This article discuss BIG, its growing political momentum in Germany, and the difficulty of getting it onto the mainstream political agenda.
Online at:
https://www.clubofamsterdam.com/press.asp?contentid=864
Germany chancellor, Angela Merkel, spoke out against meeting at a recent meeting at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. Following the recent electoral success of pro-basic income parties, such as the Pirate Party, participants asked Chancellor Merkel about the proposal. Merkel emphasized that everyone should earn their living by work and asserted that there is enough flexibility in today’s job market.
For more on her remarks at the Hertie School see:
Scholz, Kay-Uwe. Benzow, Gregg ed. (2012). Merkel’s Dialogue on the Future. DW, online at: https://www.dw.de/dw/article/0,,16007820,00.html.
In the springtime 2011 Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, started to talk with experts, practitioners, citizens and representatives of the civil society on how to deal with the challenges of the future.
During these meetings several times people wanted to know Merkel’s position on Basic Income. At 8th June 2012 Deutsche Welle, a German media concern, reported in English:
Chancellor Merkel used her answer to make a point against the unconditional basic income that some in Germany have called for. Everyone had to try and live off their work, she said, pointing out that generally, there was a lot of flexibility on today’s job market.
Already on 15th April 2012 the collection and election of topics for another meeting concluded. Among all of the 11,618 suggestions received, about 2 percent (approximately 270) demanded Basic Income in different descriptions. Susanne Wiest, who already submitted in 2009 a petition on Basic Income and who spoke at the German petition committee, also submitted her idea of Basic Income. Her suggestion came among the top-ten.
On 8th June 2012 Susanne Wiest wrote in her blog, that she received a letter from the organisation team who invited her to present on 3rd July 2012 her suggestion directly to Angela Merkel and to talk about it.
Link to the initiative “Dialogue on the Future” (in German): https://www.dialog-ueber-deutschland.de
Link to the article of Deutsche Welle (in English): https://www.dw.de/dw/article/0,,16007820,00.html
Blog of Susanne Wiest and her post about the invitation (in German): https://grundeinkommenimbundestag.blogspot.de/2012/06/grundeinkommen-im-kanzleramt.html
Some might know the tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes” by Hans Christian Andersen. The story is about how betrayers sell new clothes to a vain Emperor. As the betrayers insist, the specific qualities of the clothes are such that they could only be seen by the cleverest and bravest people.
Today, the times of Emperors and Kings are almost gone, rather the nation became the sovereign in democracies. Hence, some know the term “Leviathan” used by Thomas Hobbes referring to the biblical-mythological lake monster: A polity in the form of a state as a super organism whose almighty is invincible.
But the old clothes of Leviathan often seem like a tight suffocating corset of a relation web made by lobbies. That is why the relatively new Pirate Party in Europe demands politics be made more transparent. They claim to tie a new dress for Leviathan. Thus, a new web of relations and power emerges, but in contradiction to other parties, it should show sympathies and antipathies more transparently.
Before the Pirates also other parties appeared more or less successful with the same desire to make politics more different and better. The common purpose is to care for the welfare of Leviathan. In principle the whole political dispute turns out to be how and under which framework to reach this goal.
Obviously, the Pirates want to give the population a share to define this aim. Other parties, however, often leave this, figuratively spoken with Adam Smith, to the invisible hand of the market.
In my view, the popularity of the Pirates is based on the feeling expressed by a growing number of people that this invisible hand prevents them from participating in the common wealth. But this relates to the participation in the achievements generated by the whole society rather than to defining the welfare itself. Hence, it is for example comprehensible, why the Pirates demand for an Unconditional Basic Income: to enable an almost bureaucratic-free economic participation for all.
However, only a minority is interested in the wealth of Leviathan. The majority is rather engaged in dealing with their own well-being. As long as Leviathan does not prevent them from doing so, the wealth of this only abstractly imagined being is indifferent for them. Eventually they elected, in a representative democracy, deputies who should care about Leviathan.
The new clothes, designed by the Pirates, are not really an attempted fraud. Further they are an offer for the cleverest in the state to participate in finding solutions for existing problems. As long as the new relation web of the Pirates has no negative impact on the decision making process, it could help to cure Leviathan.
On 2nd June 2012 Katja Kipping was elected as party leader of “Die Linke”, the left-wing party of Germany. DPA, a German news agency, writes in a profile about Kipping: As long ago as 2004 she demanded a Basic Income – in a time, when nobody even thought about the success of the Pirate Party. (In March 2012, Johannes Ponader, also a known supporter of Basic Income, was elected as political secretary of the German Pirate Party).
Victor Grossman, an American journalist and author, who lived in East Berlin for many years, wrote some days ago for “Monthly Review” about Kipping: 34, a youthful redhead with an MA in Slavic Studies, American Studies, and Public Law, who worked her way up in the party, was elected to the Bundestag, and in 2009 became one of the party’s vice-chairpersons. Always a staunch advocate of a guaranteed basic income for everyone, she cannot be clearly categorized in either party wing. (source: https://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/grossman240512.html)
