by Toru Yamamori | Nov 6, 2015 | News
The National Women’s Liberal Commission calls a party resolution for a pilot project of an unconditional basic income.
The National Women’s Liberal Commission is the women’s wing of the Liberal Party of Canada, which is currently in power.
The commission raises a party resolution to ‘advocate for a federal pilot of a basic income supplement in at least one Canadian town or city, in cooperation with the appropriate provincial and municipal government(s).’
The detail of the resolution can be read here.
by Toru Yamamori | Nov 2, 2015 | News
ReCivitas have experimented a basic income pilot project in Quantinga Velho, Brazil since 2008. The delegation of ReCivitas is on tour in Europe, and will join a discussion in Paris.
The date: Wednesday 4 November 2015
The time: 19.30-
The Venue:Terre Solidaire (12 rue Guy de la Brosse, metro Jussieu).
The detail can be found here (in French).
There will also be a related event on 5th November. The information can be found here (in French)
by Vito Laterza | Oct 14, 2015 | News
Debora Serracchiani, President of Friuli-Venezia Giulia
The center-left government of the Italian region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia is about to roll out a minimum income experiment – the actual wording used in the legislation is “measures of active inclusion and income support”. It was approved in June by the regional parliament. The cabinet finalized the implementation guidelines at the end of September.
This is far from a universal basic income, but institutes a basic floor for all families below a certain income, regardless of family members’ current or previous occupational status. Families that earn 6000 euros per year or less, and have been residing in the region for at least twenty-four months, will receive a monthly sum between 70 and 550 euros for twelve months in the first instance. The monthly payment is determined by existing family income – there are six income bands – and the number of dependent children.
They can apply for a second period of twelve months, after a two months break. The award is conditional on signing an “inclusion pact”, which is a plan beneficiaries agree with social services to improve their financial situation. It can include training courses, further education and other labor market integration activities.
Local newspaper Il Piccolo reports that the scheme roll-out is expected to start in November this year. It is estimated that there are up to 10,000 beneficiaries eligible for this measure. Italian newspapers do not clarify whether this figure refers to the total number of individuals in the receiving families, or the number of applicants. Either way, it is clear that only the very poor will be covered.
Italy, like Greece and unlike most European countries, does not have a universal unemployment subsidy or a national guaranteed minimum income (GMI). A GMI scheme was piloted at the national level in the late 1990s, but discontinued in the early 2000s. Some of Italy’s 20 regions experimented with similar measures throughout the 2000s, but none of them went beyond the experimental phase. Friuli-Venezia Giulia center-left government had already instituted a five-year experiment in 2006, but the scheme was interrupted prematurely by a center-right government in 2008.
Friuli’s reintroduction of a minimum income is not an isolated case. Another region, Basilicata, adopted similar measures in recent months, and others, like Piedmont and Lombardy, are expected to do so in the near future.
Friuli’s law was promoted by the regional president Debora Serracchiani and her cabinet, and approved with votes from across the political spectrum. The center-left Democrats, who lead the regional coalition government, and their regional allies of Left, Ecology and Freedom, supported the measure, with the favorable vote of the opposition party 5 Star Movement – a populist formation with increasingly far right views about migration and borders.
The 5 Star Movement is the main opposition party in the national parliament, and has been campaigning for a “citizenship income” (a form of GMI) at the national level for some time now. In recent months, they have intensified their campaign. Popular support for a national GMI is growing, fuelled by increasing poverty and social discontent caused by the combined effect of austerity and lack of economic growth.
Matteo Renzi, Italy’s Prime Minister
Three legislative proposals to this effect have been deposited in the national parliament, but none of them has reached the stage of a parliamentary vote. The 5 Star Movement proposal is the most far-reaching of them and calls for a GMI of up to 780 euros per month. Matteo Renzi, Prime Minister and leader of the Democrats, has rejected this proposal, but promised to include in the next budget more modest measures to mitigate poverty.
If you want to find out more, here is a list of relevant sources:
Marco Ballico, “Sei ‘scaglioni’ per l’assegno antipovertà [Six bands for the antipoverty payment],” Il Piccolo, September 22, 2015.
Roberto Giovannini, “In Friuli sussidio per i poveri, i grillini votano con il Pd [Subsidy for the poor in Friuli, 5 Star Movement votes with Pd],” La Stampa, July 2, 2015.
Friuli-Venezia Giulia, “Legge regionale 10 luglio 2015, n.15 [Regional law July 10, 2015, n.15]”.
“Renzi: no al reddito di cittadinanza, per combattere la povertà serve il lavoro [Renzi: no to citizenship income, we need jobs to fight poverty],” September 30, 2015.
Josh Martin, “ITALY: Conflict over report of a basic income experiment in Lombardy”, Basic Income News, May 18, 2015.
For a brief history of GMI experiments in Italy, see Varvara Lalioti’s academic article “The curious case of the Guaranteed Minimum Income (GMI): highlighting Greek ‘exceptionalism’ in a southern European context”, forthcoming in the European Journal of Social Policy. An earlier version is available here.
by Will Wachtmeister | Aug 25, 2015 | News
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People’s_Party_for_Freedom_and_Democracy#/media/File:VVD.svg
A local branch of the powerful Dutch liberal party VVD has issued a strongly worded rejection of the proposed basic income pilot project for the city of Utrecht.
The VVD’s Utrecht spokesperson on work and incomes Judith Tielen writes that she is responding to questions from the public about the city’s “ridiculous experiments” and gives seven reasons why her party opposes the basic income pilot: poor experiment design; costs; the moral need for benefit recipients to reciprocate; the reasonable nature of current conditionality; the risk of increased “hammock-based” welfare scrounging; the primacy of national over local legislation as well as a general claim that basic income doesn’t solve anything but actually creates more problems.
The intervention by the VVD, whose leader is Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte, illustrates the lines of attack that basic income opponents will take when the Utrecht initiative is debated by local politicians in September [2015] and more generally, as basic income continues moving up the national political agenda.
Language DUTCH:
Judith Tielen “7 redenen waarom de VVD het ‘experiment basisinkomen’ in Utrecht afkeurt”, VVD Utrecht website, 11 August 2015
by Stanislas Jourdan | Jul 8, 2015 | News
Following growing interest in the idea of a basic income in the Netherlands over the past year, the feasibility of local pilot projects to investigate basic income is being considered in more than 30 Dutch municipalities.
The City of Utrecht, the fourth most populated City of the Netherlands, has attracted a lot of attention recently – including at an international level – with the early announcement of their launch of a pilot project later this year.
Although the program is far from being ready and its specifics are far less radical than they sound, the good news is: Utrecht might just be the tip of the iceberg of a massive wave of local experiments in the Netherlands.
Currently there are 30 Dutch municipalities interested in running basic income pilot projects. Among them, the cities of Utrecht, Tilburg, Wageningen and Groningen are the most advanced.
These developments are the fruit of many people’s efforts. They are also the outcome of an unprecedented wave of awareness about basic income in the Netherlands, following the broadcast of two Dutch documentaries about basic income.
Sjir Hoeijmakers
Sjir Hoeijmakers, a young econometrician, helps stakeholders interested in experimenting with the idea of a basic income at a local level. He follows up with all interested cities, advises them, and tries to create synergies between them. Hoeijmakers crowdfunded his own ‘basic income’ a few month ago, so he could afford to dedicate himself into the coordination of pilot projects ideas in the Netherlands.
“Most of the people starting these initiatives are looking for an alternative to the current social security system, which is perceived as being based too much on distrust in and control over welfare recipients.” explains Sjir Hoeijmakers. According to him, most of the initiative for local pilots comes from people working inside the municipal administrations, but some also come from academics or are citizens’ initiatives. “What is most interesting and a very good sign is that the initiatives come from people with all kinds of political backgrounds, and are often depoliticized.” .
But what are those experiments about exactly? Despite the media enthusiasm about Utrecht becoming soon “the first city without poverty in Europe”, the reality is of course slightly less utopian.
“Experiments will focus on people already receiving benefits”
The experiments will mostly focus on people who are already welfare claimants in the Netherlands, and particularly beneficiaries of the national minimum income system, which is means-tested and conditional. It is also not paid on an individual basis, but assessed by household.
In fact, those experiments mainly have two major differences with the current system: they aim at making social assistance less conditional regarding work requirements, and will aim at removing the poverty trap by allowing people to earn extra money on top of their social allowance.
However the schemes being considered so far remain household-based, means-tested and therefore non-universal. In fact, these schemes are similar to the concept of negative income tax which in the 1970s, was the basis of experiments in the United States.
“These experiments are not exactly basic income, but they go in that direction” insists Sjir Hoeijmakers. Basic Income Network in the Netherlands agrees too, and regards these initiatives as possible milestones on the path towards a fully unconditional basic income.
This approach has a fundamental advantage: since the target groups are already receiving welfare money, not much extra funding is needed from the existing budget to run these experiments. This would be a different story if all of the city’s residents were included.
“Utrecht is making big plans, but they are not ready yet”
International media outlets such as The Independent and many others have extensively reported on the case of Utrecht, reporting that the experiment could start as early as September. Sjir Hoeijmakers admits to being surprised by how much coverage the city of Utrecht is getting right now.
“The City is making big plans, especially thanks to Alderman Victor Everhardt. The program, however, is just one of many experimental initiatives, and still needs to be authorized by the National Secretary of Social Security” says Sjir Hoeijmakers. According to him, the program will most likely not start before January 2016: ”To be realistic, it could be far later than that, depending on the politics of it.”
Despite the media excitement, the numbers of people and the amounts to be given aren’t fixed yet: there are only approximate numbers up till now, and they don’t necessarily give a good picture of what will be done.
The Utrecht experiment as currently planned, would work with 5 groups, only of which one would get something close to a basic income (no withdrawal if there is extra earned income, no further conditions). A sixth group who stay living under the current welfare system will act as a control group. Each group will have a minimum of 50 people, and the 900 and 1300 euros aren’t exact figures but indications of how much might be paid.
“The city of Utrecht is using the rhetoric of the basic income, which may have contributed to it getting so much attention.” he says. “In some other cases the term Trust Experiment is being used, to avoid confusion with the concept of a full unconditional basic income.”
Several political parties openly support the experiments, including the green-left, the liberal-democrats, and some among the labor and the socialist parties.
