Social Justice Ireland examines the fairness of seven different options for tax changes in their new publication released on Wednesday 4th of October. The new Irish Budget will be announced next Tuesday, 10th October, and the Social Justice Ireland analysis shows that much of what is being proposed is unfair and unjust. Fairer options are identified in the publication referred.
On the 11th of October, a Budget Analysis Seminar will take place, over which Social Justice Ireland will present a full Budget 2018 Analysis and Response, at 11am in Buswells Hotel. The seminar briefing will get behind the numbers and examine the impact of the choices Government makes in a variety of areas including taxation, social welfare, health, ODA and education. The analysis will identify who gains and who loses as a result of Budget 2018. There will also be an opportunity for questions and discussion. The event is free but pre-registrations are compulsory (registers here).
The 17th BIEN Congress took place in Lisbon, Portugal from the 25th to the 27th of September. The focus of the congress was on “Implementing Basic Income.” The 150 presenters represented 33 countries, with more countries represented in the additional 380 audience members. According to Karl Widerquist, Vice-Chair of BIEN, this may have been the largest BIEN Congress since Brazil in 2010. The Congress included keynote presentations by BIEN co-founders Guy Standing and Philippe Van Parijs, in addition to keynote presentations about several Basic Income pilot programs, reflecting the congress’s focus on implementation, and from several political figures who are advocating for Basic Income in their respective countries.
The first day of the congress took place at the Portuguese Parliament (Assembleia da República), and as Standing said: “I am sure I speak for many of the co-founders, and many of them are here, that when we set up BIEN 31 years ago we never anticipated that we would be in a place like this in 2017.” The second and third days were held at ISEG, Lisbon School of Economics and Management, a beautiful venue that used to be a convent (Convento das Inglesinhas, restored by architect Gonçalo Byrne) that has kept many of its original architectural features and now hosts the university’s post-graduate programs.
Starting the keynote session on Basic Income pilot programs, Evelyn Forget’s presentation was about the differences between the narratives attached to several Basic Income experiments. She underlined that different narratives will create different criteria of success. For example, Finland’s narrative is about long-term unemployment and incentivising return to work. In this case, the experiment will be successful if people return to work. Ontario’s narrative is about social justice and a gap in benefits for adults because of the new reality of precarious work and poverty issues. Their goal is to expand the welfare state. Silicon Valley’s Y Combinator’s narrative started out as an utopia put forward by private individuals who wondered what would happen once automation freed people to do what they want. Forget stressed that “context matters” in pilot programs, and she suggested that when we bring together all these shared experiences, we can create newer and richer narratives.
After Forget’s insights, there were several presentations about specific pilot programs being developed. Karen Glass, from the experiment in Ontario, Canada, described the pilot program as a type of Negative Income Tax program, since the payments decrease as the recipients start working. The Ontario project applies to households and encompasses individuals aged 18 through 64, who have been residents of the region for one year. The pilot provides a guaranteed annual income of $17,000 dollars per individual and $24,000 per couple, which is 75% of the low income measure. The success criteria are not focused primarily on work incentives, but on recipients’ improved health, reduction in anxiety and the ability to make ends meet. Elizabeth Rhodes from Y Combinator, a seed investment company, talked about the contours of what this private experiment wants to achieve. Y Combinator has already financed a feasibility study in Oakland. and now plans to select 3000 participants who will receive 1000 dollars per month, some for three years and others for five. There is an income cap in the selection and they will be undersampling higher incomes. Presently the program is considering selecting subjects 21 to 40 years in age. The pilot intends to evaluate well being, mental and physical health, social and civic engagement and social networks effects as well as effects in the children of the participants. The research team has been piloting and testing their methods with a smaller group of participants.
Joe Huston spoke about the experience of GiveDirectly in Kenya. GiveDirectly has raised funds privately and has been distributing them to around 100 people, but once the project is fully launched there will be up to 26,000 people receiving some type of cash transfer. The pilot is divided into three groups, one group will receive a monthly payment for 12 years, another for 2 years and yet another will receive a one time cash grant of the same amount. The 100 people who are receiving a monthly Basic Income already have reported on their experiences, and, as Huston says,many have reported they did not reduce their work efforts; instead, many have several projects that need to be completed (such as paying for school and building a house), so they need to work. Others have pulled their Basic Income payments together in something called “table banking” and give a larger sum to each member at a time so that more can be achieved. Giving to individuals as opposed to households has had the emancipatory effects that are often theorized: because each person receives an equal amount of money, it is easier to solve household disputes. Regarding how the money is spent, Huston says that Basic Income debates seem to oscillate between saying that people will become lazy bums or startup engineers; however, both extremes are inaccurate and do not apply to what is happening in the village so far. Huston explains that when walking from house to house in Kenya one can see a diversity of life choices: “Irene spent some in purchasing a goat for about $12 and kept some of the money as savings. Eric spent most of his money in a fishing net, saved some of the money and bought small fish like anchovies for a snack. Frederick spent most of the money in school fees.” So far, each person used the money as is more adequate in their particular circumstances.
On the political arena there were several important participants. From Germany, Cosima Kern spoke about the new Basic Income single issue party, and explained that since Germany has no direct democracy (in contrast to Switzerland) this is a way to force Basic Income into the political arena. The Basic Income party had almost 100,000 votes in the election that took place on day before the Congress, which Kern said is a good result for a new party. Enno Schmidt talked about the referendum in Switzerland and also underlined that the 23% vote for Basic Income was a great first result, reminding everyone how it took 17 years of discussion in Switzerland for women to have the right to vote. Lena Stark spoke about the new political party in Sweden in the same vein as the German party; they plan to run for elections in September 2018. Ping Xu presented the situation in Taiwan with the help of Tyler Prochazka. Taiwan has the highest housing costs and the lowest birth rates, and would be an ideal site for a full implementation of Basic Income. From Japan, the ex-Minister of Agriculture, Masahiko Yamada, spoke about the importance of Basic Income in his country, which is facing new economic challenges that urgently need to be addressed.
Finally, the Scottish MP Ronnie Cowan inspired the audience with his privileged viewpoint regarding how politicians tend to operate and the heartfelt way that Scotland is pursuing their Basic Income pilot programs. Mr. Cowan said that politicians rely on experts, but experts and academic often disagree, and politicians need facts and figures, which is why experiments are so important. With pilot schemes, we can monitor outcomes; they can be used to tell if “people are happier, more socially engaged, eating healthier, if kids are doing better at school, we can measure the benefits against the cost.” Mr. Cowan concluded: “Basic Income really comes alive for me when we consider it’s for everyone. It is not means tested. It is not subject to the disability test. It removes stigma. It creates choice and it’s absolutely dripping in humanity.”
The two main keynote speakers, Guy Standing and Philippe Van Parijs, also captured the audience’s interest with their presentations. Standing celebrated the 800 year anniversary of The Charter of the Forest, a piece of legislation that was valid for 754 years, only repealed in 1971. Standing argued that the commons defended in The Charter of The Forest have been plundered upon for hundreds of years, and Basic Income is a way to bring back the commons. He defended the position that Basic Income should be seen as a social dividend based in the commons and land tax, not something that will send income tax through the roof. Van Parijs spoke of the right to work and the duty to work. He argued that even though many see Basic Income as an attack on these, it actually facilitates both. Basic Income can organically encourage part-time work and therefore job sharing, thus promoting the right to work. Basic Income can also allow for the duty to work to be expressed in a meaningful way that includes paid and unpaid jobs. According to Van Parijs, the duty to work cannot mean simply doing something for a salary; it should be viewed more widely as a duty to participate in society in a meaningful way. Basic Income can liberate people to participate in such a way by either allowing them to chose paid work that is more meaningful, or by choosing other unpaid useful work. If we eliminate the idea that people have to work in whatever they can to survive, the morality of what one chooses to do will come to the forefront, allowing the duty to work in a more meaningful way to become center stage as far as human activity is concerned.
The keynote presentations wrapped up with Eduardo Suplicy from Brazil, ex-Senator and long time defender of Basic Income, and Francisco Louçã, member of the left wing party Bloco de Esquerda in Portugal. There were also many other local Portuguese participants, as well as a slew of media attention related to the congress (which will be discussed in a future Basic Income Newspiece). The congress also included 37 parallel sessions, among others, Malcolm Torry’s presentation on Defining Basic Income, sessions on Degrowth, Digital Economy, Communicating about Basic Income, and many other topics, as well as two films, Christian Todd’sFree Lunch Society and Rena Masuyama’s Film Project, the first fiction film about Basic Income produced in Japan. Summaries of all the sessions provided by the chairs should be available in about one month at the Portuguese Basic Income Site, for now there are papers and presentations and videos of the event available of the site.
Introduction
Because of the publication of Thomas Straubhaar’s latest book Radikal gerecht – Wie das bedingungslose Grundeinkommen den Sozialstaat revolutioniert (Radically just – How Universal Basic Income Can Revolutionize the Welfare State) in February 2017 by the Körber Foundation, several articles in the German media appeared reflecting on the ideas outlined in the book. This gives me the opportunity to share with Basic Income News readers some of professor Straubhaar’s main ideas about Germany’s current social system, the modern challenges that in his view might jeopardize the old social fabric and his proposed response: a radical tax reform consisting of both the introduction of an unconditional basic income and a fifty percent tax rate on all value creation. The articles that I have used most, translated, summarized and from which I cite, are written down in the first footnote[1], see below at the end of the piece.
But first, I like to present two professionals whose stories will illustrate with what problems average Germans may have to deal with in today’s daily life under the current social welfare system. After that, I will depict the historic development of Germany’s social insurance system by introducing the social politics of its two founders.
Background: Germany worries that current social system shows more and more cracks
Baukje Dobberstein is a family doctor and psychotherapist in Hanover, Germany. Everyday she is confronted with the negative consequences of poor working conditions and the social security system in her country. She says: “Our work and social system makes people sick. Not only those who have lost their jobs, but also those who have accepted sickening work conditions, because they are afraid of a repressive social insurance system. Many of us experience stress. They fear existence insecurity, are afraid of terror, of strangers, of change,” and she adds, “Stress in itself is not a disease, but too much stress can make a person ill.” That is why she fights for her dream: an unconditional basic income.
Mayor Werner Wölfle (The Greens) also expressed his concerns. In an interview with the Stuttgarter Nachrichten, a local newspaper, he said, “Yes, also in this rich city, the capital of the German state of Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart, more than 60.000 or over ten percent of all inhabitants depends on some form of social benefits.” The most vulnerable groups to poverty are women, singles and (older) migrants. Old-age poverty is on the rise too.[2] These figures have increased steadily. In 2004, 2787 low-income earners over age 65 received additional social assistance (or Grundsicherung im Alter), which counted for nearly three percent in this age group. In 2013, it was 4536, which is already more than four percent. For the future, Wölfle fears significantly higher levels. Elderly people with broken employment biographies, long part-time working periods, low-income earners and the effects of the Hartz IV regulation reforms, that is the downsizing of employment conditions, will become much more apparent in the coming years.
The historical context of the social insurance system in Germany
This country’s social policy, largely based on work, is showing serious cracks, warns Professor Straubhaar. It was Otto von Bismarck, the first chancellor of the united German states, who created the world’s oldest welfare state in the 1880s. His main goal was to gain working class support that might otherwise go to his socialist enemies. Bismarck worked closely with the large industrial sector and aimed to stimulate economic growth by giving workers greater security. In 1884 he declared
The real grievance of the worker is the insecurity of his existence; he is not sure that he will always have work, he is not sure that he will always be healthy, and he foresees that he will one day be old and unfit to work. If he falls into poverty, even if only through a prolonged illness, he is then completely helpless, left to his own devices, and society does not currently recognize any real obligation towards him beyond the usual help for the poor, even if he has been working all the time ever so faithfully and diligently. The usual help for the poor, however, leaves a lot to be desired, especially in large cities, where it is very much worse than in the country.
In the next years Bismarck implemented his social legislation: sickness, accident, old age and disability insurance, in that order, although he believed that welfare programs “with too much socialist aspects” would force workers and employers to reduce work and production and thus would harm the economy. The introduction of these laws, and the accompanying social benefits helped to reduce the emigration of young Germans to the United States.
Germany’s social system was further developed during its ‘Wirtschafstwunder’ (economic miracle), the post World War II period of rapid industrial growth and low inflation. Ludwig Erhard, Minister of Economic Affairs in Adenauer’s Cabinet, was the architect of these glorious economic days. He was able to combine market forces with a well functioning system of social security benefits in order to achieve “Prosperity for All”. The system is financed by contributions paid by employers and employees, each contributing for fifty percent. As a consequence, coverage is mostly confined to the formal workforce consisting mainly of workers depending on wages.
Modern challenges: globalization, digitization and individualization
“It is a time that no longer exists,” says Thomas Straubhaar, “Recent phenomena like globalization, digitization and individualization have made an anachronism of this social policy.” He continues: “A social security system, which is unilaterally based on contributions from wage income, stems from the time of industrialization and the unbroken lifelong work careers, when the salary of the husband was the most important source of a family income. Individualization has questioned the traditional role models and the solidarity within families. Digitization will lead to vending machines and robots will displace people from production. Not only standardized simple work on the assembly line, supermarket checkout or office will disappear. Even in more qualified areas of activity, such as locomotive drivers, insurance brokers or accountants, employees will become increasingly superfluous. He cites forecasts, according to which digitization could lead to the withdrawal of almost 50 percent of all jobs in the long term. Nonetheless, he welcomes the new mega trends, which will change everyday life, social relationships and the working world at a rapid pace, fundamentally and in every respect. “But”, he stresses, “Only as long as all people benefit”.
Professor Straubhaar considers digitization as a blessing, where people had previously to perform hazardous, dirty or risky jobs – for instance, in civil engineering, roofing and tunnels, slaughterhouses and laboratories, as well as control and watch services. In the future, he foresees construction robots that will drag bricks and windows, industrial robots that will use new construction and reusable materials. Intelligent machines and self-controlled cameras will control and react, and three-dimensional police robots will ensure internal security. According to him, everything that is possible must be done so that people can be physically and mentally healthy and unharmed during work and not become ill, burned-out or even permanently damaged. “People are economically too valuable to make them do dangerous, risky or damaging work, and then drag them through the welfare state over decades, some of them until they die,” he says, “This is a privatization of labor income and a socialization of the follow-up costs. And this can not be economically efficient.”
In the age of digitization and automation, robots and artificial intelligence, it is uninspired to maintain a system of exploitation, that forces people to do work that nobody wants to do. It is more appropriate to let robots, computers and machines do the dangerous, dirty, harmful and unworthy jobs for us and to train people in the freed up time for better and less strenuous work. We need a system that is able to ensure the participation of all, that can provide equality of opportunity for all, writes Straubhaar in his recent published book Radikal gerecht.
“Furthermore”, he told the reporter of Technology Review, “Life expectancy has risen sharply, which means that the start of a pension in the middle of 60 can hardly be financed in the long term. During the introduction of Bismarck’s pension insurance in 1889, the life expectancy for men was 36 years and for women 39 years, today it is 78 years for men and 83 years for women.”
A radical response: introduction of an unconditional basic income
No wonder that against this background the old idea of a basic income is being given new support all over the world. This is especially true for Germany, where a representative survey found early this year, that a majority of 75 percent is in favor of the introduction of an unconditional basic income.
This summer, during an Economic Forum of the CDU (Christian Democratic Union of Germany), Straubhaar advocated a radical reorganization of the welfare state by implementing a universal basic income. “Our current system cannot be reformed. This is the only way to achieve prosperity for all again”.
In Straubhaar’s view, the introduction of a basic income is nothing less than a radical tax reform. “Money for all means an income at the level of the subsistence minimum from the state without compensation such as an obligation to accept jobs or putting someone through activating measures. It is a fundamental change of perspective, from what previously has gone wrong. No more financing over taxes from work income, no more working worlds, family pictures and life-cycles, which no longer exist and do not correspond to daily life in the future. Towards a guaranteed participation and an empowerment of all. No other model takes into account both the effects of digitization and of individualization. In the social state of the 21st century, interrupted careers due to alternate periods of retraining, part time work, job change, informal care, volunteerism and so on, will be the new normal.”
How will Germany pay for a basic income?
“The future requires a ‘blind’ social state”, writes Thomas Straubhaar in Welt und N24. “Social schemes must treat all income equally, which means wages, interest, distributed profits, dividends, royalties, rental income, transaction and speculative gains, and should implement the same tax rate upon them, rather than preferring or discriminating against the other. Whether humans, robots or machines are at work, there are many good reasons, to tax every form of value creation at the source of their origins with a uniform tax rate for the financing of state tasks. All types of income should be charged with the same tax rate.”
The tax reform of the future will bundle all social policy measures into one single instrument, the unconditionally paid basic income. The concrete elaboration – that is to say the politically determined level of the subsistence minimum, which corresponds to the amount of the basic income – should provide sufficient scope for specific adaptations to new challenges in the future which are still unknown.
According to Straubhaar, the funding of an unconditional basic income follows a simple logic. It puts an end to all social insurance and social benefit payments financed by taxes and charges from the income of work. Instead, it consolidates as an universal payment all personal financial transfers and follows the concept of a negative income tax. This means that all Germans will receive money from the state, which corresponds to an outflow from the state’s perspective and thus the opposite of a tax inflow. If the whole welfare state should be replaced by an unconditional basic income, writes Straubhaar, this would suffice to pay everybody a monthly basic income of 925 euros.
More justice in society
As a result, according to Straubhaar, this fundamental tax reform will lead to more justice and efficiency to society and will create more support, security and freedom for the individual. People will be “relieved of the worries of economic survival”. With a guaranteed basic income, “it will not be economically necessary to force all people into labor for an ever-longer life”.
The basic income will guarantee a minimum subsistence level for all, from the infant to the old, for women and men, from the cradle to the grave through a financial payment by the state. No more, no less. If someone desires more than his or her basic income, this person can simply generate additional income. A smaller number of workers will have the chance to earn more than before due to productivity gains achieved through intelligent machines. However, all who earn income, will pay income taxes – at the source, from the first euro – in accordance with this principle: Whoever earns more, pays more taxes than those who earn less, emphasizes Thomas Straubhaar. At the end of the day, it will turn out that the majority of the population still pays positive taxes from the perspective of the state, so that in order to get a balance at the state’s level, the paid basic incomes are compensated by the tax revenues.
It is important, stresses Straubhaar once more, that the German government will tax capital income just as much as working income. This also applies to the profits, generated by robots. As soon as they are distributed to the owners of the robots, that is to say the shareholders, the same tax rate as for wages is applied to the source.
In Berlin, I saw a vivid culture around bottles: people drink beer or another (alcoholic) drink from a bottle and leave it behind for people whose job it has become to collect these empty bottles in order to cash the deposit money.
In an interview with Brand Eins, Straubhaar goes into more detail. When asked, who will pay for this unconditional basic income, he answered: “We all do by means of a taxation on value creation. When a company pays out money to one of the production factors, either to labor in the form of wages or to capital, as dividend or profits, a tax becomes due, and in both cases the same tax rate will be applied. If the profit remains in the company, thus continues to be part of the production process, no tax is payable. Only when money flows from the process to people – and not to legal entities – this money will be taxed.”
According to Straubhaar, there is nowadays in Germany a net added value of about 2,5 trillion euros and government expenditures at the federal level, at the state’s level, at municipalities and social insurance funds of a total of around 1,3 trillion euros per year. With a value-added tax of 50 percent, we would therefore come to an equilibrium, only taxes will be borne equally by labor and capital. The state does not need extra money to finance a basic income. In 2015 the social budget stood at 888 billion euros. This amount of money is enough to pay every German a monthly basic income of about 1000 euros. At present, we already pay nearly 50 percent for deductions when you sum up taxes and social security contributions in this country. It is only higher from a work income of 240,000 euros. According to statistics, this is not even one percent of the taxpayers. In the future welfare state, you don’t need to pay anymore for social insurances, because you have your basic income, you only pay for your health insurance. Everyone contributes financially to the basic income: self-employed persons, freelancers, civil servants, public representatives and the recipients of capital gains.
Asked if such a major change is politically feasible, professor Straubhaar answers: “If you really want to introduce big changes, you need a large group of winners who also recognize their advantages and are willing to fight for it. This is why both sides are of equal importance for the acceptance of a basic income: the expenditure side, that is, the securing of a subsistence minimum – and the income side, that is the taxation of value creation.”
What does it mean a tax rate of 50 percent?
Thomas Straubhaar continues enthusiastically by giving some examples to the interviewers of Brand Eins. Supposing a professor with an annual salary of 120,000 euros, from which she – like all others – must pay 50 percent for taxes. At the same time, like all the others, she receives a basic income of 12,000 euros, which means she pays a net tax of 48,000 euros, equivalent to a rate of 40%. She only has to buy her health insurance, there are no further social expenses. The financial picture of a branch manager with 60,000 euros per year looks as follows: 30,000 euros for taxes plus 12,000 euros of his basic income results in a net tax of 18,000 euros or 30%. At Grundeinkommensrechner.de everyone can calculate what such a basic income means for him or her. Regarding low-wage earners, for instance a cleaning aid, who earns 24,000 euros a year, in this tax system he or she has to pay 12,000, and at the same time he or she receives 12,000 euros as basic income. The net tax rate is therefore zero, and this person also only has to insure his or her health.
Straubhaar goes on: “Anyone who today receives unemployment benefits (Arbeitslosengeld II or Hartz-IV) and who earns something, has a marginal tax rate of 80 to 90 percent, because with each earned euro the social benefit payments diminish. With this proposal, this person will only pay the obligatory 50 percent. He also does not have to consume his entire fortune before he receives any payment, he does not have to justify himself and is not harassed anymore by anyone. And with this proposal, a policy instrument that bundles both a guaranteed basic income and the added value tax, it is not necessary to fix a general retirement age, which is anachronistic in a digital society: everyone works as long as he or she wants, and deducts 50 percent of the earnings.”
Some problems might occur from Straubhaar’s model In her column at Piqd, entitled The welfare state of the future is called ‘basic income’, Antje Schrupp emphasizes the importance of a discussion about the future of the welfare state and the place of a basic income therein. That said, she also has doubts about the model of a basic income, as described by Thomas Straubhaar, in his interview with Brand Eins.
The model is a good basis, she writes, but she foresees problems in the elaboration. For example, in Germany one cannot get around with 1000 euros per month of which also the health insurance has to be paid. This is especially true for the chronically ill and elderly, who cannot afford 1000 euros per month for both their health care costs and costs of living. Furthermore, medical and nursing care of the sick and aging adults is too valuable to leave it to the nonprofessional hands of family and friends.
Meanwhile, Dr. Dobberstein, who is also a blogger and activist for an unconditional basic income, has become a candidate for Lower Saxony in the newly formed political party Bündnis Grundeinkommen (Basic Income League), that will take part in the Bundestag (federal) elections next September 24 (2017).[3]
Thanks to Kate McFarland and Dave Clegg for reviewing this article. Credit Photos: Wikimedia Commons (Hamburg), Wikipedia, Körber Foundation, Florie Barnhoorn (Berlijn).
2. The website Altersarmut – Armut im Alter has asked attention for the increasing poverty among the elderly in Germany. An important cause is the depreciation of the pensions. According to the Deutsche Rentenversicherung (German Pension Insurance), the standard pension in the Western states of the country will decrease as follows:
2010: 1083 euros
2020: 1069 euros
2030: 1024 euros
2040: 988 euros
In the former Eastern Germany the situation is even worse. When asked, “Are you afraid to be able to keep your living standards after your retirement or, if you are already retired, in the next few years?” 72 percent of respondents answered “yes”.↩
3. Sadly, Bündnis Grundeinkommen only got 0,2 percent of the votes on Sunday, September 24, 2017. This means that nearly 100.000 persons voted for the one-theme-party. However, it is not enough for a seat in Parliament.↩
Coming up on September 24th, Germany will be holding national parliamentary elections. A new “single-issue-party” will be on the ballot in every state, the “Alliance for Basic Income” (Bundnis Grundeinkommen). If this party gets five percent of the vote or more, they will have five percent or more of votes in the Bundestag.
The party is building on a movement in Germany that has seen steady growth for years. This campaign is inspired by the initiative in Switzerland and the way that movement promoted discussion all over the world.
Germans vote for their district representative and they cast a “second vote”, which determines the percentage a party has in the Bundestag. You will see the word “Zweitstimme” on almost all Basic Income Alliance campaign material.
North American Basic Income activists and scholars got to meet with Felix Coeln, who is a candidate in Germany, at our Congress in New York in 2015. Coeln was then working with the German Pirate Party. He is busy campaigning but took time to answer a few questions.
Campaign banner. “Basic Income Alliance” “Freedom Meets Justice”
Interview
Jason Burke Murphy: Why did you decide to join this new political party?
Felix Coeln: I did not join the party. I am an independent candidate on the list for the national parliament. Since I have been a member of the Pirate Party for three years (until August 2015), but needed to withdraw my membership after some terrible internal party decisions. I did not feel like joining another party.
I also felt I could not yet join because the Basic Income Alliance (Bündnis Grundeinkommen) has in its manifesto a paragraph that I cannot agree with under any circumstances. The party will dissolve after introducing a Basic Income in Germany. To me this is absolutely wrong as I believe it is very important to have parliamentarians to pay attention and make sure the laws regarding Basic Income are not corrupted after some while. I also think it would be important to introduce the Basic Income to the whole European Union. Therefore I think it would be crucial to keep the party together even if Basic Income is introduced at least for some more years, maybe ten or twenty.
Felix Coeln
But the Basic Income Alliance is willing to accept independent candidates on their election lists. They want to make sure that Basic Income activists can contribute and bring in their experience to the process of introducing the UBI and/or expand the debate around it.
Murphy: What are your chances of getting elected?
Coeln: German election law asks parties to give lists of candidates for each state, then they send people to the Bundestag based on that percentage. I am #6 on the list in North-Rhine Westfalia. This means that if we pass the 5% threshold, I would join the national Parliament, too.
Murphy: What would you consider to be successful in this upcoming election?
Coeln: I already consider the campaign a full success: by now we have more than 40 parties running for parliament. A lot of them propose UBI. But most of those parties do not have a chance to overcome the 5% threshold.
On the other hand, the public debate has already increased. Some of the long-time established parties have also offered to “check out” UBI models as possible political solutions for future trends of digitalization and advanced productivity. To me this is a direct reaction to the founding of the Basic Income Alliance.
Apart from that, if we exceed half of one percent, the party will be refunded for each valid vote. We would get 0.83 € euro each year until the next election.
If we exceed 3% we will gain some significant media attention and the other political parties will make some effort to develop their concepts of UBI. UBI plans are already ready to be presented to the public. I know this, because I have broad contact to members of all parties.
If we exceed 5% we will enter parliament – and I am pretty sure we would gain a lot of (international) attention.
Campaign Banner. “Basic Income is Electable”
Murphy: Felix Coeln, thank you for speaking with us!
If you want more information, we have included some links here:
“GERMANY: Basic Income Party Set to Participate in National Elections” by Kate McFarland for Basic Income News.
Malcolm Torry, Director of the UK-based Citizen’s Income Trust, Visiting Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics, and General Manager of BIEN, has signed a contract with the publisher Palgrave Macmillan to edit An International Handbook of Basic Income.
Torry is currently recruiting authors of each of the book’s chapters (listed below). The publisher has issued the following the call for authors:
Palgrave Macmillan is planning to publish An International Handbook on Basic Income, which it intends to be a definitive guide to the current state of the debate.
The editor, Dr. Malcolm Torry, is seeking chapter authors who will represent the best available scholarship from around the world.
A few of the chapters will be commissioned: but for most of them the editor is seeking expressions of interest.
If you would like to express an interest in writing one or more of the chapters then please contact him at generalmanager@basicincom.org or info@citizensincome.org with a CV and a list of publications on Basic Income. Bids for individual chapters from two or three authors from different parts of the world will be particularly welcome.
Dr. Torry will be at the BIEN Congress in Lisbon from the 25th to the 27th September, and he would very much welcome discussions with prospective authors or groups of authors.
The table of contents is as follows:
Part I: The concept of Basic Income
The definition and characteristics of a Basic Income
Basic Income, Solidarity Economy and Social Protection
The 24th BIEN CONGRESS in Maricá & Niterói – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – 27-29 August 2025
Maricá provides unconditional transfers to almost half of its population. 7 other cities in the state of Rio de Janeiro have already created their own local currencies inspired by Maricá’s Citizens Basic Income. Our other host city, Niterói provides transfers benefiting more than 100,000 individuals.
Pre-congress events: Latin America Day: 25 Aug. & Early Career Day: 26 Aug.
“Furthermore”, he told the reporter of 
