by Andre Coelho | Oct 18, 2018 | News
During a lunch served at the Roosevelt House (Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, New York), on the 24th October 2018, basic income will be presented and discussed, by speakers Michael A. Lewis (Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College), Eri Nogushi (Association to Benfit Children & adjunct Professor, Roosevelt House) and Almaz Zelleke (Department of Social Science, New York University in Shanghai), in a session moderated by Sanford Schram (Department of Political Science, Hunter College).
The event’s press release reads as follows:
“Recent research shows that, contrary to longstanding American beliefs, having a job does not guarantee a path out of poverty. With the rise of automation and stagnant wages, discussions on anti-poverty measures are more relevant now than ever. One such proposed measure is the idea of universal basic income, which would ensure that no one’s income would fall below a certain level, whether or not they were employed. Roosevelt House’s online Faculty Journal recently published commentaries on this issue, and to continue the conversation three of the authors will explore the economic, sociological, political, and philosophical dimensions underpinning this approach. This moderated discussion will include an assessment of the far-reaching implications of this important policy proposal to combat poverty and recommendations to address the entrenched structures of inequality in the United States today”
Registrations can be made here.
by Faun Rice | Oct 14, 2018 | News
Dr. James Chamberlain, of Mississippi State University’s Department of Political Science and Public Administration, published Undoing Work, Rethinking Community in February 2018. This new work examines the contemporary overvaluation of work, highlighting political rhetoric that puts employment at the centre of society without addressing the socio-economic factors that limit access to employment and a living wage. Its underlying argument mirrors its title, that community must be separated from the idea of paid labour as inequity grows. Chamberlain’s book includes a chapter on basic income (UBI), emphasizing that while UBI is an important part of social restructuring, it must be paired with conscious attention to deconstructing the importance of paid work.
The book was listed as an exciting contribution to the literature on unpaid work and basic income by JoAnne Swanson of The Anticareerist. It has also gathered several reviews. Hull University’s Patrick Reedy comments that “Chamberlain’s book provides a useful resource for questioning our own assumptions regarding the close coupling of work and organization and the centrality of work to our understanding of citizenship and community.”
Blogger and author John Budd comments further on the connections between Undoing Work and UBI, noting that “A popular proposal these days is for a universal basic income, the (simplified) theory being that reducing people’s dependency on work for subsistence will allow them to choose from a broader set of life activities. An interesting contribution of Undoing Work is showing how the thinking that lies behind many of the proposals for universal basic income do not break with traditional views of work and society to the extent needed to really bring about a large-scale change in the centrality of work.”
For more information:
John Budd, “Undoing Work, or Doing it up? How Central Should Work Be to Society?” Whither Work? Blog, June 13th 2018
Patrick Reedy, “Book Review: Undoing Work, Rethinking Community” Organization Studies,, August 6th 2018
“Interview: James Chamberlain on “Undoing Work, Rethinking Community” – Epistemic Unruliness 23”, Always Already Podcast, July 9th 2018 (Podcast)
Kate McFarland, “Interview: UBI and ‘Job Culture’”, Basic Income News, April 30th 2018
by Andre Coelho | Oct 10, 2018 | News
There is a plan for distributing dividends, unconditionally, for all Americans. It has been coined as the Social Wealth Fund (SWF), an idea developed and pushed by the People’s Policy Project (3P) founder Matt Bruenig, a known lawyer, blogger and policy analyst in the United States. 3P is a think tank founded in 2017, focused on studying policies benefiting citizens at large.
This plan, described in greater detail in a booklet, rests on the idea of turning national a kind of wealth fund such as the Alaska Permanent Fund (APF). However, unlike the APF, the SWF would have to rely on other sources of revenue (other than oil). Bruenig’s suggestions range from voluntary contributions, managing state-owned physical assets through the fund, various kinds of taxes (including eliminating tax breaks for the rich), leveraged purchases, to monetary seigniorage. This income is supposed to come from the highest earners in society (ex.: corporate taxes, financial taxes, philanthropy, stock exchanging), distributing it by all people.
Peter Barnes, an advisor to the Economic Security Project, has written about the SWF. According to him, the SWF is “refreshing”, because apparently none of the past policies have solved or even reduced inequality, such as “greater funding for education, infrastructure investment, low interest rates, a higher minimum wage, trade wars, tax cuts, or even a federally guaranteed job”. The inequality problem runs deep in society, and that’s where an unconditional dividend distribution of commonly owned assets could really be effective.
As for distributing dividends, Bruenig’s idea is to set this as a percentage of a five-year moving average of the fund’s market value. This could equate to a withdrawal rate of, say, four or five percent. If, at a given moment, the total fund value is $10 trillion, then the available dividends for distribution are $400 billion (Note 1).
On an article published by Anne Price and Jhumpa Bhattacharya, on wealth funds and racial inequality, the concept is summed up nicely:
“Often referred to as a Social Wealth Fund, Citizens Wealth Fund or Sovereign Wealth Fund, this concept rests on the principle of shared ownership, and builds from the foundational vision that all Americans have a right to reap benefits from wealth that we all created together.”
Note 1 – billion = 1 thousand millions
More information at:
Matt Bruenig, “Social Wealth Fund for America”, People’s Policy Project, 2018
Peter Barnes, “Opinion: All Americans would get an income boost under this new plan to share the country’s riches”, Market Watch, September 10th 2018
Anne Price and Jhumpa Bhattacharya, “Why a Social Wealth Fund Must Account for Racial Inequity”, Medium, September 19th 2018
by Daniele Fabbri | Oct 6, 2018 | News
Democratic presidential hopeful Andrew Yang spoke at the Political Soapbox on Saturday, August 11th, 2018, during the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines.
Andrew Yang, a democrat running for president, former entrepreneur and CEO, and author of “The War on Normal People”, addressed the crowd at the Political Soapbox explaining his program.
VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjaMqNUwD3I
He stated that one problem he identified lies in the fact that you need to move from places like Iowa in order to be able to find better career opportunities but, he said, there should be something better to do for young people rather than to move to Wall Street to make a lot of money for themselves. Ideally, after graduating from college, people would find a job, or build businesses, in the communities in which they are born and raised. An undergraduate should be able to volunteer, and make a living wage or better in his state, but nationwide people are required to move in order to pursue working opportunities.
This is the reason why he founded Venture for America in 2011, a non-profit with the aim of providing funds to top graduates and allowed them to take part in promising start-ups in developing cities around the U.S. But then he realized that this was not enough. There was a structural problem in the job market, and funding Venture for America alone was like “pouring water in a bathtub with a hole”.
The point is, in Andrew Yang’s opinion, technology will make human labor less essential.
He uses the example of some of the most common jobs in America – retail and sales, truck driving, and food prep. Automation is going to hit them all, with self-driving trucks already being tested in the field, moving in strict formation in order to optimize costs – a driving arrangement called platooning – and that expected savings from automation will be in the order of $168 billion per year in the freight industry.
Call centers will not be spared from automation, automated kiosks at McDonald’s will soon be more widespread, and 30% of malls will disappear in the next four years, due to Amazon gaining more and more of the market. The transformation will make many jobs obsolete, while stripping value from the many and concentrating it into the hands of a few.
Automation, if not dealt with appropriately, comes at a great cost, and people need to act together as a society to counteract the potential disruption brought by A.I.
In order to do so, Andrew Yang presents the three pillars of his campaign:
1)A $1,000 freedom dividend for each adult (which is a form of Universal Basic Income). Value is being hoovered up by the richest people, with the recent $1.5 trillion tax cut being spread unevenly, as only 6% went to workers. The time of trickle-down economics should come to an end, he says, and it should be substituted with trickle-up economics; money should move the other way around, from families and communities up. The economy is up to $19 trillion dollars, with an increase of $4 trillion in just the last ten years, and the Freedom Dividend is something feasible, he maintains.
2)Medicare for all, as healthcare costs are the number one cause of bankruptcy. People should be able to worry only about getting better, not about how to pay for it.
3)A new American Scorecard, which is a way to measure things differently than GDP does. This would include new indicators including well-being, mental and physical health, not only economic figures. This would also have an instrument which could account positively for motherhood work and parenting, and not for national defense expenses.
More information at:
Brianne Pfannenstiel, “Presidential hopeful Yang floats idea of $1,000 monthly ‘dividend’ for American adults”, Des Moines Register, August 18th, 2018
Sara Bizarro, “United States: Andrew Yang is running for President in 2020 on the platform of Universal Basic Income”, Basic Income News, April 8th, 2018
Article reviewed by Dawn Howard
by Daniele Fabbri | Sep 30, 2018 | News
Four Ontario mayors, with a letter addressed to Jean-Yves Duclos, who sits in the present Canadian federal cabinet as Minister of Families, Children, and Social Development, appeal to the Federal Government for assuming oversight over the Basic Income Pilot project in their communities.
The letter from the Mayors of Brantford, Hamilton, Kawartha Lakes and Thunder Bay follows the early end of the pilot, wich was announced on July 31st by the new center right government of the Ontario province. It was and abrupt end, just three months after the pilot program was fully subscribed, following its announcement by the previous government in April 2017.
For the pilot, the province had enrolled 6,000 people, 4,000 to actually receive the payments, the others to act as a control group. In order to be selected for the pilot, the requisites were: being between the ages of 18 and 64, and living on a low income, defined as under $34,000 per year for singles and $48,000 for couples. Participants were to receive, under a tax credit model, $16,989 per year for a single person, less 50% of any earned income, or $24,027 per year for a couple, less 50% of any earned income.
The communities of Brantford, Hamilton, Kawartha Lakes and Thunder bay were among those to be chosen as the sites for the pilot test, and Ontario’s pilot was at the center of a diffused international interest for the concept of basic income, with delegations from the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea and the Unites states visiting the communities in order to observe and learn from the experience. “We believe the results of the Ontario Basic Income Pilot would have provided crucial information that could enable not just the Ontario Government, but other jurisdictions around the country to determine the efficacy of such a program on a larger scale”, the mayors write.
The end of the project was justified by the minister of Community Social Services (CSS) because it supposedly provided a disincentive to work, ignoring that two thirds of pilot participants are currently working (some with part-time jobs), but nonetheless interested in contributing to the community and to upgrade their professional skills, the letter says.
The fallout from the Ontario government’s cancellation of the pilot is twofold, on the one hand it is detrimental to participants, and on the other one it is a step back in the research for a better, more comprehensive way, to assist citizens.
The pilot was in the first of the three scheduled years of duration, and its findings and level of success could not be determined appropriately, although many participants could already identify positive changes in their lives as a result of it. These reported having used the money to stabilize their housing, improve their health through better dieting and checking for opportunities to specialize themselves, going back to school and enhance their level of skills. The letter continues by saying that many participants reported an amelioration of their well-being and the regaining of confidence, self-esteem and dignity, as they become able to afford housing and improve their intake of healthy food. Futhermore, as a consequence of being able to afford the time for civic activities and volunteering, these people were becoming active members of their community.
The decision to stop the program is harmful the participants, as they made financial decisions having in mind the commitment of the Ontario government to supply them with a stable income over the next years. They were elected among the most vulnerable members of their communities and, once the pilot started, many incurred in expenses which are now irrecoverable. Planning ahead for the following three years period, some moved to safer rental accommodations, finding themselves locked in tenancy agreements they cannot afford, while others paid up-front to go back to school or to enhance their skills, and found themselves indebted.
In the letter, the mayors of the cities of Brantford, Hamilton, Kawartha Lakes and Thunder Bay say that they fear that many of the participant will “inevitably fall into situations of homelessness and significant financial distress” without any fault of their own, and those struggling with mental health will now need additional support.
The mayors thus request that the federal government assumes oversight over the Ontario Basic Income project for the following two years, in order to complete it. They provide three reasons in support for their request. Firstly, the pilot infrastructure has already been built, with many of the up-front costs having been paid, the participants chosen and a project staff in place with given timelines and an evaluation team at work. Secondly, information gathered through the pilot, which is the greatest such test in the world and the first in Canada since Mincome in the seventies (the Manitoba Basic Annual Income Experiment, conducted between 1974 and 1979), would benefit the Federal Government, providing a bonanza of valuable data. And thirdly, one third of the total cost of the project, $50 million, has already been spent. There is no hope of recovering that amount, which considering the negative fallout produced by the premature cancellation of the pilot, is an expense that would end up only creating distress in the communities which were taking part in the experiment.
“Minister, when the program was launched, you said that you would be watching it closely and looked forward to seeing the results – as did we. Federal oversight of the Ontario Basic Income Pilot project would be the best option to revive the critical information that will be generated, protect pilot participants from crisis who entered into the program in good faith and ensure the funds that have already been spent on this program are not wasted.”
The termination of the pilot provoked turmoil and induced various reactions from the communities involved, and awaiting for an answer from the federal government, a judicial review has been requested over the cancellation of the experiment and a class-action lawsuit has been launched by Mike Perry, a social advocate for the program which is handling the cases pro bono, representing four pilot participants.
For more information:
Shawn Jeffords, “4 Ontario mayors asking feds to take over basic income pilot“, Global News, September 7th 2018
Chris Friel, Fred Eisenberg, Andy Letham and Keith Hobbs – Letter to Minister Duclos, September 4th 2018
Official Ontario Basic Income Pilot website
Kate McFarland, “ONTARIO, CANADA: New Government Declares Early End of Guaranteed Income Experiment“, Basic Income News, August 2nd 2018
Article reviewed by André Coelho
