by BIKN Korea | Aug 2, 2013 | News
[BIKN – August 2013]
Third, Kwen Moon Seok, a beloved steering committee member of the Basic Income Korean Network (BIKN), passed away in May 2013. He was only in his mid 30s and left his wife and an infant daughter behind. Before his death, he had devoted himself to setting up an new network called, “alba-yondae (Solidarity of tentative workers)” and had been respected by many young people who joined the network. According to a member of BIKN, “He was one of the most sincere and hard working activist. … May rest in peace.”
More information about Kwen Moon Seok (in Korean) is online here.
by Yannick Vanderborght | Jun 10, 2013 | Opinion
Marina P. Nóbrega – for the Municipal Council for the Citizen’s Basic Income, Santo Antonio do Pinhal, SP, Brazil
Humanity has to rescue the human solidarity that used to pervade tribal societies where wealthy was evenly shared. In our days money has to be used to that effect as great social thinkers have been preaching. In Brazil, President Lula´s law 10,835 from 2004 says that “A monthly benefit enough for the basic needs of a person will be paid equally to all. This basic income is to be instated by steps, taking care first of the most in need.” This law is still unregulated but the government, immediately after, created the successful Bolsa Familia (BF) program. Law 10,835 is unique in the world and needs to be regulated as to the steps to be taken to gradually universalize the benefit.
The Municipal Council for the Citizen’s Basic Income in the city of Santo Antonio do Pinhal has such a proposal.
Our initial proposal was to have a municipal pilot project fueled by a percentage of gross earnings from private businesses and private donations plus 6% per year from the city’s revenue. The idea was to create a fund to operate as the Alaska scheme. The Council analyzed carefully this proposal in the light of basic income principles and the practical attempts made to collect funds. We came to the conclusion that the Alaska way is impossible to succeed in our conditions besides we also do not accept that the annual and variable dividends represent the idea we have about a basic income.
Instead, we suggest that the path to Basic Income should go through 3 stages. We do not think this to be the best way for other countries but, considering Brazil’s situation, with almost 50 million under the support of the conditional BF (average of US$ 17.50 per person), we have a stepping stone to approach the final goal of including all in basic income. The steps suggested are:
Step 1 – Start the unconditional and universal basic income with all newborns in Brazil in the near future. The Council suggested that the caring parent receives US$ 35.00 per month and the same amount is deposited monthly in a savings account in name of the child, to be withdraw when he/she reaches legal age. This will be particularly valuable in two ways: it is financially viable, progressive and amenable to planning, will carry a strong symbolic value benefitting the children of the nation and pointing to a better future. This move will have a crucial educational value by giving people of all social classes time to understand the revolutionary value of a minimum income independent of work.
Step 2 – Next we suggest remove all conditionalities linked to the Bolsa Familia program. This will require that the funds for the almost 50 million involved (about 25% of our population) be doubled. We can predict that the result will be impressive economically and socially. The humiliation of means test, the complexity of the paperwork that opens the opportunity for political manipulation will vanish. The economy will benefit, and the results will be boosted by the possibility of taking regular jobs or opening a small business, both banned under the present conditionalities. These people will be freed from the known “poverty trap” created by the requirements for admission.
Step 3 – The Bolsa Familia bureaucracy can now be directed to monitor people that are still economically vulnerable but outside the government lists or people that fall into the “precariat”. They and their dependents should immediately receive the unconditional basic income.
PS: The Council can be reached by sending mail to maripnobrega@gmail.com
Phones: 55 12 9777 9115 or 55 12 3911 3839
by Karl Widerquist | Apr 27, 2013 | News
On April 10th a conference entitled ”The Future of Europe: a debate about solidarity, democracy, and integration” was held in Turin at Fondazione Einaudi. The conference, which focused also on the issue of Basic Income, was attended by Philippe Van Parijs, Universite Catholique de Louvain, and Guido Montani, Universita di Pavia. The event was moderated by Flavio Brugnoli, Director of Centro Studi sul Federalismo.
Info (in Italian): https://www.carloalberto.org/assets/events/ilfuturodelleuropa.pdf
https://www.bin-italia.org/
by Citizens' Income Trust | May 30, 2012 | Opinion
Kevin Farnsworth and Zoë Irving (eds), Social Policy in Challenging Times: Economic crisis and welfare systems, Policy Press, 2011, xi + 335 pp, pbk, 1 847 42827 1, £27.99, hbk, 1 847 42828 8, £70
Whilst in all of the countries studied in this edited collection the welfare state can be regarded as entering a new age of austerity, the picture that emerges is one of diversity: of different kinds of financial crisis in different countries, of different cultural contexts, and of different effects on welfare provision. For instance: ‘Liberal market economies … are least well equipped in both economic buffers and social solidarity to deal with the impact of a crisis in welfare funding because interests are not shared corporately or between social classes’ (p.24).
The first part of the book tackles more general questions. Has the crisis resulted in a shift in the economic paradigm? No: that would require positive action. Has a crisis in financialised capitalism fostered a new economic and social strategy? No: it has resulted in welfare state retrenchment and widening inequality. Are we all in this together? No: there is one strategy for financial institutions, and another for citizens. Is a global social floor a good idea? It’s a better idea than national safety nets. How will relatively young welfare states in the developing world cope with the financial crisis? In Brazil and South Africa, the crisis has led to the expansion of income transfer programmes, and in particular to the inclusion of 16 and 17 year olds (p.104).
The second half of the book studies individual countries. South Korea’s experience of the 1997 crisis suggests that extreme neoliberalism doesn’t work. China’s response to the recent crisis has been to include previously excluded groups in welfare systems. Germany’s small financial sector, and adjustments already made during unification, have meant that the crisis has had a ‘muted’ effect. Ireland’s weak welfare state is suffering retrenchment rather than reform. Iceland’s crisis has seen the neoliberal model questioned. In Scandinavia unemployment has risen, but only slowly. Domestic policy concerns drove the United States’ healthcare reforms, and in neither the United States nor in Canada has the crisis resulted in much welfare state reform. In the UK, the depth of austerity measures is more ideological than necessary.
‘More of the same’ is the picture that emerges: that is, it is long term cultural and ideological factors that determine welfare structures. Whilst the financial crisis might have precipitated minor change, and in some cases it has exacerbated existing trends (especially in the UK and Ireland, and over the extent of punitive measures imposed on the unemployed), it has stimulated little genuine reform. The editors’ concluding chapter extracts a number of ‘solutions’ from the different chapters, but they can’t be said to constitute any kind of package; and their confident conclusion that
What the contributions here demonstrate is not only that emergency events are crucial to both the shaping of social policy, and to the understanding of that process, but also that challenging times are as likely to widen the scope for progressive welfare state-building as they are to diminish it, and that how states respond is a matter of political struggle and political choice (p.278)
isn’t borne out by the evidence.
The strengths of the book are the amount of detailed evidence and the careful analysis in each of the very different chapters; and a particular strength is that the chapter authors don’t draw clear conclusions where there are none to be drawn. A justifiable clear conclusion is Farnsworth’s: that Government policy is bound to increase inequality in the UK. What he might also have said is that reduced withdrawal rates under the new Universal Credit will reduce inequality and will incentivise labour market activity. The lesson to draw is that reduced benefits withdrawal rates and an increase in universal benefits would both reduce inequality and incentivise labour market activity: both outcomes which would enhance the economic outlook and the social fabric.
by Yannick Vanderborght | Apr 3, 2012 | Research
In this opinion piece published by the French daily Le Monde (March 6, 2012), Philippe Van Parijs (Louvain University, Hoover Chair) compares the eurozone with the United States. Inspired by the works of Martin Feldstein and others, he argues that the eurozone will only be viable at the price of increased interpersonal solidarity. This solidarity, Van Parijs argues, should take the form of a modest individual income floor funded by VAT, i.e. a so-called “Euro-Dividend”.
The piece (in French) is online at:
https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2012/03/06/pas-d-eurozone-viable-sans-euro-dividende_1652164_3232.html
A Dutch version has been published by the Belgian daily De Morgen: https://www.demorgen.be/dm/nl/2461/De-Gedachte/article/detail/1400934/2012/02/28/Geen-duurzame-euro-zonder-eurodividend.dhtml