by Roland Duchatelet | Apr 27, 2015 | Opinion
Introduction.
This budget assumes public finance all levels combined, and no change in overall tax income, which is currently 4131 billion $.
Today, no more than 8% of the population is required to produce all agricultural products, industrial products and buildings required. That is why the state needs to distribute purchasing power to 100% of the population. Jobs in the service sector will be triggered by the purchasing power (the current doctrine is that we should create jobs to generate purchasing power, but that is an instable system).
This increased efficiency has created a societal system with can create welfare and therefore has a huge common, “social”, capital. Every citizen should get a dividend from that capital. We call it the social dividend or “Basic Income Grant”; an income which we don’t need to work for, just like rich people live from their heritage. All citizens get this social dividend. Some part in cash, some part in kind. The amount in cash depends on their age (see table in the budget).
The amount in kind is given in education vouchers, healthcare vouchers and “coaching” vouchers. Citizens choose their education, healthcare and coaching service provider who gets money from the “social dividend in kind” fund, provided by the state budget.
Both education and healthcare will see drastic changes in the coming years, due to the advent of the Internet. With the number of internet service providers like Spectrum (check out Spectrum internet pricing here), Xfinity, and similar others providing affordable internet plans, users can have access to information of any kind at their fingertips. The country will witness an unprecedented increase in education and healthcare – entrepreneurs.
Every citizen will have the right to be “coached”, which will help all citizens to address problems and opportunities in their lives. This coaching system will hugely reduce criminality and improve productivity.
Since working people will get a social dividend of 500 $ per month, somebody earning 1500 $ net now would have the same total income if he/she gets a net salary of 1000 $ net. In practice, the pay check will mention BIG: 500 $ and Work income: 1000 $ instead of 1500 $ work income now. That is why the in the budget figures, the cost for public servants, but also workers in education and healthcare seems low: a part of their salary is paid, so to speak, by the BIG.
|
BIG |
BIG |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Age |
cash |
vouchers |
total |
number |
cash dividend |
coaching |
|
|
|
|
$ pp pm |
$ pp pm |
$ pp pm |
million |
billion $ p year |
billion $ p y |
billion $ |
|
|
| 0-17 |
150 |
300 |
450 |
75 |
135.0 |
270.0 |
|
|
|
| 18-25 |
250 |
300 |
550 |
41 |
123.0 |
147.6 |
|
|
|
| 26-67 |
500 |
300 |
800 |
169 |
1014.0 |
608.4 |
|
|
|
| 67 + |
1000 |
300 |
1300 |
35 |
420.0 |
126.0 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
320 |
1692.0 |
1152.0 |
2844.0 |
17.8% |
GDP |
Other public expenses:
| public service employees |
|
|
|
|
|
| Net |
$ per month |
$ cash |
total |
total |
employed |
billion $/y |
|
|
extra salary |
social |
cash |
compen- |
million |
budget |
|
|
|
dividend |
salary |
sation |
|
|
|
| national administration |
2450 |
500 |
2950 |
3450 |
2.5 |
74 |
|
| local admin |
2150 |
500 |
2650 |
3150 |
5 |
129 |
|
| Army |
1650 |
500 |
2150 |
2650 |
0.6 |
12 |
|
| police + |
1750 |
500 |
2250 |
2300 |
3 |
63 |
|
| Justice |
1950 |
500 |
2450 |
2950 |
0.3 |
7 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
11.4 |
284.4 |
284.4 |
| military excluding personnel |
|
|
|
|
275 |
| Interest payments |
|
|
|
|
|
230 |
| Public investments and current purchases |
|
|
|
500 |
| Total public expenditure except loan repayments |
|
|
|
4133.4 |
Within the BIG, a value of 1152 billion $ is paid in kind, in the form of vouchers. These vouchers go to service providers who get cash for it from the government budget. The service providers use this money to pay the extra salary over the BIG to nearly 25 million people employed by those service providers in education, health care and coaching. The demand side of these services is completely subsidised. The offer side is market driven while the government needs to define the rules.
|
|
|
total |
total net |
employed |
billion $ p y |
|
|
|
cash |
compensation |
million |
budget |
| education |
2200 |
500 |
2700 |
3200 |
8 |
211 |
| healthcare |
2200 |
500 |
2700 |
3200 |
13 |
343 |
| coaching |
2200 |
500 |
2700 |
3200 |
3.7 |
98 |
|
|
|
|
|
24.7 |
652.08 |
| products and services relating to healthcare, education and coaching |
500 |
| cost to be covered by BIG vouchers |
|
|
|
1152.08 |
by Kristine Osbakken | Apr 20, 2015 | Opinion
Have you ever thought of a Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) for absolutely everyone? The 14th USBIG Congress held in conjunction with Canada BIG was just held in Manhattan, and a friend with frequent flyer miles got me there. Presenters from across the globe shared perspectives on how to equalize the obscene income gap and confront the unrelenting increase in job loss due to technology, robots, the chip.
In 2007/2008, Wall Street criminals were bailed out to the tune of trillions, while news reports began to predict no uptake in the economy till 2017. Who wasn’t aghast? Who determined such a forecast and weren’t there going to be new policies to get people back to work? Seems not. As much as we hear of declining unemployment, we know that such figures discount and dismiss the long-term unemployed. The ‘service industry’ promised us by Bill Clinton has resulted in millions of underpaid workers. The right has taken out the unions.
Last year, the Democrats in our own Minnesota legislature did not find it fit to vote sick leave a worker’s right, and came up with a minimum wage of, voila: $9.50 an hour. That’s compensation of about $20,000 a year, thousands less after deductions and next to nothing if you have to pay for day care. I made $20,000 a year in the mid 70’s as a teacher in Philadelphia. That’s approximately what I make 40 years later as a substitute teacher in ISD 709, but now with absolutely no bennies.
No wonder a Basic Income makes unprecedented political progress, and around the world. Sean Healy of Social Justice Ireland dramatized the scenario, showing a bar graph with the thinnest of lines representing the wealth of the bottom 20%, and bars and bars of wealth so high they couldn’t even fit onto the graph for the top quintile. Marshall Brain of North Carolina State and author of the 60 million hit website “How Things Work” envisioned a visit by extraterrestrial creatures who take note of: 10,000 nuclear missiles, massive poverty for billions, environmental destruction, gigatons of carbon in the air, extinction, burgeoning prisons, religious strife, war, disease, millions of dying children, mass surveillance, nations, racism/sexism/homophobia. Their conjecture: ‘humans appear to be insane. Hundreds own everything while billions starve.’ Brain isn’t sure that our species can agree on anything, so that in a few decades humans will be forced to totally yield to silicon intelligence. He sees BIG as a route out of this and to a rational existence.
Frances Fox Piven of CUNY: “welfare as we know it regulates the poor and is bent to keep people at the low rungs of society. And the US has been losing its low level programs.” (In Minnesota, ‘welfare’ stipends have not risen for 27 years, and if you’re a low-income worker, you’re denied a living wage and benefits.) “Human needs for caring for old and young cannot be met. Many work multiple jobs…we must have a political strategy and ally with groups who rally for improvements in unemployment insurance and social security. We must leave behind the old left ideas of full employment (wage slavery) and economic growth—global warming won’t permit either.”
Speaker Willie Baptist (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) talked about building a new poor people’s campaign because conditions in Watts are now found in all communities. Marion Kramer and Sylvia Orduno from Detroit Welfare Rights Organization explained the hell Michigan residents are experiencing. Automation took the good paying jobs with benefits, and now Marion’s son can’t even collect unemployment when he’s laid off from what part time jobs are available. Detroit’s water plan, developed in the 90’s and based on income, was never implemented. So that the water supply for 30,000 people was recently shut off. And when water is shut off, the MI government can take your children. What Kramer called ‘the beginning of fascism in Michigan’ includes the Mackinac Plan to sell off public assets, charter schools replacing public schools, the assault on public employees, and taxation of pensions. Orduno said potentially a quarter million people risk losing their houses because unaffordable water bills are being billed to their taxes. She expressed a bond with the people of Northern Minnesota over water issues, ours due to impending sulfide mining.
Alaska was continually brought up as an example of BIG, with residents receiving yearly checks from oil revenues. Eduardo Suplicy, a former member of the Brazilian Senate, had pushed for and obtained passage of a bill that would ferret out implementation of a guaranteed income. The first stage was initiated as a stipend to the poor for enrolling their children in school. Suplicy urged us to sign a letter to Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff to resurrect the aging bill and get it off the back burner.
Recent articles on a Basic Income Guarantee have appeared in the pages of The Economist and the Washington Post and there’s a community on Reddit that is closing in on 25,000 subscribers. That’s not to mention the huge number of signatures collected for the European Citizen’s Initiative and the successful campaign for a Basic Income referendum in Switzerland.
In just the last few months, the momentum among political parties and leaders has also picked up. The Green Party worldwide has of course had Basic Income on its policy agenda for quite some time, but recently the general conference of the Liberal Party in Canada approved two motions towards a Basic Income, one in favor of a federal pilot program and one in favor of implementation. This is after the premier of the Canadian Province of Prince Edward Island, Robert Ghiz of the Liberal party, called for a pilot program for a Guaranteed Minimum Income in the form of a Negative Income Tax, and the leader of the provincial opposition party, the NDP, called for a similar Basic Income Guarantee.
Kristine Osbakken, Duluth, MN
krissosbakken@gmail.com
by Joerg Drescher | Apr 9, 2015 | News
Tony Atkinson is a well known scientist on inequality and a student of James Meade. Atkinson is Senior Research Fellow at the Nuffield College of the Oxford University and Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics. In an interview with the German newspaper “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” he pleads for a minimum heritage for all citizens at the age of 18 years.
In this interview he was asked about inequality in Germany. He said inequality has consequences for economic success. Even Christine Lagarde, the director of the IMF, worries about inequality which decreases economic growth. However, inequality is for Atkinson also a question of justice. He rhetorically asks whether we really want to live in a country in which some people can travel to space, while others have to eat at meal centres even if they have work.
He is not against good payments and argues that inequality does not mean to dissolve all differences. Rather he means equal opportunities, which are not given in unequal societies.
In his opinion many European countries implemented successful measures after World War II to reduce inequality, but in the last years these programs were reduced. He gives the example that the social state built up a very effective transfer system which helped poor people, but meanwhile social benefits were reduced in many countries.
Asked if Thomas Piketty is right to increase taxes for super rich people to distribute the money, Atkinson answers that Piketty is very interested in super rich people, but less in helping the poor. For Atkinson super rich people are not only a source for taxation; rather he sees in them a risk because at least in the Anglo-American sphere they have increasingly disproportionate political influence. This is bad for democracy. However, poverty as well as marginalisation of poor people is the worst consequence of inequality. In his opinion a further political question of our time is the inequality between generations and genders.
The interviewer asks if he really thinks those modern problems can be solved by measures of yesterday in the sense of more taxes for more social benefits. On the one hand, he says, he supports a progressive tax system; on the other hand, he suggests we unchain the pension system from work and think about new forms of unemployment insurance.
The conversation changes and Atkinson is asked about work and the problem that technological progress assists inequality and robots destroy certain jobs and no taxes can stop this development. He answers that the debate should be on the issue of what we want to be automated. For instance, it might be better to have robots in industry, but do we really want waiters replaced by drones? You cannot talk with drones about the weather (for some people the most important reason to use this service). Not everything a robot can do it should do.
The next question is about what would happen if there is no unemployment, because jobs are paid unequally. Atkinson counters that in future it is important to pay attention to how much people earn before they pay taxes. It is a matter of distributing wages and income from investments. Here he suggests a “minimum heritage” for all citizens at the age of 18 years. In this case they would have this security which heirs have. A possibility to fund this is to increase inheritance taxes. However, he agrees that this would not be easy in a global economy, but it could work if financial information were exchanged. A civilized society needs high taxes. People have to provide information which is needed for taxation.
Link to the original interview by Lena Schipper, 6th April 2015 (in German):
https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/wirtschaftspolitik/armut-und-reichtum/interview-mit-tony-atkinson-ueber-armut-ungleichheit-und-mindesterbe-13511563.html
by Roland Duchatelet | Apr 6, 2015 | Opinion
Introduction.
This budget does not take into account the debt problem. The author thinks that the only realistic way out of the crisis is to give a debt moratorium of 5 years and discuss that topic 3 years from now.
The depth of the Greek crisis is an opportunity to depart from the classical views regarding the organisation of a state, dating back to the 1950’s, to implement a system taking into account the two recent and biggest revolutions in mankind:
- the human brain aid (computers, pda ..) replacing in part the brain power of humans, like motors did replace the muscles of Man and horses 200 years ago.
- The word wide free and fast communication network.
Today, only 8% of the population is needed to produce everything: food, industrial products and buildings. The model of the fifties is “job-centric”. The model presented here is the model of 2015: it is based on distribution of purchasing power. Jobs will follow the purchasing power (the current doctrine is that we should create jobs to generate purchasing power), for those who are still thinking in terms of jobs.
Greece, like many other countries, has a long history leading to 2015, the age were machines largely replace man to produce goods. Any citizen has the right to benefit from the heritage of his country, which is now capable to produce all goods we need with just 8% of the population.
We have created a huge social capital. Every citizen should get a dividend from that capital. We call it the social dividend or “basic income”, an income where we don’t need to work for, just like rich people live from their heritage. All citizens get this social dividend. Some part in cash, some part in kind. The amount in cash depends on their age (see table in the budget).
The amount in kind is given in education checks, healthcare checks and “coaching” checks. Citizens choose their education, healthcare and coaching service provider who gets money from this “social dividend in kind” fund within the state budget.
Both education and healthcare will see drastic changes the coming years, due to aforementioned massive global revolutions. The country will witness an unprecedented increase in education and healthcare – entrepreneurs.
Those services may even attract customers from abroad.
Every citizen will have the right to be “coached”, which will help all citizens to address problems and opportunities in their lives. This coaching system will hugely reduce criminality and improve productivity.
Since working people will get a social dividend of 350 € per month, somebody earning 1100 € net now would have the same total income if he/she gets a net salary of 750 €. The basic income system makes labour less expensive for the employer, the employer being public or private.
That is why the in the budget figures, the cost for public servants, but also for education and healthcare looks so low: a part of their salary is paid, so to speak, by the social dividend.
| social security |
social dividend : basic income |
|
|
| age |
cash |
cheques |
total |
number |
cash dividend |
coaching |
|
|
€ pp pm |
€ pp pm |
€ pp pm |
|
billion €/year |
billion €/y |
billion €/y |
| 0-17 |
75 |
50 |
125 |
2270000 |
2.0 |
1.4 |
|
| 18-25 |
250 |
50 |
300 |
1180000 |
3.5 |
0.7 |
|
| 26-60 |
350 |
50 |
400 |
5130000 |
21.5 |
3.1 |
|
| 61-67 |
400 |
50 |
450 |
1020000 |
4.9 |
0.6 |
|
| 68 + |
500 |
50 |
550 |
1400000 |
8.4 |
0.8 |
|
|
|
|
|
11000000 |
40.4 |
6.6 |
47.0 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
sum |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| public service employees |
(remuneration on top of social dividend) |
|
| net |
€ pp pm |
|
|
|
billion €/y |
|
|
|
salary |
soc divid. |
total |
|
budget |
|
|
| national |
1050 |
350 |
1400 |
100000 |
1.260 |
|
|
| local |
800 |
350 |
1150 |
100000 |
0.960 |
|
|
| army |
1050 |
350 |
1400 |
1000 |
0.013 |
|
|
| police + |
900 |
350 |
1250 |
100000 |
1.080 |
|
|
| justice |
1050 |
350 |
1400 |
10000 |
0.126 |
|
3.4 |
|
|
|
|
311000 |
|
|
|
| Public investments and current purchases |
|
|
16 |
| Total public expenditure except loan repayments |
|
66.5 |
Obviously, some assumptions have been made regarding numbers of people kept in public service and the reorganisation of public services relating to security (police, army, ..) which could be looked at in a different way. Education, healthcare and coaching are paid by the government through the social dividend in kind. The demand side remains “public” and fully subsidised. The “offer”–side becomes, to some extent, market driven. The cost is only 6.6 billion because a significant part of the cost of these salaries is paid through the basic income grant to the people working in those branches.
| subsidised by social security cheques |
|
|
|
|
| education |
800 |
500 |
1300 |
240000 |
2.304 |
|
|
| healthcare |
800 |
500 |
1300 |
240000 |
2.304 |
|
|
| coaching |
800 |
500 |
1300 |
200000 |
1.920 |
|
6.5 |
On the public income side, VAT is increased to 30% and collected better to move it from 14 to 24 billion €. Other consumption tax is increased from 10.7 to 15 billion € mainly by increasing prices for fuel and a new consumer tax on electricity of 10 eurocent per kwh should bring 4 billion €. Social security contributions are abolished. Payroll tax will be levied only above a net income -including basic income- of 1150 € per month . It is expected that the majority of the employees will not pay payroll taxes anymore. However, anything earned above that threshold will be taxed at 50%. We expect this tax to generate 14.4 billion €. Corporate income tax is replaced by corporate eco-tax. This is a tax on energy consumption mainly, but not exclusively. Taxes on property should generate more and a tax on financial transactions should bring another 1.5 billion €
| TAXES |
|
PLAN |
NOW |
| Consumption |
|
billion €/y |
|
| VAT |
|
23 |
14 |
| Other |
|
15 |
10.7 |
| tax on electricity |
|
4 |
|
| Labor |
|
|
|
| sociial security levy |
|
0 |
22 |
| personal income |
|
14.4 |
13.5 |
| Corporate/Wealth |
|
|
|
| Corporate income |
|
0 |
2.2 |
| Corporate ecotax |
|
4 |
|
| Property |
|
5 |
3.7 |
| Financial transaction taxes |
|
1.5 |
|
| Total |
|
66.9 |
66.1 |
by Karl Widerquist | Apr 5, 2015 | News
Jurgen De Wispelaere
Jurgen De Wispelaere addressed “”Unconditional Basic Income: Political Obstacles and Strategies” in a talk give on Friday, March 20th, 6:30–8:30 pm at 4200 Cedar Ave. S., Mpls, MN 55407. Hosts were Kristine Osbakken and Liane Gale of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network.
Says De Wispelaere, “The idea of granting each citizen an individual and unconditional basic income is booming. Support from all corners of the political arena seems to follow suit. I want to describe two political problems we need to overcome to make basic income a policy reality. 1) Much of political support is “cheap”, and we need to find ways to make sure political supporters put their money where their mouths are. 2) Strategy: should we try and unite factions from the Left and the Right around a single proposal, or instead work towards a specific progressive basic income proposal. I will invite the audience to think through some of the ways in which a basic income movement might get around these problems.”
Jurgen De Wispelaere is a former occupational therapist turned moral philosopher. He lectures at Trinity College, Dublin and has been a fellow with both the Combat Poverty Agency Ireland and Centre for the Study of Social Justice at Oxford. He’s the founding editor of the journal “Basic Income Trust”, on the Executive Committee of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) and the author of several books and many articles.
