by Andre Coelho | Sep 25, 2018 | News
On September 15th 2018, Donut-D-Day brought together various Dutch organizations and citizens committed to integrated systemic reforms to fight climate change, socioeconomic inequality, and unstable financial systems. The organizers used Kate Raworth‘s model of Doughnut Economics to imagine possible approaches that would balance the need for minimum standards of living for all people (the social foundation), within the environmental limits of the Earth. This day was intended to be the first encounter of longer series of meetings, aiming to connect people working on themes that are strongly linked and to facilitate their integration and collaboration.
Kate Raworth was present through a prerecorded video presentation in which she emphasized how we are currently overshooting the donut on both sides, with poverty and hunger in the center of the donut, and climate change and environmental destruction on the outside of the donut. In order to eliminate human deprivation while staying within planetary boundaries, she argues we need economies that are distributive and regenerative by design. Sources of wealth creation, particularly housing & land, energy generation, enterprise ownership, money creation, and info & technology, will need to be pre-distributed. Simultaneously, we will need to work within the cycles of the living world toward a circular or cyclical economy, investing in renewables, recognizing the potentials of waste, creating systems of repair and share, and pushing for open source standards, resources, and data. She invited people to join the discussion groups on these topics on her website.
The second presenter was Harold Boven, an economist and co-initiator of the plan Courageously Forward by the Young Democrats, which is a financially covered plan for basic income that would end all poverty in the Netherlands. Harold presented data from a Dutch study (CPB, 2016) that could not find any positive results of the 6.5 billion euros invested in activating employment policy to get unemployed people into jobs. He emphasized that basic income would not lead to inflation because it is fiscally financed and does not require the introduction of extra money. According to him, a basic income of €1200/month per single adult and €300/month per child, adding €600/month per adult when sharing a household. He presented a financing mechanism to cover the 164 billion euros annual cost for such a policy, which would come from the elimination of existing welfare programs (134 billion), the introduction of lightly progressive property taxes (14 billion), environmental and energy taxes for companies (14 billion), and inheritance taxes (2 billion). Disability payments would remain untouched. Apart from the usual advantages attributed to basic income, Harold added that it is a response to the failure to the current system and dissatisfaction with the political establishment, while presenting an alternative for emerging populism.
Anne Knol, from Environmental Defense, shared her insights on what she learned about the incredible complexities of interconnections between environmental and social problems. Anne estimated that science guides about 5% of debates, while emotion, lobby, and the interests of political parties guide the rest. She argued that campaign leaders need to present appealing stories that can compete with the story of capitalism and the widely spread and accepted idea that the market should be allowed to run its course. Anne reminded the audience about the donut economics, and to the dangers of overdoing policy on the environmental front, and then affecting people on the bottom of the income scale. On the other hand, there is the fear that if people’s standards of living are risen, that could lead to more environmental excesses. Hence the need to work on both “sides” of the donut simultaneously, ensuring a just distribution of both the costs and the benefits of environmental policies.
Herman Wijffels (Wikipedia)
The last main speaker of the day was Klaas van Egmond, professor of Geosciences at the University of Utrecht, co-initiator of the Sustainable Finance Lab, and board member of the NatureCollege. He discussed the problems in the current configuration of our financial system and the reforms necessary to break with the types of practices that led to the 2008 financial crisis and that will result in more problems in the future in they remain unchecked. Klaas explained that, in a healthy society, the main goal is the expression and implementation of values, as supported by the economy, in turn supported by the financial system. Klaas proposed that clear boundaries between the public and the private must be reinstalled, banks must not be bailed out and cannot have the power to create money. The community misses out on 40-50 billion euros per year due to money creation by private banks. This could instead be used to fund basic income and a smooth transition to sustainability. These measures would break with the cycle of growth and collapse, lead to a stable economy, and allow for complete elimination of government debts.
The day was wrapped up by Herman Wijffels, co-chair of Worldconnectors and until last October professor of sustainability and social change at the University of Utrecht. He emphasized that our current system is socially and economically dysfunctional and has been bought by capital. According to him, we are facing the end of material growth due to the exhaustion of natural resources and are on a journey through the desert to find a new promised land. Wiiffels spoke about a new type of society, with a fairer distribution of wealth, while putting the planet first. Basic income and financial reform would be key elements in the transformation of the capitalist system. In addition, he said that we need to acknowledge that masculine values are no longer appropriate for the 21st century and we should embrace feminine values, which would mean a greater care for life, connections with the Earth and all people on it.
More information at:
Donut-D-Day was live streaming on Facebook (in Dutch)
Article written by Karin Berkhoudt, reviewed by André Coelho.
by Andrew Sanchez | Sep 19, 2018 | News
Sam Altman. Picture credit to: San Francisco Chronicle.
Y Combinator (YC) Research will begin its basic income study in 2019 after regulatory hurdles slowed a pilot program in Oakland, California.
The proposed study, entitled “Making Ends Meet,” will provide monthly cash transfers of $1,000 to 1,000 participants for three or five years. Another 2,000 people will serve as a control group and receive monthly transfers of $50 for the duration of the study. As reported by Wired , the experiment will take place across two states with the exact locations to be decided in the upcoming months.
As outlined in their project proposal , YC Research’s basic income study will assess the effects of unconditional cash transfers on a variety of factors including time use, objective and subjective well-being, and financial health. The study will be administered by staff at Y Combinator Research in collaboration with the University of Michigan Survey Research Center.
Y Combinator Research is the non-profit research arm of start-up accelerator, Y Combinator. In 2016, Y Combinator president Sam Altman posted a “Request for Research” in which he forecast the need for a universal basic income (UBI) in an increasingly automated future: “I am fairly confident that at some point in the future, as technology continues to eliminate traditional jobs and massive new wealth gets created, we’re going to see some version of this at a national scale.”
In September 2016, YC Research initiated a pilot study in Oakland to evaluate experimental design in preparation for the full-scale study. Although the pilot was intended to enroll approximately 100 participants, it ultimately included fewer than ten people as bureaucratic obstacles slowed the study’s implementation. The researchers encountered difficulties in trying to ensure that participants would still receive means-tested support payments as their nominal incomes were increased through receipt of cash transfers.
Elizabeth Rhodes
YC Research’s study will go ahead even as other UBI trials have been cancelled in recent months. In Ontario (Canada), a new administration led by premier Doug Ford, prematurely cancelled a basic income trial earlier this year , and in Finland, a highly-publicized trial has been refused future funding.
Despite the cancellation and discontinuation of government-led trials in Canada and Finland, other studies in the United States are still on course. The Economic Security Project, led by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, has plans for a basic income trial in Stockton, California and Greg Duncan, at the University of California, is organizing a long-term study of cash transfers to low-income mothers, under the name “Baby’s First Years.”
These trials will not be the first studies of UBI in the United States. Beginning in the 1960s, four Negative Income Tax (NIT) trials were conducted in the U.S. as new forms of welfare provision, attracted attention across the political spectrum. Although the trials represented a milestone in experimental social science at the time, their results were subject to differing interpretations by the media, politicians, and participating researchers. Some results, such as a reported increase in divorce rate – a result which was not replicated and has subsequently been disputed – were used to discredit basic income as a legitimate alternative to traditional welfare programs.
The current trials proposed by YC Research, the Economic Security Project, and Greg Duncan will mark a new chapter in the study of basic income in the United States. Unlike earlier studies and recent efforts in Ontario and Finland, the American studies will be privately funded and thereby insulated from changes in government policy which have hindered state-sponsored projects.
As UBI attracts increased attention in the political sphere, long-term studies like the proposed YC Research project will be necessary to assess competing claims about the effects of cash transfer programs in different social and economic contexts.
More information at:
Nitasha Tiku, “Y Combinator learns basic income is not so basic after all”, Wired, August 27th 2018
Kate McFarland, “Ontario, Canada: New Government declares early end of guaranteed income experiment”, Basic Income News, August 2nd 2018
John Henley, “Finland to end basic income trial after two years”, The Guardian, April 23rd 2018
Kate McFarland, “Stockton, CA, US: New details revealed in planned basic income demonstration”, Basic Income News, 23rd August 2018
Karl Widerquist, “The basic income guaranteed experiments of the 1970s: a quick summary of results”, Basic Income News, December 3rd 2017
by Andrew Sanchez | Sep 14, 2018 | News
In her recent work Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World (W.H. Allen), Atlantic writer Annie Lowrey offers a new account of the universal basic income (UBI) rooted in her experience as a global observer of geopolitics, economics, and social policy.
Lowrey approaches UBI as a potential tool to redress a variety of issues, including inequality, poverty, and technological unemployment, which have become increasingly divisive in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and the recent boom in AI research. By viewing human action rather than impartial circumstance as the primary driver of socio-political change, Lowrey concludes that UBI represents an “ethos” of universality, unconditionality, and inclusion as much as any concrete policy proposal.
In the opening chapter, Lowrey explores the relationship between basic income, work, and technological unemployment. After sketching the twinned histories of human advancement and the fear of technological unemployment, she examines why current innovations in AI might be qualitatively different from earlier achievements and why these differences may in fact lead to widespread joblessness. Lowrey notes that certain Silicon Valley luminaries, whose own endeavours threaten the livelihood of many low-skilled workers, have promoted the UBI as a necessary social policy for a jobless future.
Despite calls by technologists for a UBI as a “social vaccine for the 21st Century,” Lowrey ultimately considers discussion of basic income in relation to future joblessness as premature. Although she grants that basic income could operate as an important vehicle of state provision in the future, Lowrey prefers to consider the UBI’s potential to address current social and economic problems.
These problems range from a labour market with stagnant wage growth in Houston to chronic poverty on the shores of Lake Victoria to the challenges of welfare reform in rural India. In each case, Lowrey unpacks how political choices, bureaucratic structures, and personal circumstance converge to prevent certain people from meeting their basic needs.
Through carefully examining different political, geographic, and economic contexts, Lowrey can assess the benefits and drawbacks of basic income proposals in a variety of contemporary settings. This approach accepts that any form of UBI would affect different communities and individuals in unique and perhaps unpredictable ways.
Give People Money distinguishes itself from other works on the topic through its commitment to personal narrative and Lowrey’s own experience with the people who stand to benefit from basic income proposals. Although she examines the ethical and economic justifications of UBI, her primary focus lies in the human story and the way she came to view UBI as an ethos of transformative social change. Give People Money ultimately advocates for UBI not by advancing specific policy initiatives, but by presenting basic income as an impetus to radically reconsider what humans owe one another and how the earth’s bounty ought to be shared.
by Andre Coelho | Sep 5, 2018 | News
After reporting on the two first days of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) Congress in Tampere, Finland, 24th and 25th of August, a second and final part is here lay forth, covering for the event on the last day (26th). (Note 1)
Jamie Cooke, Sarath Davala, Evelyn Forget, Loek Groot and Olli Kangas all sat together at the University of Tampere main auditorium to speak and discuss basic income experiments. These stood for, respectively, the Scottish feasibility study (not yet a functional pilot), the Indian Madhya Pradesh basic income pilot (concluded – ran through years 2011 and 2012), Canadian experiments (past “Mincome” experiment and the interrupted Ontario pilot), the Netherlands transfer schemes (several Municipalities) and the Finish ongoing two-year experiment. The session was chaired by Phillipe van Parijs.
Jamie Cooke
The speakers were asked to freely describe each case. Olli Kangas assured the audience that the Finish experiment is going on as planned, and that results will start to be collected and organized after the ending date, in December 2018. He also confirmed that the studied variables were essentially related to paid work and related job market interactions, adding that survey data would be published at the beginning of 2019 at the latest. As for Evelyn Forget, she reminded that basic income experiments in Canada have been more focused on health outcomes, although work-related results have also been captured. She believes the Ontario pilot – six months into its planned duration – was cancelled for ideologic reasons (the new conservative government arguing that people should get jobs, instead of depending on unconditional transfers). In his turn, Loek Groot informed the audience that experiments in the Netherlands are not testing basic income, but several ways of managing people on benefits. He also added that the social benefits system in the Netherlands is decentralizing, hence the Municipalities initiatives to start these experiments which, generally, measure work-related variables, plus health and life satisfaction data. Finally, Jamie Cooke explained that the basic income idea in Scotland has very much gained from BIEN’s affiliate in the region (Basic Income Scotland) and its actions to spread the word about it. That and the work of RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce), both in the United Kingdom and the local Scottish RSA, has helped in gaining traction for the (basic income) experiment. Jamie noted that the language used when presenting and discussing basic income must be clear, because people need to understand what is being done or planned.
At this moment, van Parijs introduced a provocative question: What, if any, would be the results of a basic income experiment that would lead you to give up on the basic income idea? Olli Kangas recognized that there could be such a result, taking on a cautious approach. However, he added, experimental results could always be “spun” politically in several directions, according to ideologic agendas. Evelyn Forget didn’t oppose to that view, although, contrary to Kangas, she thinks the outcomes of such experiments are already more or less predictable (drawing from past experiments analysis). Sarath Davala wouldn’t quite imagine himself not being a supporter of basic income, and so returned a more passioned answer: “I don’t know, and I don’t want to think about it!”. He added, however, that basic income experiments also test if trusting people is good or not (he believes that it is good). Near the end of the session, Evelyn concluded that people love stories, caring much less about numbers and statistics. That is why she worries about eventual social destructive behaviours which may occur during (basic income like) experiments.
Parallel sessions during this last day of the Congress were widely varied, although only lasted through the morning period. Papers on freedom and (social) reparation, trade unions, work, rights, alternative currencies and the relation of all these with basic income were presented.
Evelyn Forget
The last Plenary Session was featured by Evelyn Forget, who explained in further detailed what happened with the Ontario experiment. She informed that first the new government argued that the experiment had “failed”, which could not be true since there was no data to justify that statement. In a subsequent argument (for having cancelled the experiment), the same government alleged that 25% of the recipients had dropped out, which was also false, for the same reason (no data). The true reason for slashing the basic income pilot finally came, when an official from the newly elected government stated that they did not believe in “free money”, but in people getting jobs. Forget was further concerned about this situation, aggravated by the fact that recipients were getting more or less twice then they would have from regular benefits (and now had to return to their original earnings, with no previous warning). The need to ease these recipients out of the experiment has motivated an insurgence of activity by Canadian social activists (mainly basic income advocates and anti-poverty organizations), to try and restart the experiment or at least to help people transition from their income support during the experiment to their former earnings.
Forget concluded the Plenary with more general considerations on income, welfare and basic income. According to her, income security is not only linked to precarious employment, but also with welfare bureaucracy, which has gotten so complex that people have difficulty in knowing what their earnings will be from month to month. Hence basic income would introduce a kind of income regularity that most people nowadays cannot really expect from the market nor from the State. She ended on the note that the goodness of basic income very much depends on its financing mechanism, which could turn an output of social solidarity into one of societal disintegration.
Closing the Congress, Annie Miller shared a few last words, emphasizing that BIEN Congresses have greatly expanded since their inauguration in 1986. All the same subjects are covered nowadays, as were before (ex.: poverty, social justice), but now including issues such as (basic income) experiments, environmental issues and cryptocurrencies. For her, the importance of research, dissemination of knowledge and activism for basic income cannot be overstated. Finally, Miller is confident that, although present-day world is (mainly) governed by sociopaths, the time has arrived to replace them with empathy, kindness and honesty.
Note 1 – Mistakenly, Lena Lavina’s Plenary Session was held on the 26th (first in the morning), but reported on part 1 as having been on the 25th. So now, the last Plenary held on the 25th, on basic income experiments, is reported on in the present article (part 2).
More information at:
BIEN Congress 2018 website
André Coelho, “BIEN Congress 2018 (part 1)”, Basic Income News, September 3rd 2018
by Karl Widerquist | Aug 29, 2018 | Opinion, The Indepentarian
This essay was originally published on Basic Income News in March 2014.
Basic Income is suddenly the subject of much more discussion around the world. Political movements are growing. The media, social networks, and blogs have suddenly devoted more attention to basic income. Basic Income News (BI News) suddenly has much more news to report. The website is running two-to-five stories a day, and its accompanying NewsFlashes have more news than they can fit. This is a good time to talk about the goals of BI News and the accompanying NewsFlashes.
BIEN
BI News has three main goals. Most importantly, it keeps readers informed about all the news directly relevant to the Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) around the word. Secondly, it keeps readers informed about events organized about BIG and publications written about BIG. Thirdly, it includes features providing a mouthpiece for members of BIEN and its affiliates to write blogs, opinion pieces, and book reviews about BIG.
The first goal of BI News is important because activists, researchers, and anyone interested in BIG need a place where they can find out what is happening around the world that is relevant to BIG. No one other website is doing it, and no others are likely to start. You can’t just search Google News for “basic income” and expect to find all the news about BIG. There are more than a dozen, perhaps dozens, of terms for BIG in English alone. There are policies and programs that are forms of BIG or that share some of the characteristics of BIG but that are not discussed in terms of BIG: the Alaska Dividend, some cash transfers, the Earned Income Tax Credit, dividends from casino revenue on U.S. Indian Reservations, the Bolsa Familia in Brazil, GiveDirectly in Uganda, and many, many more. There are also policies that are described in the words “basic income” or words very similar to terms for BIG but aren’t BIG or aren’t very closely related to it. The news section of BI News shows readers what proposals, policies, and social activism around the world related to BIG and explains that connection.
USBIG
This effort requires consistent monitoring of mainstream news, social media, blogs, and other sources of information. It involves original reporting to make the necessary connections to BIG as well as meta-reporting—reporting about reporting. Articles in this section of BI News are written from a neutral perspective, because the goal of this section is not to persuade but to inform. There are many arguments going around about BIG, but only one news source dedicated to informing people about BIG. This service is valuable to activists, researchers, and anyone interested in BIG.
This section reports only on issues directly relating to BIG. It doesn’t report on other social policies or on the economic and social conditions that create a need for BIG unless there is some direct connection to BIG in the news on these issues. The reason is that news indirectly relating to BIG outnumbers the news about BIG by orders of magnitude. If BI News reported on all these other things, its focus on BIG would be lost.
Stories from the news section of BI News can be found at this link: https://binews.org/category/latest-news/.
CIT (UK)
The second goal of BI News is to keep people informed about events being held and literature being written about BIG around the world. The goal of publicizing events is obvious. It helps our members, our affiliates, other networks, and hosting institutions to publicize events related to BIG. The goal of keeping up with the literature is important because of the dispersion and the diversity of the BIG literature today. So many different terms for BIG are used that there simply is no easy way to find it on a search. As far as we know, no other group is keeping a comprehensive bibliography of the literature on BIG as BI News attempts to do.
BI News posts summaries of the more important publications and attempts to post at least the publication information and a link to all publications, even the less important ones. We do this because, even if one individual publication is not terribly importantly by itself, the dialogue as a whole is important. If you want to know what is being said about BIG at a given time or what has been said over a given period, BI News has collected and organized that information. We’re doing a fairly good job of that for English-language publications right now, and hopefully, as we expand we will do it for more and more languages.
Articles in these sections are also written from a neutral perspective, because as with the goal of reporting the news, the goal of reporting on events and publications is also to inform, not to persuade. The literature and events in this section also must directly relate to BIG, again because reporting on wider literature would sacrifice our focus on BIG.
The BI literature posts on BI News are here: https://binews.org/category/bi-literature/.
Events posts are here: https://binews.org/category/events/. Links are here: https://binews.org/category/links/.
BIN Italia
Persuasion is the third goal of BI News. The features section, which includes blogs, opinion pieces, book reviews, and occasional podcasts and interviews, performs this function. This section provides an outlet for BIEN members to write their opinions about BIG, sometimes directed at other supporters, sometimes directed at a wider audience. Arguing for the cause of BIG has obvious value, but there are several reasons why this goal ranks third. The readership of BI News is overwhelmingly made up of people who already support BIG. They’re already convinced; their primary need is for information. Another reason this is a lesser important goal is that there are many places around the world where people can publish features having to do with BIG, but only BI News is pursuing the first two goals. However, making the case for BIG is valuable. BI News provides a place for BIEN members and supporters to become a part of that dialogue. Right now we’re running an average of about one feature per week, but we are hoping to increase that substantially, perhaps eventually to one feature per day.
A list of and links to the latest features can be found on the homepage of BI News: https://binews.org/. Blogs can be found by going to the Features dropdown list and selecting blogs.
To keep up with these goals, BI News maintains a website, updated at least once a day, and a regular newsletter, collecting the recent stories from the website. As we expand our volunteer base, we will expand what we do.
-Karl Widerquist, Doha, Qatar, March 2014
Volunteers needed for BI News
If you’d like to help, we need volunteers. Primarily we need people with one of two skills. We need writers to help us report the news and we need people with website-design skills to help us improve how we present it. Among our writers, we need people with language skills. The languages we need most are English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Italian, but if news is happening in any language, we need writers to report on it. If you would like to help spread the word about BIG, please contact the editor of BI News, Karl Widerquist <Karl@widerquist.com>.
