by Kate McFarland | Aug 6, 2017 | News
Prof. Dr. Helmut Pelzer, Professor Emeritus of Pharmacology at the University of Ulm, has passed away on July 14, aged 90. Pelzer is remembered as the inventor of the Ulmer Model, a mathematical model for calculating the design of a basic income.
In the 1990s, Pelzer’s work inspired research on basic income among faculties at the University of Ulm. The Ulmer model, which he developed in 1996, continues to influence the German basic income movement, especially the Initiative Grundeinkommen Ulm of which Pelzer was a founding member. To date, 15 scientific papers have been published citing the model.
Dr. Pelzer was also a member of the scientific advisory board of BIEN’s German affiliate, Netzwerk Grundeinkommen, and B(I)ENEFACTOR of BIEN.
His passing was announced on the Facebook page of Initiative Grundeinkommen Ulm, which posted the following note:
Shortly after his 90th Birthday (12 March 2017), the founding father of Initiative Grundeinkommen Ulm, Prof. Dr. Helmut Pelzer, slept peacefully this morning.
We will carry on his legacy by ensuring that his work gains more and more support in the 21th year of his “scientific justification for financing and realizing an unconditional basic income according to the mathematical-based Ulmer Model.”
Ute Fischer, Sascha Liebermann, and Thomas Loer have published an extended obituary on the blog of the initiative founded by Liebermann, Freiheit statt Vollbeschäftigung (“Freedom instead of Full Employment”), which can be read in full here.
Lauding Pelzer’s contributions to the basic income discussion, the three social science researchers note the uniquely versatile design of the Ulm Model: “In contrast to other calculations, Helmut Pelzer’s marginal transfer model was based on variable parameters. This makes the model particularly adaptable to design requirements, not only in Germany, but in the whole EU.”
Netzwerk Grundeinkommen also posted a short obituary on its website, concluding, “The Basic Income Movement as well as our Network mourn a scientist who fought passionately for the idea and proposal of a Basic Income.”
Thanks to Albert Jörimann and Ronald Heinrich for information and translation assistance.
Photo: University of Ulm, CC BY-SA 3.0 Jürgen Lehle
by Kate McFarland | Jul 20, 2017 | News
Earlier in July, Bündnis Grundeinkommen (BGE) was officially recognized as a national political party in Germany. The party is campaigning on a single issue: the introduction of an unconditional basic income for Germany.
BGE is now preparing for its official campaign launch event on July 29 in Berlin. The event, called BGE: Open Air, will feature a combination of talks and artistic performances.
DUNDU, CC BY 2.0 Kris Duda
Performers include the high-wire artists of One Inch Dreams (the team behind Alexander Schulz’s recent highly publicized high-wire walk to the summit of Scotland’s Old Man of Hoy)–symbolizing balance in society and freedom with a sense of security–as well as the “gentle giant” puppets of DUNDU. The event will close with a concert from a brass jazz combo.
Guest speakers include Enno Schmidt (co-founder of Switzerland’s basic income referendum campaign), Sascha Liebermann (Professor of Sociology at the Alanus University and co-founder of Freedom Instead of Full Employment), Michael Bohmeyer (founder of Mein Grundeinkommen), Ralph Boes, and Bernhard Neumärker (Professor of Economic Policy at University of Freiburg). BGE chair Susanne Wiest and vice chair Cosima Kern will also speak at the event.
BGE: Open Air will kick off BGE’s campaign for Germany’s federal elections, held on September 24.
More information, including a detailed schedule, is available on the website of Bündnis Grundeinkommen and BGE’s Facebook event page.
Edit (July 22): This article originally stated that Helwig Fenner would represent Mein Grundeinkommen at BGE: Open Air. Since this time, Michael Bohmeyer, the organization’s founder, has agreed to speak. Founded in 2014, Mein Grundeinkommen crowdfunds money to distribute in the form of year-long “basic incomes” to individuals chosen by raffle. To date, it has awarded 99 basic incomes.
by Kate McFarland | Jul 11, 2017 | News
The end of June saw the proliferation of rumors that a basic income experiment would be launched in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. While such rumors were inaccurate, a political coalition in the state has called to further research basic income.
The June 25th edition of the newspaper Flensburger Tageblatt, the daily newspaper of the city of Flensburg in Schleswig-Holstein, heralded the purported plans of the state government to introduce an experiment of basic income. The paper quoted Robert Habeck, Green Party leader and future minister of environment, as saying that “we want to test a basic income from the government side and propose Schleswig-Holstein as a model region.” It further claimed that a coalition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Free Democratic Party (FDP), and Green Party backed the demand for a test of a basic income.
The article fueled rumors, widely disseminated through basic income social media channels, that Schleswig-Holstein is preparing to launch a basic income experiment.
This announcement, however, was premature. Despite Habeck’s support, a basic income experiment Schleswig-Holstein remains at best a remote future possibility. In fact, the coalition agreement signed in between the CDU, FDP, and Greens does not call for an experiment or pilot study of basic income. Instead, calls only for the establishment of a “laboratory for the future” (“Zukunftslabor”) to research and assess new forms of social protection, a basic income being one.
Arguably, the coalition agreement’s proposed “laboratory for the future” does signal progress toward the investigation of a basic income in Schleswig-Holstein. However, the reality is far more modest than originally rumored.
No German UBI Experiments So Far..
Shortly prior to the first rumors of a basic income pilot in Schleswig-Holstein, the State Legislature of Hawai’i passed a bill that created a working group to study a universal basic income among other possible policies to provide the state’s residents with economic security. This generated a spate of media attention for basic income — but, as usual, not all reports were entirely accurate. Some news reports on the legislation, identified Germany (in addition to Finland and, soon, Canada) as a country that is already “testing” a basic income.
The claim may have originated in an article published in Business Insider and Futurism, which cites an article about the startup Mein Grundeinkommen as its source. This is misleading: Mein Grundeinkommen is a private effort, not a governmental one, and it merely awards year-long “basic incomes” of €1000 per month to individuals chosen by lottery. The startup’s work benefits randomly selected individuals while increasing awareness of basic income — and, in these aims, the project been highly successful. Mein Grundeinkommen has distributed year-long “basic incomes” to 94 individuals (and counting), and each drawing continues to generate media publicity. However, although anecdotes from individuals are sometimes presented as evidence regarding the effects of a basic income, the project should not be confused for an experiment.
Currently, no basic income experiment is being conducted in Germany — and, so far, no developments in Schleswig-Holstein have changed this fact.
More information on the alleged Schleswig-Holstein pilot:
Lea Hampel, “Jamaika-Koalition flirtet mit dem Grundeinkommen,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, June 27, 2017 (in German).
“North German state weighs up introducing unconditional basic income,” The Local, June 27, 2017.
Ronald Heinrich, “Grundeinkommen in Schleswig-Holstein? – Reality Check,” Huffpost, June 30, 2017 (in German).
Photo (Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein) CC BY-SA 2.0 Rüdiger Stehn
by Kate McFarland | Jul 9, 2017 | News
On July 6, the German political party Bündnis Grundeinkommen (“Basic Income League”) announced that it had established chapters in all 16 federal states of Germany and collected over 30,000 signatures–thereby fulfilling the conditions required for the party to participate in Germany’s parliamentary election on September 24.
Founded in September 2016, Bündnis Grundeinkommen is devoted to promoting a single issue: the establishment of an unconditional basic income in Germany. Unlike Switzerland (which voted on basic income in June 2016), Germany does not hold national referenda; thus, advocates launched a single-issue political party as a means to put basic income on the ballot. The party has not committed itself to any specific implementation model.
Bündnis Grundeinkommen has already been on the ballot in two state elections: in Saarland, where it received 0.1% of the vote (286 votes) in the election on March 26, and in North Rhine-Westphalia, where it received 0.06% of the vote (5279 votes) in the election on May.
Bündnis Grundeinkommen is likely to be one of 48 parties competing in the parliamentary elections.
Reviewed by Russell Ingram
Photo: Reichstag building, CC BY-SA 3.0 Cezary Piwowarski
by Kate McFarland | Feb 23, 2017 | News
Ronald Blaschke, a writer and advocate for universal basic income in Germany and Europe, has contributed to the Degrowth in movement(s) project at Degrowth.de.
In a series of 32 essays, Degrowth in movement(s) investigates the relationship of the degrowth movement with other social and political movements.
Blaschke’s introductory piece describes the idea of UBI and the current state of the UBI movement in Germany, with special attention to intersections between the latter and other social movements in Germany, especially (of course) the movement for degrowth. For example, basic income supporters participated in the 2014 Degrowth Conference for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity in Leipzig, resulting in the formation of a working group on basic income. Moreover, in May 2016, an international conference specifically on UBI and Degrowth convened in Hamburg, with the goal of fostering dialogue to allow the two movements to “learn about the relevance of the other and ultimately aim to identify points of intersection, common challenges and opportunities for cooperation.”
Blaschke explains several reasons for which the degrowth and UBI movements form a natural partnership. First, by mitigating economic insecurity, UBI removes a massive barrier to ecological progress. Degrowth advocates often agree that chronic economic insecurity “block[s] important transformation processes, including ecological ones.” Second, UBI is typically seen as promoting citizens’ participation in democracy, which it turn creates the groundwork for the transition to a more sustainable economy and society (which many believe to be attainable only through democratic means). Third, UBI could engender an economy based on solidarity rather than competition. Some parts of the degrowth movement hold that a solidarity-based economy (in contrast to a profit-driven competitive economy) is the only way to thwart excessive consumption of natural resources. Fourth, UBI enables individuals to exercise much greater control over their own time, and many in the degrowth movement maintain that “shortening the period of gainful employment and having more time available for other activities is a transition project on the way to a degrowth society.”
At the end of the piece, Blaschke provides a bibliography for future reading on the topic (with most pieces in German).
Read the full article (English version):
Ronald Blaschke (translated by Ellen Worrell), “Sustainable Ecological Transition is Impossible Without Unconditional Social Security for All People,” Degrowth in movements, January 24, 2017.
Reviewed by Dawn Howard.
Cover image CC BY-SA 2.0, swiftjetsum626.
