On 8 June 2003 you can participate in a Zoom webinar entitled “The Politics of Basic Income in South Africa: Perspectives, Strategies, and Realities” sponsored by BIEN and four other organizations.The webinar will begin at 17:00 SAST (GMT+2) and feature as Guest Speaker Neil Coleman, Co-Founder & Senior Policy Specialist at the Institute for Economic Justice in South Africa.
To register click here.
Guest Contributor: Jeffery J. Smith, co-founder of the US Green Party and author of the play
Thomas Paine—not Tom Paine as his detractors addressed him—added his voice to the chorus of prominent thinkers calling for an extra income for everyone sourced from ground rent. In the 18th century, Paine’s was a popular voice, inspiring revolt everywhere. His opponents dubbed his career “the Age of Paine”.
Leading reformers advanced “physiocracy” (nature’s rule). To them, it was obvious that the distribution of natural rent created class, decided one’s wealth vs one’s poverty, and conferred political power as consistently as a natural law. Physiocrats dominated debate in the three nations where Paine promoted justice.
In France, Quesnay and Turgot formulated “l’impot unique” (the single tax) on land. Mirabeau the Elder prophesied their discovery would be a “social advance equal to the inventions of writing and money.” (The equal of fire, too?) Voltaire’s character Candide declared, “The fruits of the earth are a common heritage of all, to which each man has equal right.” Rousseau added, “You are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to no one.” The first French Republic used land rent exclusively until the cost of war impelled them to tax commerce, too.
In Britain, Adam Smith wrote, “Ground rents seem a more proper subject of peculiar taxation.” William Blackstone judged “The earth, therefore, and all things therein, are the general property of all mankind.”
In America, two famous friends of Paine shared the same belief. Thomas Jefferson: “Everyone may have land to labor for himself may exact for it such compensation as not only to afford a comfortable subsistence, but wherewith to provide for a cessation from labor in old age.” Benjamin Franklin, bankrupted by his speculation in land (bailed out by friends), converted to physiocracy. Today, the US Social Security Administration recognizes Paine’s proposal as the precursor of the Social Security pension.
Paine’s Common Sense spurred the American colonies to rebel, his American Crisis kept them at it while the war went against them. For these achievements—plus Rights of Man, Age of Reason, and Agrarian Justice—the US Congress bestows the Thomas Paine Award upon authors of clear, inspiring political prose.
In our era, it’d not be books but other media that’d shift a popular paradigm, likely entertainment media. Recall how Gandhi helped the anti-nuclear weapons movement, what Malcolm X did for civil rights, what Milk did for gay marriage, etc. A movie about Paine could do the same for an extra income for all.
A step toward the silver screen is a new stage play, Tom Paine’s Bones, which unlike previous attempts, relates his exciting life—he faced death seven times—in order to reveal his humanitarian ethics as a way to convey his geonomic policies. That is, entertain to enlighten.
To bring the play to your town and enjoy a night at the theater, please get in touch. To help make its premiere in Portland Oregon a success, join the crowd funding campaign. Thanks for you consideration.
Basic income has become the subject of a lively and controversial debate in politics, civil society and academia. By questioning the fundamental assumptions of our social interaction, it challenges us to redefine the way we want to live together. At Basic Income and Development, this year’s FRIBIS’ annual conference, we will be taking a closer look at the relationship between basic income and development ideas and the potential they hold for the challenges of both the present and the future.
For decades globalization and neoliberal economic policies have driven social and ecological crises worldwide. The ongoing climate change has not only lead to environmental disasters, but is also causing social crises. The increasing social and economic inequality is resulting in social polarization and increasing support for populist parties. And, as more and more public goods and services have been privatized in favour of economic growth, the risks in the wake of the various global crises have become collective problems. At the same time standards for the management of natural resources and the natural living environment are lacking, as are norms and values for labour markets, health policy and crisis prevention. We also lack sustainable means and mechanisms to establish social, ecological and economic justice.
Given these challenges, we want to explore the extent to which basic income can help to overcome crises and create new perspectives. Could a basic income help us to use environmental resources more sustainably, preserve biodiverse habitats and make social communities more resilient? Would it help people in (post-)conflict regions to build or secure social peace? Or would it rather have the opposite effect, as some critics suggest? What are the potentials and risks of a basic income for development practices in the Global South, and how does this/do they relate to concepts of redistribution and justice? These and other questions will be addressed at this year’s FRIBIS annual conference.
Visit the conference website here.
Readers and BIEN members might be interested in a new book, IN THE BALANCE: The Case for a Universal Basic Income in South Africa and Beyond, which has just been published and is drawing good reviews.
It’s available from online retailers, New York University Press (for North America and Europe) and Witwatersrand University Press (for Africa). An open access PDF version can also be downloaded for free.
Here are a few excerpts from reviews:
“Hein Marais delivers a theoretically powerful, impressively documented, timely and urgent case for radical wealth redistribution …. Crucially, the book supports a basic income not as a policy fix, but as a far-reaching political and imaginative response to the steady collapse of a wage-centered social order. This is a book destined to have lasting influence.”
—Franco Barchiesi, Ohio State University; author of Precarious Liberation: Workers, the State, and Contested Social Citizenship in Post-apartheid South Africa
“If you have been searching for a way to clearly understand the concept of a Universal Basic Income (UBI), then this is the book that you have been waiting for.”
— Awande Buthelezi, coordinator for the #UBIGNOW Campaign and activist with the Climate Justice Charter Movement
“This book is a major contribution to our understanding of the possibility for policies to achieve more equitable levels of well-being in the contemporary political economy of South Africa and the world.”
– Peter B. Evans, Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
And here is a short description:
“As jobs disappear, wages flat line and inequality grows, this timeous book presents a
compelling analysis of the need, conditions and possibilities for a universal basic income (UBI) in South Africa and globally.
Paid work is an increasingly fragile and unattainable basis for dignified life. This
predicament, deepened by the COVID-19 pandemic, is sparking urgent debates
about alternatives such as a universal basic income (UBI). Highly topical and
distinctive in its approach, In the Balance: The Case for a Universal Basic Income in
South Africa and Beyond is the most rounded and up-to-date examination yet of the
need and prospects for a UBI in a global South setting such as South Africa.
Hein Marais casts the debate about a UBI in the wider context of the dispossessing
pressures of capitalism and the onrushing turmoil of global warming, pandemics and
social upheaval. Marais surveys the meaning, history and appeal of a UBI before even
handedly weighing the case for and against such an intervention.
The book explores the vexing questions a UBI raises about the relationship of paid
work to social rights, about prevailing notions of entitlement and dependency, and the
role of the state in contemporary capitalism. Along with cost estimates for different
versions of a basic income in South Africa, it discusses financing options and lays out the social, economic and political implications. This incisive new book advances both our theoretical and practical understanding of the prospects for a UBI.”
In a few short weeks, June 23-25, the biggest annual North American event for basic income will be taking place: the 20th Annual Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) Conference! Click for access to registration, the full program and more information. June 23 and 24 sessions will be live in Portland, Oregon and the June 25 (Saturday) sessions will be virtual.
Whether you’re someone working in the economic justice space who wants to deepen their understanding of basic income policy or a grassroots advocate who is just starting to learn about basic income, this is an amazing opportunity to get plugged into the community and benefit from the knowledge of the past year’s incredible strides for direct cash.