by Karl Widerquist | Jan 25, 2013 | News
The German Pirate Party, which has endorsed BIG in recent elections, has made it official by producing an official economic program including a basic income guarantee. According to the program, “For us, work is not just a commodity, but also always the personal effort of an individual. Therefore, it is an imperative of human dignity that every human is free to decide what career they want to pursue and what work they want to accept, but also, that this effort is appreciated correspondingly. The technological development allows that not every monotone, little meaningful or even dangerous task must be done by human hands. We see this as a great step forward that we welcome and want to advance further. Therefore, we consider the pursuit of absolute full employment as neither timely nor socially desirable. Instead, we want to commit ourselves to ensuring that all humans receive a just part of the overall prosperity and will for this purpose examine the introduction of a unconditional basic income guarantee.” The program was adopted at the party convention on November 24-25, 2012 in Bochum, Germany.
For more on the Pirate Party’s economic program (in English), go to:
https://en.thecitizen.de/2012/11/27/the-departure-from-the-dogma-work-pirate-party/
by Yannick Vanderborght | Jan 18, 2013 | News
The case of Ralph Boes has gained a lot of public attention in Germany recently. Boes, a longtime beneficiary of the German social support system “ALG-II” – also known as “HartzIV”–and an activist against the sanctions of this system, provoked the responsible German state agency until he was sanctioned at the beginning of November. His benefits were reduced by 90 percent, from €374.00 per month to only €37.40 per month. With only this much left, he saw himself as forced to starve.
Boes refused any private help in order to demonstrate the consequences of the sanctions policy. In 2012, Germany imposed more than 1,000,000 sanctions. This number represents an increase of about 38 percent compared to 2009. In more than two-thirds of these cases, the reason for the sanction is failure to appear.
After 26 days, the authority recognized a formal error, and Boes received the full amount of his benefits again.
More information about Boes can be found here:
https://wir-sind-boes.de/presse.html
More information about rising sanctions can be found here:
https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/neuer-rekord-jobcenter-verhaengen-mehr-als-eine-million-hartz-iv-sanktionen-1.1527783
An article about Boes in English can be found here:
https://www.vice.com/read/hunger-strike-against-the-welfare-state
by Citizens' Income Trust | Jan 7, 2013 | Opinion
BIEN now stands for ‘Basic Income Earth Network’. Once every two years BIEN holds a congress, and this year’s showed just how appropriate the name now is and how inappropriate it would be to still call it the ‘Basic Income European Network’. There were participants from South Africa, Namibia, India, Japan, South Korea, the United States, Canada, Latin America, and numerous European countries. Over three hundred in all gathered for forty-eight hours of plenary sessions, workshops and panels: often six different workshops and panels at one time, with three or four speakers each, to enable all of the papers to be delivered and discussed.
The congress was titled ‘Pathways to a Basic Income’. There was a sort of pattern to the timetable. Friday’s sessions were largely on the current state of the debate, Saturday on routes towards implementation of a Citizen’s Income, and Sunday on a Citizen’s Income’s relationships with such vital themes as ecology, rights, justice, and democracy: but nothing is that tidy, and each day contained a wide diversity of presentations and discussions touching on all of those areas.
The high point was a set of presentations by Guy Standing and representatives of India’s Self Employed Workers Association on the Indian Universal Cash Transfers pilot project and on some of the interim results. Of all of the sessions that I attended this one got by far the longest applause. The other high point, though a rather lower key presentation, was the significant story of Iran’s Citizen’s Income told by Hamid Tabatabai during one of the panel sessions.
The Congress was a quite inspiring mixture of the visionary and the realistic, of the broad-brush and the detailed, of the theoretical and the practical, and Germany’s Netzwerk Grundeinkommen (Basic Income Network) is to be congratulated on organising such a highly successful event.
by Karl Widerquist | Jan 2, 2013 | Opinion, The Indepentarian
Book review of Irrweg Grundeinkommen: Die große Umverteilung von unten nach oben muss beendet werden [The Basic Income Aberration: The Great Redistribution from Bottom to Top Must be Ended] by Heiner Flassbeck, Friederike Spiecker, Volker Meinhardt and Dieter Vesper (2012), Frankfurt, Westend
Heiner Flassbeck, Friederike Spiecker, Volker Meinhardt and Dieter Vesper wrote a book with two goals. Firstly, they are against the change of income distribution in the last decades (“the great redistribution from bottom to top”). The authors’ criticism of the increasing inequality is shared by many advocates of an unconditional basic income and opens them for the basic income debate. Nevertheless – and this is the second objective of the book – the authors reject the basic income.
This economic book focuses on the question of income distribution. Quite rightly, the question of distribution is thematicized as a central economic question that cannot be separated from the economic system as a whole. “The way of distributing income is crucial for the functioning of the economy. Distribution questions are deeply political-economic questions and cannot be answered satisfactorily without being set in the context of a promising political-economic idea” (p.9).
On one side, the authors separate themselves from a widespread attitude among mainstream economists. Many economists refuse value judgments on distribution policy since these are outside the economic discipline. However their political advice (with the argument of efficiency) often includes recommendations leading to expansion of inequality that are in no way neutral for distribution policy.
On the other side, basic income advocates are admonished to support their proposals with economic presuppositions and effects on consumer possibilities of broad sectors of the population, on demand and not only on value judgments regarding distribution policy. Personal income distribution (distribution among persons) decides over the amount of consumer spending, not functional income distribution (between labor and capital). A more equal personal income distribution safeguards economic stability, as the authors emphasize, and does not only strengthen social cohesion and social peace.
The book’s proposals on improving work income and containing the low wage sector would help to a more equal distribution. However more equality in personal income distribution can also be gained by improving transfer income. Steps toward an unconditional basic income could play an important part.
- Abolishing the sanction threat against Hartz IV recipients (social benefit for long-term-unemployed connected with a lot of bureaucratic controls and workfare-requirements) strengthens the negotiating power of workers in the low wage sector. The dominant pressure of job centers on the unemployed today forces them to accept low wages. A legal minimum wage can also be neutralized through evasion-strategies (like pseudo-independence or honorary contracts) if the negotiating position of workers is not strengthened. Therefore the pressure applied by the job centers must be reduced.
- Developing the child benefit to a children’s basic income would strengthen the purchasing power of families and improve the education chances of children of financially disadvantaged parents.
- Preventing old age poverty requires tax-financed benefits for seniors that cannot depend on gainful work or legal pensions. The less old age basic security benefits are tied to conditions and bureaucratic examinations, the more they will reach the target group and help in removing hidden poverty.
Every step at preventing poverty is also a step at invigorating consumer demand. Steps toward basic income can achieve that change of distribution demanded in the book. The authors who vehemently reject the basic income do not deliver any real counter-argument.
The main argument in the book against the basic income is the reference to the decline of gainful work incentives with an unconditional income. The real core of this objection is in the possible negative repercussion of a basic income on production that is limiting the amount of a possible basic income. At the same time there are possible positive effects like better protection against economic risks, strengthening and stabilizing demand and extensive improvement of framing conditions for value creation beyond the markets (in family work, honorary posts, unpaid activities in art, culture, politics, science, software development and so forth) which also have positive influence on the gainful working life.
On account of the incalculability of the economic effects, approaching basic income gradually is recommended. Individual steps like those named above can be evaluated to draw further conclusions. Steps toward a basic income can also be understood as a learning process. In its course, the economic possibilities and consequences of a gradually increasing uncoupling of income and benefits become clear. Steps toward a basic income like those cited above are especially recommended because they would contribute concretely to improving the life of those having the hardest time and to stabilizing the economic situation. That is certainly not a wrong way.
This book review was originally published in German in a longer form on November 15, 2012 by the BIEN’s German affiliate, Netzwerk Grundeikcommen at:
https://www.grundeinkommen.de/content/uploads/2012/11/kumpmann_rezension-zu-flassbeck-et-al_15nov2012.pdf. Ingmar Kumpmann is an economist in the Saarland Chamber of Labour and a member of the academic advisory for the Netzwerk Grundeinkommen
RELATED LINKS:
Basic Income Earth Network
https://basicincome.org
Hans Christian Mueller, “Economists Argue over Distribution Question, “ November 4, 2012
https://portland.indymedia.org/en/2012/11/420507.shtml
Karl Widerquist, “Opinion: Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income,” November 18, 2012
https://binews.org/2012/11/opinion-independence-propertylessness-and-basic-income/
by Karl Widerquist | Dec 12, 2012 | Research
According to the publisher Palgrave/Macmillan, “This exciting and timely collection brings together international and national scholars and advocates to provide historical overviews of efforts to pass basic income guarantee legislation in their respective countries and/or across regions of the globe. Contributing authors address specific substantive issues such as: who were the main people and groups involved in support of or against such legislative efforts; what were the main reasons for the success or failure of BIG-related initiatives to date; and what the prospects are for the future. Countries discussed include Australia, Finland, Germany, Iran, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain, the UK, and the US.” The publisher also quotes Greg Marston, who writes, “This book integrates careful research, political theory and practical insights in a way that no other volume on the idea of a basic income guarantee has yet done. Through engaging and thoughtful presentation of wide ranging national case studies, readers will learn a great deal about the global state of play. In an age of growing economic insecurity, the book provides a timely reminder of the possibilities income guarantee schemes offer for improving social wellbeing.”
For more information go to:
https://us.macmillan.com/basicincomeguaranteeandpolitics/RichardKCaputo
