat MP who has recently included basic income in a Resolution about climate change (coined the “Green New Deal”), has also mentioned it at a Netroots Nation event in August 2018. The mention is very brief and grouped with “universal college, education, trade school [and a] Federal Jobs Guarantee”, which had been in and out of the Democrats agenda since the 1940’s.
The Democrats political platform does not mention basic income, despite recent efforts by Ocasio Cortez (with the above-mentioned Resolution), although it goes through a lot of policies for low-income workers and families. However, it hints at an expansion of current social security programs, enhancing their range towards universality, as in the following passage:
“The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) program should be expanded for low-wage workers not raising children, including extending the credit to young workers starting at age 21. The Child Tax Credit (CTC) should be expanded, for example, by making more of it refundable, or indexed to inflation to stem the erosion of the credit.”
