by Karl Widerquist | Jun 11, 2017 | Opinion, The Indepentarian
Overview (details below)
June 15-18, 2017: New York, NY
June 20-21: Brussels, Belgium
June 27-29: Sheffield, United Kingdom
July 5-7: Stockholm, Sweden
July 9: Oslo, Norway
July 11: Haugesund, Norway
July 27-29: St. Louis, Missouri/O’Fallon, Illinois
August 15: Canberra, Australia
August 16: Sydney, Australia
August 17-18: Melbourne, Australia
August 31-September 1: Reykjavik, Iceland
September 25-27: Lisbon, Portugal
November 14: Doha, Qatar
So many conferences and seminars have agreed to let me give talks this summer and fall that I’m calling my usual working vacation a “Speaking Tour.” It’s (tentatively) 21 talks in 14 cities in 9 countries, which sounds like a lot, but it’s spaced out over 5 months interspersed with regular work at my job and/or vacation days.
I’ll discuss a variety of topics including the cost of Basic Income, why Basic Income is so important, a property theory I call Justice as the Pursuit of Accord, a criticism of influential political theories I call Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy, the political economy of Basic Income trials, and more. It sounds like a lot, but it’s based on work I’ve done over the last ten years or so.
It’s a hectic schedule, but I feel extremely lucky to be able to do this. All of the travel is sponsored either by my university or by institutions. If my expenses are paid, and my boss gives me time off, I’m willing to travel a lot more than this.
Most of these events are open to the public and most of them are free. So, if you’re anywhere near any of these places, meet me there. Come, tell me where I got it wrong. I’m looking forward to discussing some issues.
Event details
June 15-18, 2017: New York, NY: “The 16th North American Basic Income Guarantee (NABIG) Congress”
- June 15: 4pm: Interview with “Income Outcome,” a feature documentary on UBI (prerecording)
- June 15: 6-8pm: Featured speaker, “Opening Panel of the NABIG Congress,” Roosevelt House, Hunter College
- June 17: 10:20-11:50am, Presenter, “The Cost of UBI: Back-of-the-Envelope Calculations,” Silberman School of Social Work, Hunter College
June 20-21: Brussels, Belgium: “Conference: Why Private Property? Politics of property and its alternatives”
June 27-29: Sheffield, United Kingdom: “Association of Social and Political Philosophy 2017 Annual Conference”
July 5-7: Stockholm, Sweden: “Economic Ethics Network Annual Conference” (invitation only) at the Institute for Futures Studies
July 9: Oslo, Norway: BIEN Norway
July 11: Haugesund, Norway: BIEN Norway
July 27-29: St. Louis, Missouri/O’Fallon, Illinois: “The 37th Conference of the Council of Georgist Organizations”
- June 29, 10:30-11:45: Featured speaker, “The People’s Endowment: Common Resources and Basic Income,” Hilton Garden Inn, O’Fallon, Illinois
August 15: Canberra, Australia: Basic Income Guarantee Australia events
- Morning: Featured speaker, workshop with MPs at Parliament House, details TBA
- Evening: Featured speaker, public event, details TBA
August 16: Sydney, Australia: Basic Income Guarantee Australia events
August 17-18: Melbourne, Australia: “Basic Income Guarantee Australia Workshop on Basic Income”
- August 17: evening: Public forum, events TBA
- August 18: Featured speaker, details TBA
August 31-September 1: Reykjavik, Iceland: “Nordic UBI Conference: Basic Income and the Nordic Welfare Model”
- September 1, 11:30am-12:10: Featured Speaker, “The Political Economy of Basic Income Trials,” Nordic House, Reykjavik
- September 1, 1:30-3pm, Panelist “Panel Discussion,” Nordic House, Reykjavik
September 25-27: Lisbon, Portugal, “17th BIEN Congress: Implementing a Basic Income”
- September 25: Presenter, “The Political Economy of Basic Income Trials,” Portuguese National Parliament, Lisbon, Portugal
November 14 (Date to be confirmed): Doha, Qatar: Faculty Seminar
by Kate McFarland | Jun 4, 2017 | News
A Special Rapporteur of the United Nations will hold a panel discussion on universal basic income and the future of human rights on Thursday, June 8, 2017.
Organized by Professor Philip Alston, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, the event will explore the potential for basic income to mitigate global economic insecurity. The panelists include two cofounders of the Basic Income Earth Network — Professor Philippe van Parijs (University of Louvain, Hoover Chair of Economic and Social Ethics) and Guy Standing (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) — in addition to Isabelle Doresse (People’s Universities in Northern Pas de Calais, ATD Fourth World) and Alex Praça (Human and Trade Union Rights Officer of the International Trade Union Confederation).
The panel will discuss a report prepared by Alston and submitted to the UN’s Human Rights Council. Alston’s report addresses the concern that “the human rights movement needs to address and respond to the fundamental changes that are taking place in economic and social structures at the national and global levels,” including precarious employment, automation, increasing inequality, and the obsolescence of traditional forms of labor market regulation.
As Alston describes the idea, a basic income “is explicitly designed to challenge most of the key assumptions underpinning existing social security systems”:
Rather than a system where there are partial payments, basic income guarantees a floor; instead of being episodic, payments are regular; rather than being needs-based, they are paid as a flat rate to all; they come in cash, rather than as messy in-kind support; they accrue to every individual, rather than only to needy households; rather than requiring that various conditions be met, they are unconditional; rather than excluding the well off, they are universal; and instead of being based on lifetime contributions, they are funded primarily from taxation.
The 20-page report describes each of these characteristics of a basic income, overviews the history of the idea, and describes various types of basic income and related policies, such as a negative income tax and cash transfers. Alston also lays out some examples of the possible cost of implementing a basic income scheme.
Alston holds that “the basic income concept should not be rejected out of hand on the grounds that it is utopian” and encourages further discussion of the policy as a means to alleviate economic insecurity and promote human rights and social justice. He additionally urges that the debate on basic income be united with that on social protection floors.
Further Viewing and Reading
The June 8 panel discussion will be broadcast live online here.
The full report on universal basic income of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights is available in the UN’s document repository or can be directly downloaded as a PDF here.
Reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan
Photo: Human Rights Council during 15th Session, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 UN Geneva
by Guest Contributor | May 29, 2017 | Opinion
The crowdfunding campaign for “The Mincome Experiment” can be found here.
The Mincome Experiment is a documentary that is as much a story about basic income as it is about human socioeconomic evolution throughout the years. Vincent Santiago, the director for the documentary, first heard that University of Manitoba professor Dr. Evelyn Forget was looking for volunteers to digitize the results of the 1970s Mincome experiment. While Santiago did not consider himself an experienced social activist, he was nevertheless keen to study possible measures to prevent government excesses that he believed could lead to growing social inequality and injustices. Santiago was convinced that basic income and open government were foundations that could help prevent social inequality and injustice.
The Mincome experiment and the concept of basic income caught Santiago’s imagination, and he took a passionate interest in seeking out more information. He finally talked to Dr. Forget on April 2014. Another opportunity arose soon after to interview then-Conservative Senator Hugh Segal, a very vocal and strong basic income advocate in Canada. Vincent Santiago read about and researched basic income and talked to economists and others. In the process, he discovered several interesting side stories not widely known, even within Canada.
Santiago wanted to make the Mincome experiment into a documentary. He soon realized there was so much story to be told. He looked into the various forms of basic income and decided the film should be told as an engaging narrative about human socioeconomic evolution. Intertwined into the historical and visionary backdrop is the concept of basic income and its role. Of the film, Santiago said:
While the Mincome experiment is very much the central theme of the documentary, the documentary also looks into other basic income experiments and the various forms and possible implementation. I’ve started calculating the various ways to pay for it and how to implement them.
The promotional trailer created for the crowdfunding campaign asks various questions typically uttered by people who are cynical or against basic income. That is because Santiago did not want to make a film only for those already familiar with basic income. He wanted to create an entertaining and fun documentary that also draws in the skeptics by presenting facts, without shying away from common ridicule and prevailing concerns.
Another project that occupies Santiago’s time is creating a low-cost, no commission fee platform for crowdfunding, curating, and showcasing creative works. With this platform, which first went into development in 2012, Santiago is now launching the crowdfunding campaign for his documentary. The Mincome Experiment project is still a long way from reaching the stated fundraising goal, but the team remains confident the amount can be reached. Efficient use of the funds would allow the project to include more engaging footage and animation for the documentary, ensuring that it will capture and convince audiences worldwide.
The crowdfunding runs until June 15, 2017 and can be found here.
Written by the team behind “The Mincome Experiment.”
by Donald Brown | May 27, 2017 | News
The California Research Bureau hosted a panel on March 23, 2017 regarding current issues facing the state of California, and one of the topics that arose was Universal Basic Income.
The panel, hosted by Anne Neville and featuring three experts — Nicholas Davis; Rachel Hatch; Irena Asmundson — focused on various topics of inequality facing Americans in the state of California. From housing, to health care, to inequality itself, many of the themes focused on how to reshape and adjust society for the wellbeing of its citizens. At one point during the panel, the topic of Universal Basic Income arose, and all three experts took time to explain their views on it during a roundtable discussion.
Nicholas Davis, who was the most connected to the concept of a basic income, spoke in favor of it. Davis argues there are three reasons why a discussion on UBI is essential: the first is about creating security for people in current social climates of instability and insecurity; the second reason focuses on empowering personal freedom, to escape the issues of governmental paternalism; and the final point addresses social justice, which focuses on inclusiveness so that the gains of technology are shared with all instead of a few.
Irena Asmundson then took the response to Davis’ remarks, talking about the economic cost to introducing a UBI. The representatives main point regarding affordability for a UBI in California in terms of taxation would be that the state would need to obtain four times the amount of money it currently does from citizens. However, the largest form of aversion Asmundson expressed was on America’s failings to introduce affordable housing and health care to its citizens, and that these issues need to be solved before a UBI can be considered feasible. In her view, she believed the failure at addressing baseline needs like housing and health care to be far more crucial than assuring a minimum floor, which in comparison UBI may seem more nuanced and not direct at addressing those issues.
Finally, Rachel Hatch expanded upon Asmundson’s position on inequality, and worried that a UBI may not deal with the issue of wealth inequality. Hatch believes a basic income may assure people a minimum financial base, but that it will do very little to address systemic inequality, where just eight men own as much wealth as the bottom half of the human species.
Watch the alluded conversation below.
by Kate McFarland | May 22, 2017 | News
As the Canadian province of Ontario prepares for a three-year trial of guaranteed minimum income (GMI), the Centre for Labour Management Relations (CLMR) at Ryerson University in Toronto is holding a conference to explore the economic motivations and labor market consequences of such a policy. The conference, The New Economy and a Basic Income Guarantee [1], is a private, registration-only event. According to CLMR’s website, the event will bring together over “250 representatives from academia, community, government, industry, law, unions and workers.”
Conference participants will investigate topics including the following: changes in the nature of work and employment that are generating pressure for new forms of the social assistance; theoretical and empirical work on GMI, with a focus on “intended and unintended labour market impacts”; the relationship between a GMI and labor and tax policies in the province; economic, political, and social factors that motivate Ontarians towards “administering, designing, organizing, planning, and receiving” a GMI.
The all-day event will take place on Monday, May 29.
Part of Ryerson University’s School of Management, CLMR promotes relations between labor and management that lead to (in the word of its mission statement) “greater productivity and profitability for businesses, improved job and income security for workers, and decreased inequality and injustice for all of society”. The center funds research projects in various disciplines and provides education and training to both students and professionals.
Photo (at Ryerson University) CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 wyliepoon
Text reviewed by Dave Clegg
[1] To minimize confusion, I use the term ‘guaranteed minimum income’ rather than ‘basic income guarantee’ (cf. my editorial “Basic Income’s Terminological Quagmire”). A basic income guarantee is often defined in American and Canadian contexts as an unconditional guarantee to all members of a community of an income sufficient to meet basic needs. This definition is narrower than BIEN’s definition ‘basic income’ in one dimension–it requires a minimum amount of the income guarantee–while broader in another, in that is not does require that payments be universal and of uniform amount (that is, it encompasses programs in which the amount of the benefit is reduced with earned income, as in Ontario’s forthcoming pilot program).
