This is the preliminary program for the North American Basic Income Guarantee (NABIG) Congress, which will happen at the Michael DeGroote Center for Learning and Discovery, in the McMaster University, city of Hamilton, in Ontario, Canada. Registrations can still be made here. The venue will take place from the 24th of May (at 6:30 pm) onto 11:30 am on Sunday the 27th.
The program highlights “conversation among national public champions”, including Canadian Senator Art Eggleton; Canadian Member of Parliament Guy Caron; famed Manitoba Mincome researcher and population health expert, Dr. Evelyn Forget; Basic Income Canada Network (BICN) Chairperson, Sheila Regehr; and potentially also U.S. entrepreneur and 2020 presidential candidate, Andrew Yang (running on a basic income-anchored platform).
Other highlights include the Friday night’s premiere screening of a new and original documentary film on the famous Manitoba Mincome experiment in Dauphin, Manitoba, in the 1970s, followed by discussion with the American filmmakers and Mincome’s executive director, Ron Hikel.
There will be plenary speakers from Canada, the U.S., Mexico, Belgium, and Portugal. Over 30 other presentations and workshops addressing either of the Congress’s two main themes: (1) the converging paths leading to basic income (e.g., health, human rights, automation, sustainability, democracy, etc.); and (2) making basic income a reality, through pilots, policy, and public support.
“There will always be hope”. Picture credit: Alex Gi.
On the 11th and 12th of October 2018, the University of Freiburg, in Germany, holds an interdisciplinary Conference titled “Basic Income and the Euro-Dividend as Sociopolitical Pillars of the EU and its Member Countries”. It will be organized by the Department of Economic Policy and Constitutional Economic Theory and the aim is to gather relevant leading researchers and thinkers in Europe to discuss an EU wide approach of a basic income.
In Europe, the public debate about a universal basic income (UBI) is usually a national one. In recent years a European version of a UBI has attracted more and more attention – primarily pushed by the suggestion of Philippe Van Parijs titled a “Euro-Dividend”. This conference aims to shed some light at pros and cons of a EU wide UBI regulation and its relation to national approaches from an interdisciplinary perspective. Both UBI approaches shall be analyzed and discussed with respect to justice, economic and migration effects, legal aspects, creation of solidarity in the EU, and political viability. On the first day, the conference will address general issues about UBI, while the schedule of the second day contains EU-related concepts just like the Euro-Dividend.
Papers are invited from areas such as Philosophy, Sociology, Political Science, Law, and Economics and even Technical Sciences addressing one or more of the following topics:
o UBI and arguments of freedom, solidarity, social and gender justice
o Changing time allocation and shifting time sovereignty, voluntarism and creativity
o Legal aspects of UBI
o Experiments and microsimulations on UBI’s level and impact
o UBI in the digital age / Robots, AI, Labor, and the Welfare State
o The European Pillar of Social Rights, UBI, and Euro-Dividend: Creating European
Solidarity
o Financial feasibility of a UBI and financing concepts of a Euro-Dividend
o EU labor market effects and migration (on international level and within the EU)
More information at:
The “Basic Income and the Euro-Dividend as Sociopolitical Pillars of the EU and its Member Countries” Conference website
A new video has been released by Geoff Crocker, on a “radical concept of funding basic income by perpetual deficit”. This video is a result of a presentation done at the Asia Pacific UBI Conference, which was held of the latest 17th and 18th of March 2018.
In this short video, Geoff Crocker generally reviews the most typical arguments for and against basic income, focusing on the financing issues. Particularly, he conceives a thought experiment where all economic goods and services are produced by machines. The question then arises: how to distribute these among the population? Crocker’s conclusions, from this onset, are that basic income becomes “essential to maintain consumer demand”, and that “financial deficit is inevitable”. This, apparently, derives directly from the fact that modern economies operate at a permanent deficit and that “unearned income [is] necessary in high tech economies”.
Geoff Crocker’s ideas had already been mentioned on Basic Income News, in a paper he called “The economic necessity of basic income”.
The Italian branch of the Basic Income Network (BIN Italia) has written a plea about Guaranteed Minimum Income to the newly elected Parliament, still struggling to form a government.
Plea to the Italian Parliament (full text)
“May the Parliament listen to our society.
Guaranteed Minimum Income is something we can’t do without any longer.
Something that until a few years ago was confined to the scope of utopias and eccentricities of some activists, the guaranteed minimum income is now one of the main themes of the 2018 political and electoral debate. The material condition of millions of people, the economic difficulties of evergrowing population groups, the weight endured by generations of occasional workers and temporary employees, have drawn attention to the necessity for reform toward this direction.
Italy’s delay on this issue is now intolerable. It would seem reasonable to begin with prompts such as the 2017 european resolution that exhorted the member states to adopt a guaranteed minimum income policy, as defined in the 20 principles and rights of the European Social Pillar released on November 2017, in Göteborg, with the joint declaration by the European Union (EU) organs.
Among the 29 points of the European Social Pillar, is number 14: the right to an «adequate minimum income». The EU has been asking Italy for years to conform to supranational parameters on this matter, and so did recently the Council of Europe, denouncing the persisting lack of effective policies against social exclusion (in contravention of the European Social Charter article 30). Despite all this, the adoption of a guaranteed minimum income policy in our country seems far away.
Over the last years, propositions and calls have also come from large portions of society, campaigns and public initiatives. These have examined and integrated/absorbed the experiences of other european countries, the international debate and the experiments currently underway in many countries in the world.
From all these experiments, it’s clear that a guaranteed minimum income is much more than a benevolent bestowal. It’s an instrument to acknowledge and value personal histories, skills, abilities and aspirations, in the pursuit of a free and decent life.
We ask the Italian Parliament to take on the responsibility to begin, as soon as possible, a debate about the introduction of a guaranteed minimum income in Italy. At this point, and even more now, after the latest elections, this issue cannot be neglected. Millions have voted also to see this proposal put into practice.
We are aware that different approaches exist and that some of the political parties have already made their proposals official. But these differences can be overcome in a debate free of preconceived divergences, and a legislative process ought to be set in motion in this direction.
In order to have debate as wide and universal as possible, we believe it can be useful to begin with the draft law proposed by a citizens’ initiative. That proposition, written in 2013 and supported by a large coalition in civil society, was never examined by the Parliament. Also useful can be the 10 points of the Platform for a Guaranteed Minimum Income, drawn up by the Rete dei Numeri Pari.
These proposals can of course be improved, but we are certain that Italy can’t do without a Guaranteed Minimum Income any longer. Let’s begin with a Guaranteed Minimum Income as a first step toward a tangible universal welfare.”
The board of the Basic Income Network Italia – (BIN Italia)
Sarath Davala is an independent sociologist who, along with Guy Standing, was the architect of a series of UNICEF-backed basic income pilots in Madhya Pradesh, central India. Inspired by the findings of that study, he became the co-founder and coordinator of the India Network for Basic Income.
The Basic Income Asia Pacific 2018 conference held in Taipei this March featured a host of speakers from around the world, including Davala. I got to sit down with Davala at National Taiwan University to talk about his research and the applicability of basic income to Asia. The following transcribed interview has been lightly edited.
Please talk about your research in India, and how it has led to your support for UBI as policy.
Between 2011 and 2013, a women’s trade union called the Self Employed Women’s Association conducted an experiment in Madhya Pradesh. I was heading that research project and Guy Standing was supporting as the main principal researcher. Now that study where we gave unconditional basic income to 6,000 people living in nine villages came out with findings which were startling and surprising. Because at the time people believed – the government said, the bureaucrats always said, and everyone in the middle-class believed – that if you give money to people without any conditions, they will not use it for good purposes but bad purposes, like drinking alcohol and other things. But we found that many positive things have happened in all these villages. Particularly, the most vulnerable in society benefited the most.
That gave us the conviction that UBI is a very good policy. It need not replace everything (to say that only UBI should be there), but when you are designing or redesigning your welfare basket for your nation, you must have this as the foundation, where everybody gets a certain basic amount of money, and on that they build a life. UBI can be a foundation on which the market or the government, can actually build your life. So that is how research comes into policy.
Could you talk about the process in which you made the Madhya Pradesh basic income pilots a reality? How did you gain the support of local government?
We didn’t ask the local government for money, that’s the important thing. We asked a variety of people, but finally UNICEF agreed to give us the money. It was not a small amount of money, almost a million US dollars. That was required because we were giving cash to people.
Everyone is in process of searching for alternatives, even the government, because the existing system is not delivering the welfare properly, effectively. So we said [to the government], “here’s an alternative, please join us, listen to us, once every three months we will come talk to you.” So that, when we finally come out with the findings, the government said “Oh yeah, we know these guys, they’ve been doing this work.”
So that was one reason, we followed up with policymakers. But at the same time, the other reason was we needed local support. Because if you go to a village and say you want to distribute cash, the local politicians and media will be a problem. So we had the friendship of the government, the trade union which was working in the area, and international experts like Guy Standing. With this kind of combination, we have been able to roll out a study.
Did you encounter any challenges in implementing the basic income experiment on the ground?
A variety of challenges. Even in 2010, when somebody told me they have a project like this, asking “would you like to head this project?” I said “What? Giving money to people? Without any conditions? I always suspected you were mad but now it’s confirmed.” I thought it was crazy.
Similarly when you go to the villages, and say “we want to give cash to everybody for one year.” They say, “what kind of crazy fellow you are!” There’s a lot of disbelief, but also lots of suspicion, that “you guys have something else in your mind and you are going to cheat us, you are taking our consent signatures, maybe you will use our signatures to grab our lands.” People were suspicious about our motives. But then it took us a long time to bring everybody inside. There were 10 percent of the people who rejected the process. But then, women from those rich households said, “no, no. We want to be part of it. You are conducting training programmes and opening bank accounts. We don’t have bank accounts.” So they were interested.
In your presentation earlier, you talked about how it’s important to consider Asia’s local context. You have also worked with Guy Standing, who coined the term, an emerging socioeconomic class, the “precariat.” Do you think the concept of “precariat” is applicable to the situation in developing countries, or is the “precariat” more particular to developed societies?
No, no no. The precariat is everywhere. The percentage will change [depending on the economy], but the percentage is increasing. In fact, earlier the precariat was at the bottom, but even if you go to the high end jobs, you realise that the contracts are very fragile. Today you are there, tomorrow you can be given a pink slip: “okay, you are no longer needed.” Of course, the precariat is there in developing countries, but also every other country.
You want to deny that there’s a precariat, it’s up to you. But if you want to see, there is precariat. Who is the precariat? Precariat is that class of people whose basis of livelihood is very precarious. Today it is there, tomorrow it is not. And they can turn anywhere. That’s why Guy Standing says it is the most dangerous class. They can turn into anything, into crime, into drugs.
Speaking of the Asian context, would you say Asia is particularly vulnerable to the coming wave of automation?
Which economies are more vulnerable to automation and which are not? Within India, automation will affect maybe small section of the industrial manufacturing sector and the software industry. But because of the surplus cheap labour available in India, most of the entrepreneurs will bank on cheap labour.
So for India, I do not see the threat of automation, but it is possible in Taiwan. You are going to have your first automated 7-11? If that is profitable, more and more Family Marts, KFCs, McDonalds may switch their outlets. At the end of the day, an entrepreneur is looking at costs. And human beings are so difficult to manage, every entrepreneur will say. I taught human resources courses in a business management school for seven years. Every businessman is trying to get rid of them.
In your presentation, you talked about how the Indian government has been reducing the welfare state and pushing responsibility to the family and the market. In this context, do you think UBI is a way for governments to reject its responsibility as the welfare state to provide more social services?
Absolutely. Every government in the world is under pressure now. They are under pressure in order to pursue economic growth. They think if economic growth is there, everything will be alright. Under those pressures, they want foreign investment to come in, they want multinationals to establish units in their countries. So they want economic activity in their country, so they’re doing a variety of things with other nations, particularly the richer ones. They’re under tremendous pressure.
When those pressures are there, governments are trying to reduce their responsibility to the people. It’s our job as civil society that we have to keep reminding government that “this is your minimum responsibility. If not in that way, then you should do it this way.” We are saying that, in the welfare basket, UBI is a foundation, the primary thing. On top of it, we can put additional various other things. So that should be the new design. We are making a new design of the welfare basket, trying to propose to the government “in all circumstances you must do this. Don’t throw us into the market, and don’t throw us into the family,” because everyone in the family is in a precarious position. We have to force the government to implement basic income, because that gives basic security to everyone.
Any other comments?
I think there is great promise in the group steering the UBI Taiwan movement. I wish everyone in UBI Taiwan great success. To all the readers, please join and strengthen the movement, because we are definitely making history.
