by Jenna van Draanen | Apr 9, 2015 | News
The French Movement for Basic Income group is proposing a new pilot project that will reform the existing welfare program (RSA) to become unconditional and remove the job search requirement currently associated with it, among other changes. This proposal calls on the new Departmental Council elected in March to implement the pilot program, and in doing so, move closer to a basic income in France.
Jean-Eric Hyafil, “Expérimenter le RSA inconditionnel dans les départements” [Trying out the unconditional RSA in the Department] Mouvement Francais pour us Revenu de Base, March 19, 2015.
by BIEN | Oct 26, 2014 | News
[Claus Offe]
Thanks to the initiatives of 29 year old Berlin-based freelancer Michael Bohmeyer, there has been a recent wave, probably unprecedented in its size, of media attention to basic income issues in German local and national media. What gathered wide attention is a project Bohmeyer started which can be seen as a remote relative to, or micro version of, a proper Basic Income (BI). What Bohmeyer shares with most proponents of the latter is one moral intuition: A person’s access to income must be unhinged from his or her prior market-tested productive contribution. His experiment is designed to demonstrate that people who receive income (of Euro 1000 per month for the modest duration of just one year) will still, even in the absence of any work incentive or “equivalence conditionality” attached, make an effort to perform useful activities – be it for sale in markets, be it as “free” services to communities.
Michael Bohmeyer, Mein Grundeinkommen
Contrary to BI schemes, there is no legal entitlement of citizens to the transfer, but a random selection of recipients from a pool of applicants. Also, the income granted is not tax financed, but “crowd funded”, i. e. derived from voluntary donations of supporters and, hopefully, charitable foundations. Furthermore, there still seems to be some soft test attached which is to provide evidence (to donors and potential future donors, that is) that recipients are in fact doing something “useful” and respectable while enjoying their “unconditional” benefits. Finally and unsurprisingly, the number of “basic incomes” thus generated is miniscule, with currently just five recipients being served in Berlin. All the greater is the favorable media resonance highlighting the two astounding (if not outright “scandalous”) facts that there are in fact people out there who donate money without thereby purchasing an equivalent, and that there are also people who receive that money without stopping to engage in some kind of useful activity. It is this demonstration effect that may work as a mild antidote to deep-seated market liberal popular assumptions.
For more information (in German), see Mein Grundeinkommen [My Basic Income] at: Mein-grundeinkommen.de.
by Craig Axford | Sep 8, 2014 | Research
Betty Wallace, a recipient of the monthly payments who still lives in the farmhouse where she lived in the 1970s, recalled Mincome’s major impact on some families. Benjamin Shingler
[Craig Axford]
Residents of Dauphin, Manitoba who benefited from Canada’s experiment with a basic income guarantee look back upon it fondly. Research conducted four decades after the so-called “Mincome” experiment found the project resulted in a significant decline in hospital visits without producing a reduction in labor market participation.
Benjamin Shingler, “Money for nothing: Mincome experiment could pay dividends 40 years on”, Aljazeera America, August 26, 2014
by Craig Axford | Jul 8, 2014 | Research
Maybe Detroit could use a little BIG (Image: The Huffington Post)
[Craig Axford]
The author of this blog suggests the City of Detroit should select around 1,000 individuals living within the same area, offer them $400 a month without any strings attached, improve basic services such as internet access, and then see what happens to their community.
Albert Wenger, “A Basic Income Experiment I would Like To See (Detroit)”, Continuations, June 24, 2014
