Utopie trifft Politik [Utopia meets Politics]

Handshake - Credited to ELUMN8

Handshake - Credited to ELUMN8

In Germany, the unconditional basic income (UBI) idea has been around for years, through political activists. However, its application seems utopian, thundered from critics all around the political spectrum. The author enumerates arguments against the UBI, while defending its merits.

Felix Werdermann, “Utopie trifft Politik [Utopia meets Politics]“, der Freitag, September 24 2014

Annette Miersch, "Ein Jahr lang Grundeinkommen [A year of Basic Income]"

From RBB Inforadio

From RBB Inforadio

A business man in Berlin, Michael Bohmeyer, starts on Wednesday paying a monthly unconditional payment of 1000 € to each of four people, raffled from a group of registrations. The money has been collected from a crowdfunding process and will be paid individually, during one year.

Annette Miersch, “Ein Jahr lang Grundeinkommen [An year of Basic Income]“, Inforadio RBB, October 1 2014

Berlin, Germany: Basic income experimentalism at the micro level

[Claus Offe]

Thanks to the initiatives of  29 year old Berlin-based freelancer Michael Bohmeyer, there has been a recent wave, probably unprecedented in its size, of media attention to basic income issues in German local and national media. What gathered wide attention is a project Bohmeyer started which can be seen as a remote relative to, or micro version of, a proper Basic Income (BI). What Bohmeyer shares with most proponents of the latter is one moral intuition: A person’s access to income must be unhinged from his or her prior market-tested productive contribution. His experiment is designed to demonstrate that people who receive income (of Euro 1000 per month for the modest duration of just one year) will still, even in the absence of any work incentive or “equivalence conditionality” attached, make an effort to perform useful activities – be it for sale in markets, be it as “free” services to communities.

Michael Bohmeyer, Mein Grundeinkommen

Michael Bohmeyer, Mein Grundeinkommen

Contrary to BI schemes, there is no legal entitlement of citizens to the transfer, but a random selection of recipients from a pool of applicants. Also, the income granted is not tax financed, but “crowd funded”, i. e. derived from voluntary donations of supporters and, hopefully, charitable foundations. Furthermore, there still seems to be some soft test attached which is to provide evidence (to donors and potential future donors, that is) that recipients are in fact doing something “useful” and respectable while enjoying their “unconditional” benefits. Finally and unsurprisingly, the number of “basic incomes” thus generated is miniscule, with currently just five recipients being served in Berlin. All the greater is the favorable media resonance highlighting the two astounding (if not outright “scandalous”) facts that there are in fact people out there who donate money without thereby purchasing an equivalent, and that there are also people who receive that money without stopping to engage in some kind of useful activity. It is this demonstration effect that may work as a mild antidote to deep-seated market liberal popular assumptions.

For more information (in German), see Mein Grundeinkommen [My Basic Income] at: Mein-grundeinkommen.de.

GERMANY: Someone will win a basic income for a year

Michael Bohmeyer, a 29 year old IT professional and basic income activist raises money for a project named Mein Grundeinkommen (my basic income) via crowdfunding, were people can win a basic income of 1.000 Euro per month payed for one year. Within only 22 days almost 500 people donated 12.000 Euro for the first winner to be drawn soon. Bohmeyer wants to find out how the winners will use the money and how it may make a difference in their life. The project has attracted a lot of attention in German media.

For more information (in German) see: Mein Grundeinkommen

For an interview in English with Michael Bohmeyer see:

Chris Köver, “A German Guy Wants to Give You a Bunch of Money for Nothing.Vice, Aug 14 2014.

Michael Bohmeyer, photo by Jannismayr.de via Vice

Michael Bohmeyer, photo by Jannismayr.de via Vice