OPINION: A viable transition to Basic Income

by Yannick Vanderborght | Dec 5, 2011 | Opinion

Thomas Paine and many other libertarians concerned with fundamental human rights, dreamt of the day when no one would suffer from want and basic income security should be garanteed to all. The Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) promotes the idea  among all countries. In Brazil, Senator Eduardo M. Suplicy has been the champion for the basic income, here called “Renda Básica de Cidadania – RBC” or citizen’s basic income.

Brazil developed gradually, since 1994, programs do help the poor. The Lula government united social programs that were dispersed and created the “Bolsa Família Program”, a system of conditional transfer of money linked to school attendance and vaccination. The family income has to be below a defined amount to qualify for the benefits. The program has been a great success. Nevertheless conditionalities require a large bureaucracy to monitor beneficiaries. Senator Suplicy introduced a bill to create an unconditional basic income for all and President Lula sanctioned the law in 2004.

Suplicy’s efforts triggered initiatives by ReCivitas (1). This small organization tried to start a pilot experiment in Paranapiacaba, based on withdrawals from a fund belonging to all, without success. Then ReCivitas started a mini-pilot experiment, using money from donors, to pay a RBC to almost 90 people in a rural “bairro” in São Paulo state. That experiment is doing well and has been described in BIEN’s Newsflash 65, november 2011.

The encounter of Suplicy and the mayor of Santo Antonio do Pinhal, a small city (~7,000 people) at the Mantiqueira mountains in São Paulo, started another effort to bring the idea to a real test. Volunteers explained the idea in meetings at schools, churches, and community spaces. In 2009 the town deputies sanctioned a law, presented by the mayor, that created a town’s fund to be fed by 6% of the city’s earnings. The rest was supposed to be provided by donors. The experiment was analysed by NEPP (2) a organization that is part of UNICAMP (3) and funded by CAF (4). A group of volunteers provided data about the town and stats were recorded, without any clear recommendation. Simultaneously Anthony Baert, from the Economics School of Louvain, Belgium, joined NEPP, had access to the same data, and published his own study (see BIEN’s Newsflash 65) of the known basic income experiments around the world, with an analysis of the existing proposal for Santo Antonio do Pinhal (5). His conclusion stated:

“based on this research, we make recommendations for the implantation of the Citizen’s Basic Income in Santo Antônio do Pinhal (Brazil). We conclude that it is not viable on the short and medium term and we suggest instead to first launch a five-year pilot project.”

We have been aware of the enormous difficulties to implement a fund-based solution to RBC for Santo Antonio do Pinhal. A Basic Income Grant (BIG) Bank is providing the resources at Quatinga Velho representing around 90 persons (see BIEN’s Newsflash 65). Anyone can imagine the difficulties to implement a funding through regular withdrawals from financial investments  even for a small city. Above all, we believe that RBC is a basic right and should not depend on donations of any type, although welcome. This right must be provided by the federal government.

As a large proportion of the poor receive already from Bolsa Família, the transition to RBC is a thorny problem considering all that has been invested so far. Also the costs to switch to the universal and unconditional system of RBC right away, would seen dounting.

We believe that the solution to gradually implement the RBC, as President Lula’s 2004 sanctioned law demands, is to define a future date, say January 1, 2013. All children born in Brazil since that day will be registered as recipients of a monthly value (say R$ 50.00 or R$ 100,00) delivered to his mother or legal guardian.

Less than 2-4 billion reais would be used at the first year in Brazil. For Santo Antonio do Pinhal, 60,000 reais would pay the first year, below the 90,000 reais that the law already sanctioned, and reserved annualy for the RBC fund. Bureaucracy involved would be minimal, there will be no conflict with the Bolsa Família program, the implementation will be progressive, viable, manageable and definitive. The RBC gradually will substitute for the Bolsa Família program.

Sustainability at its core is to manage resources wisely. We side with the great Julian L. Simon (6): the most important natural resource is human creativity. Educated and creative human beings are the scarce and precious “material” we need. They will turn natural materials (ores, oil, land, sea, waters, space, etc) and existing knowledge and technologies (history, humanities, biology, physics, chemistry, etc) into valuable and life enhancing assets. Possibly the most important task is to garantee that the coming generations will receive full support in terms of education and health. This is not possible without a measure of income security that the RBC could provide. We must start right away – the pressures of an increasingly old population will tax the young of the future in unprecedented ways. Caring for them is caring for the future of people and environment.

1 ReCivitas – Instituto pela Revitalização da Cidadania – www.recivitas.org.br
2 NEPP – Núcleo de Estudos de Políticas Públicas
3 UNICAMP – Universidade Estadual de Campinas
4 CAF – Confederação Andina de Fomento
5 Anthony Baert – https://www.proac.uff.br/cede/sites/default/files/TD54.pdf
6 Julian L. Simon – The ultimate resource 2 – 1996 – Princeton University Press

Marina Pasetto Nobrega and Francisco G. Nobrega
maripnobrega@gmail.com or  francisco.nobrega@gmail.com

Santo Antonio do Pinhal, Novembro de 2011

OPINION: The Answer is Blowin´ in the Wind

by Yannick Vanderborght | Jun 13, 2011 | Opinion

Every time I read about the lives lost in the wars of Vietnam and Iraq, in the repression against movements pro-democratization in many Arabian countries, in the recurring conflicts at the borders of Israel and Palestine, in lamentable episodes that killed Chico Mendes, Sister Dorothy Stang, and the couple José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and Maria do Espírito Santo – defenders of the forests – and in the violence that occur in the outskirts of our metropolis, the beautiful lyrics of Bob Dylan, who turned 70 on Tuesday, May 24th, come to my mind, especially “Blowin’ in the Wind”, written in 1962.

Then, the Vietnam War was spreading absurdly. It seemed that mankind, including Chiefs of State of powerful nations, was hardly listening to the people who called the attention to the absurd of the wars and to how it would be better to solve great divergences among people and nations through the non-violence. There were great examples of this attitude as Leon Tolstoi, Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr., the latter always remembered for his beautiful words in “I Have a Dream”, of August 28th, 1963, when he claimed for the approval of laws assuring equality in civil rights among all the peoples as well as the Universal Suffrage:

This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism…This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality… Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

Martin Luther King Jr. was one of those who built the conscience of the peoples of the world in a way to put an end to the long and suffered Vietnam War. In big cities, on the streets, in public squares, crowds decided to sing, many times led by Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, the group Peter, Paul and Marie and other great interpreters.

“How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
How many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they´re forever banned?
How many years can a mountain exist
Before it´s washed to the sea?
How many years can some people exist (as the Brazilian people, I think)
Before they´re allowed to be free?
How many times can a man turn his head
Pretending he just doesn´t see?
How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
How many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
How many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin´ in the wind
The answer is blowin´ in the wind.”

This is a matter of common sense, totally within our reach to accomplish, even with much effort and determination. It is obvious that, in order to reach the conditions for living with less violence in our society, in order to end the need for wars to solve the fundamental mankind problems, we must put into practice the tools of economic and social policies that mean the use of principles of justice, as the ones elaborated by philosopher John Rawls, in The Principles of Justice (1971).

Thus, we could realize a shared feeling of fraternity, which effectively would be recognized by the society, resulting in a much higher level of civility.

So, to create a civilized and fair society, we must take into consideration values that are not only the search of self interest, to take advantages in everything. It´s clear that all of us want to develop and we also want the progress of our beloved ones. I teach my sons and pupils to consider the value of ethics, of the search for truth, of fraternity, of solidarity, of freedom and of democracy. And what are the tools consistent with these values? One example would be extension of good opportunities in education to every child, every youth and every adult who did not have good opportunities of education. A good public health service for all. The accomplishment of an agrarian reform, in a country still unequal in its land property conditions. The incentive to the cooperative forms of production and to the participation of the workers in companies’ profits. The expansion of micro credit opportunities. And the implementation of social inclusion programs that may bring a higher level of freedom and dignity to all the human beings.

According to the conclusion reached by a growing number of economists and philosophers of the five continents at the 13th International Congress of Basic Income Earth Network, Bien, held at USP in 2010, the tool that would contribute for this objective in a high level is a Citizen´s Basic Income, regardless the person’s origin, race, age, gender, civil, social or economic condition.

Fortunately the National Congress approved and President Lula sanctioned, in 2004, the Law 10.835/2004, to institute the Citizen´s Basic Income step by step, under the criterion of the Executive Power, starting with those who need most, like the Bolsa Familia does, until the day when everybody, including foreigners living in Brazil for five years or more, has the right to receive an income, as enough as possible, to meet the vital needs of everyone.

It will be great if President Dilma Rousseff announce this upcoming November the implementation of the Citizen´s Basic Income, during her term until 2014, as approved by consensus by the IV Nation Congress of the Workers’ Party, in February, 2010. We will sing with much joy and significance: “The answer is blowin´ in the wind”.