by Kate McFarland | May 14, 2016 | News
The Revolution of Social Justice international conference will be held in Budapest on May 21, 2016, on the theme of “the chances of progressive politics and basic income in Europe and Hungary.”
Keynote speakers include Guy Standing (economist, Research Professor at University of London, and co-founder of Basic Income Earth Network), Iván Szelényi (Professor of Sociology at New York University), and Enno Schmidt (artist and co-initiator of the popular initiative for basic income in Switzerland).
The conference also includes two panel discussions on themes related to basic income: the first on basic income pilot projects and how to move from these experiments to national projects, and the second on how to build progressive social and political movements to support (or be supported by) basic income initiatives.
A third panel discussion, featuring a diverse group of national public figures, asks “What’s next, Hungary?”
The conference concludes with a festival–which will include a poem and song recital by Virág Erdős and László Kollár-Klemencz and concert by Kistehén Band.
Attendance is free upon registration.
by Kate McFarland | May 8, 2016 | News
Last Wednesday, May 4, billionaire bond manager Bill Gross (of Janus Capital) made waves when he endorsed universal basic income in his Monthly Investment Outlook – or, perhaps more accurately, declared a UBI to be inevitable.
Mr. Gross, like many other commentators on current economic trends, foresees massive job loss due to automation:
Virtually every industry in existence is likely to become less labor-intensive in future years as new technology is assimilated into existing business models. Transportation is a visible example as computer driven vehicles soon will displace many truckers and bus/taxi drivers. Millions of jobs will be lost over the next 10-15 years. But medicine, manufacturing and even service intensive jobs are at risk. Investment managers too! Not only blue collar but now white collar professionals are being threatened by technological change.
He is critical of the idea, currently en vogue, that the appropriate response is to make higher education more accessible and affordable — submitting that a college degree might “better prepare students to be contestants on Jeopardy” but not necessarily lead to better jobs or more economic growth.
What, then, should be the alternative? Well, here’s what Mr. Gross says:
Instead we should spend money where it’s needed most – our collapsing infrastructure for instance, health care for an aging generation and perhaps on a revolutionary new idea called UBI – Universal Basic Income. If more and more workers are going to be displaced by robots, then they will need money to live on, will they not? And if that strikes you as a form of socialism, I would suggest we get used to it.
Indeed, he later goes so far as to assert, “The question is how high this UBI should be and how to pay for it, not whether it’s coming in the next decade. It is.”
On the question of how to financial a UBI, Mr. Gross recommends that central banks print more money – the idea popularly referred to as “helicopter money” and promoted in Europe as “QE for the People.”
Within hours, Mr. Gross’ proclamations led to a proliferation of news stories on basic income – including reports in Reuters, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and CNN Money, to mention only a few.
Matt Levine (in his Bloomberg View column “Money Stuff“) drew upon some personal anecdotes from Bill Gross to common on the common objection-cum-question “Would people stop working if they had a basic income?”:
Imagine a young Bill Gross, offered a basic income, free of the constraints of needing to earn a living. Would he still have become an obsessive bond manager? Yes of course he would have, come on. Gross has been open about the fact that he’s not in bond investing for the money; he’s in it for the fame. And there is no universal basic income of fame, though I guess Twitter is getting us pretty close.
Meanwhile, other authors and commentators took a skeptical stance. Fortune columnist Chris Matthews, for example, questioned the political feasibility of UBI in present day America, and Myles Udland, writing for Business Insider, claimed that a UBI would not be welcomed because “in the US we have attached a stigma to receiving certain types of government assistance, and the sociopolitical hurdles to a basic income program are very high.”
To be fair, Udland probably penned this criticism before he had chance to the read David Calnitsky’s article in the Canadian Journal of Sociology, “‘More Normal than Welfare”: The Mincome Experiment, Stigma, and Community Experience,” reported upon in Basic Income News last week. Calnitsky’s article provides empirical support to what many have already expected: since it is given to everyone — “obscuring the distinctions between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor,” as Calnitsky writes — a basic income should substantially diminish the stigma associated with the receipt of government monies.
Is basic income nonetheless too radical to be accepted in the States? At the very least, given the quickly burgeoning interest in the idea — and more and more prominent endorsements like that of Bill Gross — it seems premature to rule out its eventual widespread acceptance, which perhaps might happen sooner than we think.
Image Credit: Sequence Media Group
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by Karl Widerquist | May 5, 2016 | Research
Abstract:
This paper examines the impact of a social experiment from the 1970s called the Manitoba Basic Annual Income Experiment (Mincome). I examine Mincome’s “saturation” site located in Dauphin, Manitoba, where all town residents were eligible for guaranteed annual income payments for three years. Drawing on archived qualitative participant accounts I show that the design and framing of Mincome led participants to view payments through a pragmatic lens, rather than the moralistic lens through which welfare is viewed. Consistent with prior theory, this paper finds that Mincome participation did not produce social stigma. More broadly, this paper bears on the feasibility of alternative forms of socioeconomic organization through a consideration of the moral aspects of economic policy. The social meaning of Mincome was sufficiently powerful that even participants with particularly negative attitudes toward government assistance felt able to collect Mincome payments without a sense of contradiction. By obscuring the distinctions between the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor, universalistic income maintenance programs may weaken social stigmatization and strengthen program sustainability.
David Calnitsky, “‘More Normal than Welfare’: The Mincome Experiment, Stigma, and Community Experience,” Canadian Review of Sociology 53, no. 1, pages 26–71, February 2016
by Kate McFarland | May 5, 2016 | News
Erik Olin Wright is a Professor in the prestigious Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison — and a staunch advocate of a universal basic income.
Wright was interviewed on the April 5th edition of the Berkeley-based radio show Against the Grain. In a broadcast of approximately 50 minutes, the distinguished sociologist explains why a basic income would not be a “disincentive” to work (unlike means-tested anti-poverty programs), argues that basic income does not “subsidize low wages” in a morally problematic way, discusses the potential impact of basic income on unions and progressive politics, and differentiates his preferred version of a basic income from that of Charles Murray and others on the right — and more.
Overall, Wright presents a persuasive and compelling case that the radical left must take basic income seriously, while allaying worries that the policy could hurt workers and rebutting objections to its unconditionality.
Against the Grain describes itself as providing “in-depth analysis and commentary on a variety of matters — political, economic, social, and cultural — important to progressive and radical thinking and activism.”
The broadcast can be heard in its entirety here.
A partial transcript is available here.
Photo: Erik Olin Wright presenting in Luxemburg (May 2011), Rosa Luxemburg-Stiftung
by Sandro Gobetti | Apr 12, 2016 | News
Credit to: BIN Italia.
A conference has been held in Milan to exchange ideas on policies to combat poverty, such as the introduction in Italy of a minimum and guaranteed income. It took place on Wednesday, March 2nd at Degrees Hall on the Via Conservatorio.
Through the first part of the conference, which consisted of talks on the topic, and a final round table, researchers, teachers and experts presented and discussed policy at the national and regional level, with particular attention to political obstacles to the introduction of anti-poverty policies such as a guaranteed minimum income. The initiative is part of a new focus in Italian political debate, towards the introduction of national measures that have positive effects on social inclusion by reducing economic inequality.
The conference was sponsored by the departments of Political Science and Social Studies of the State University, and the Sociology department of the Catholic University, in collaboration with Easycare Foundation.
Program:
9:00 am – POVERTY AND MINIMUM INCOME AFTER THE GREAT RECESSION: HAS SOMETHING CHANGED?
Chair: Matteo Jessoula, University of Milan
- The minimum income schemes in the European periphery during the crisis(Manos Matsaganis, University of Athens Economics and Politecnico di Milano)
- Towards a national minimum income scheme in Italy: the political role (Ilaria Madama, University of Milan)
- Minimum income trials in Italy: from Social card to the experiments of the SIA (Daniela Mesini, Institute for Social Research)
- The regional minimum income schemes: an alternative?(Marcello Natili, University of Milan)
- The Lombard case, from the proposal to the law on an income for autonomy(Rosangela Lodigiani, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan)
11:15 am – Coffee break
11:30 am – Debate
THE MINIMUM INCOME IN ITALY: WILL IT BE THE RIGHT TIME?
Chair: Paul Graziano, University of Padua and the European Social Observatory
SPEAKERS
Giulio Gallera, Councillor of autonomy Income, Regione Lombardia
Elena Lattuada, CGIL Lombardia
Cristiano Gori, Alliance against poverty in Italy and Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan
Sandro Gobetti, Campaign for the Dignity Income – BIN Italia
Raffaele Tangorra, Ministry of Labour and Social Policy
Tito Boeri, President INPS
For more information click here
