by Kate McFarland | Dec 2, 2016 | News
On November 20, Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that Joe Kaeser, CEO of the multibillion-dollar engineering company Siemens AG, has demanded a basic income.
According to the news report, Kaeser, speaking at the Süddeutsche Zeitung Economic Summit in Berlin, said that a basic income would eventually be necessary to protect workers who become displaced due to artificial intelligence and automation. Subsequently, many readers credited Kaeser with support for unconditional basic income (bedingungsloses Grundeinkommen), as endorsed by BIEN.
In later remarks, however, Kaeser clarified that he does not demand an unconditional basic income–as the Siemens Press Office tweeted on November 22:
Source: Siemens Press Office (via Twitter)
While Kaeser believes that the state must offset the hardships faced by those whose jobs are adversely affected by technological progress, he does not believe that the support must be unconditional.
Despite Kaeser’s own subsequent disavowal of UBI, the initial (and perhaps misleading) news report generated a surge of interest in the idea. Süddeutsche Zeitung itself–Germany’s largest subscription newsletter–followed its article about Kaeser with a week-long series on basic income.
One article revisited the ideas of Götz Werner, the billionaire founder of the drugstore chain Drogerie Markt who called for a universal and unconditional basic income of 1000€ per month. Others provided further commentary on Kaeser’s initially reported statement that a “kind of basic income” will be unavoidable in the face of automation.
In comments to Basic Income News, Ronald Heinrich of the basic income political party Bündnis Grundeinkommen described Kaeser’s remarks as a “tipping point” in German media coverage of basic income.
Reference
Max Hägler (November 20, 2016) “Siemens-Chef plädiert für ein Grundeinkommen,” Süddeutsche Zeitung [German]
Joe Kaeser photo CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 CSIS
by Kate McFarland | Nov 28, 2016 | News
A tech conference held in October in Berlin, Germany, included a panel on universal basic income, which featured basic income popularizer Michael Bohmeyer (Mein Grundeinkommen) alongside three AI experts.
The Data Natives conference, which took place in Berlin from October 26 through 28, featured a variety of sessions on data science, AI, machine learning, and related technical topics, as well as sessions on business in a data-driven age [1].
Amidst its panels and presentations on data science, software development, and business, there was one politically-oriented panel: “The Future of AI and Universal Basic Income”.
The panel discussion was moderated by Hans Uszkoreit, scientific director of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (who speaks about his own work in a separate session), and included three panelists: Abdourahmane Faye, a machine learning specialist who works on what advanced data analytics can do for business; NiMA Asghari, UAV applications expert at Drone Industry Insights; and Michael Bohmeyer, founder of Mein Grundeinkommen, a German non-profit organization that has given away dozens of year-long basic incomes to randomly-selected entrants.
Panelists discussed such issues as whether artificial intelligence really will destroy jobs, whether individuals with a basic income would lose motivation to work and help others, and whether it is accurate to extrapolate the findings of basic income pilot studies (including individual trials like those of Mein Grundeinkommen) to a society with a full-scale universal basic income.
While Bohmeyer, of course, is a champion of UBI, others on the panel hold less favorable views. Faye opposed the policy: expressing confidence in humanity’s ability to continue to create new jobs in a digitized, automated economy, he does not see a need for UBI, and he worries that a UBI would undermine work incentives. Asghari seemed to assume a more neutral territory, raising points both for and against UBI throughout the discussion.
Watch the four men speak from really short chairs in this complete video of the session:
[1] The author, being both fond of puns and a big fan the band Einstürzende Neubauten, would like to make special note of a session entitled “Einstürzenden Neudaten“.
Reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan
Photo: nHow (conference venue) lobby CC-BY-SA-3.0 Forster82
by Kate McFarland | Oct 9, 2016 | News
The International Peace Bureau (IPB) held its 2016 World Congress in Berlin, Germany from September 30 through October 3. This year, the congress included a panel discussion on universal basic income.
The panelists — who were also the organizers of this IPB workshop — included Juana Perez and Angel Bravo from the Spanish organization Humanistas por la Renta Básica Universal (“Humanists for a Universal Basic Income”), and Diana Aman and Ralph Boes of the Bürgerinitiative bedingungsloses Grundeinkommen (BBG), a Berlin-based advocacy group which celebrated its 10th anniversary at the start of the month. (BBG, in collaboration with other pro-UBI German organizations, has been campaigning for the introduction of a basic income referendum in Germany.)
The panelists described ways in which the implementation of a basic income would contribute to peace — for instance, by reducing or eliminating violence and social unrest caused by poverty, and by overturning the “inhuman system” of present societies that presently abide by the “biblical curse that says ‘By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread'”.
Founded in 1891, the International Peace Bureau has a long and distinguished history of advocating for a world without war and facilitating communication between peace societies worldwide. The IPB was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1910, and 13 of its officers have received the prize as individuals. At present, IPB has 300 member organizations in 70 countries.
The IPB’s main present focus, and the theme of its recent congress, is the reallocation of military expenditures by governments.
For details concerning the IPB panel on UBI, see:
Sasha Volkoff (October 6, 2016) “A workshop on the Universal Basic Income in Berlin“, Pressenza International Press Agency.
Reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan
Image: Doves at International Peace Day, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 United Nations Photo
by Kate McFarland | Oct 8, 2016 | News
Enough for All, an Attac Germany working group, has created a four-minute explainer video that presents several arguments for a universal basic income.
In English:
In German:
Enough for All has years of experience publicizing and promoting the idea of basic income.
Members of the group helped to form BIEN’s German affiliate, Netzwerk Grundeinkommen (founded in July 2004), and organized the first three German-language basic income conferences, held in Vienna (2005), Basel (2007) and Berlin (2008).
One ongoing project of Enough for All is its traveling exhibition “Basic Income for Beginners”, which was originally developed to display at the conferences. The exhibition includes 25 cloth banners with information about basic income, such as the non-randomly selected example below (see the previous link for the rest).
The “Basic Income for Beginners” exhibition has now been displayed in more than 50 cities.
From 2012 to 2014, Enough for All helped to run the (now closed) European Citizens’ Initiative for an Unconditional Basic Income.
Attac Germany members Dagmar Paternoga and Werner Raetz are regularly available to deliver lectures on basic income.
Attac is an international organization with chapters in 40 countries and over 1000 local groups. It opposes “neo-liberal globalization” and supports “the regulation of financial markets, the closure of tax havens, the introduction of global taxes to finance global public goods, the cancellation of the debt of developing countries, fair trade, and the implementation of limits to free trade and capital flows” (see its overview). National Attac working groups, such as Enough for All, are permitted to develop their own agendas without consultation or confirmation from the international organization.
“Enough for All” information provided by Iris Schmidt
Article reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan
by Albert Joerimann | Oct 5, 2016 | News
Activists from different currents of the Basic Income movement in Germany convened in Munich on Sunday, 25 September, to found a new political party, Bündnis Grundeinkommen (“Basic Income League”, called “BGE Partei” for short).
The party’s only objective is the introduction of an Unconditional Basic Income in the country. At present, 14 persons, representing 10 of Germany’s 16 federal states, form the party’s executive. Bündnis Grundeinkommen aims to take part in the elections to the German federal parliament in 2017. This will require the creation of additional sections in the other federal states as well as the collection of signatures that are required to allow participation in the elections.
Ronald Trzoska, a member of the German Pirate Party, is the initiator and the first president of the new party. (The Pirate Party, which acquired 2.2% of the votes in the federal elections of 2013, already supports Basic Income.) Trzoska and other founders have expressed confidence in their ability to have Basic Income discussed during the political process of the federal elections. They admit, however, that obtaining a seat in the federal parliament does not seem realistic at this time.
Links and more information (in German):
– BGE Partei (Facebook).
– Bündnis Grundeinkommen (Facebook).
– Laura Freisberg (26 September 2016) “Ihr habt ‘ne Partei, lacht mal!” BR Bayern.
– Sascha Liebermann (14 September 2016) “Deutschland bekommt seine allererste BGE-Partei” Freiheit statt Vollbeschäftigung
Reviewed by Kate McFarland
Photo: First Board of Bündnis Grundeinkommen
