by Jonny West | Jun 1, 2016 | News
On 18 May 2016, Mein Grundeinkommen raffled off four one-year basic incomes, with each winner receiving €1,000 per month for the next year. Since announcing its first winner in September 2014, Mein Grundeinkommen has announced a total of 42 winners.
Mein Grundeinkommen is a “micro version of a basic income,” which – according to its website, at the time of writing – has crowdfunded more than €520,000 from more than 44,400 people. The success of the Mein Grundeinkommen initiative has inspired similar crowdfunding initiatives in the Netherlands, Ons Basisinkomen, Switzerland, Grundeinkommen für dich, and the USA, My Basic Income.
Despite its success, however, the crowdfunding approach is unlikely to tell us much about the macroeconomic effects of introducing an unconditional basic income. For example, we won’t learn much about the effects of a basic income on aggregate demand, the labour market or inflation.
Nevertheless, these experiments can offer us “persuasive anecdotes,” which can teach us more about the effects of a short-term basic income on the employment, social participation and health outcomes of particular individuals.
Speaking to the LA Times, Michael Bohmeyer, Mein Grundeinkommen’s founder, said “the one thing that everyone tells us is that they’re able to sleep much better … But, ostensibly, not a lot changes: The students keep studying, the workers keep working and the pensioners are still pensioners. But there is a big change that takes place in their minds. People feel liberated and they feel healthier.”
So, what would you do if you were guaranteed €1,000 per month for the next year? What dreams would you dust off?
Mein Grundeinkommen’s next raffle will be held on 7 June 2016. For more news and stories check out the Mein Grundeinkommen website: https://www.mein-grundeinkommen.de/start
Credit Picture CC Raven Jelks
by Kate McFarland | May 20, 2016 | News
Inspired by the popular initiative for a basic income in Switzerland — where citizens will vote on a basic income on the 5th of June — the group Omnibus for Direct Democracy has joined forces with several basic income advocacy groups to launch a campaign for a basic income referendum in Germany.
An important difference between the two countries, however, is that Germany does not currently permit referendums at the federal level. The main goal of Omnibus for Direct Democracy is to reform the German democratic system so that citizens can introduce and vote on national referendums — as reflected in its slogan, “Wir wollen abstimmen” (“We want to vote”).
“The idea to combine the demand for the introduction of plebiscite with the demand for a basic income. Both demands share the same idea of man and trust in fellow citizens” explains Reimund Acker of Netzwerk Grundeinkommen (BIEN Germany).
More specifically, the campaign aims to collect 100,000 signatures on a petition demanding the right of referendum so that the German people can have the opportunity to vote on a basic income. The petition is to be presented to the German parliament on May 30.
As of May 20, the petition has obtained over 90,000 signatures.
In addition to Netzwerk Grundeinkommen, the Berlin basic income group Bürgerinitiative bedingungsloses Grundeinkommen e.V., Michael Bohmeyer‘s crowdfunding initiative Mein Grundeinkommen, and Götz W. Werner’s Unternimm die Zukunf all support the campaign.
The Omnibus in Bern, Switzerland.
Since March 18, when the campaign was launched, activists have made use of Omnibus for Direct Democracy’s iconic double-decker bus to spread information and publicity throughout Germany. The OMNIBUS visits about 100 cities per year to educate the public about direct democracy. Now it raises awareness of basic income as well.
The OMNIBUS is currently making its way to Bern, Switzerland, where it will be loaded with informational pamphlets from the Swiss popular initiative for a basic income. These pamphlets will be delivered to parliament along with the petition signatures at the end of the month.
On May 29 — the day before the pamphlet and signatures are to be delivered at the Reichstag building — the largest poster in the world will be brought to Berlin, where it will cover the Straße des 17. Juni, a maj
or street in the center of the city. This record-breaking poster, created by Swiss basic income activists, asks “What would you do if your income were taken care of?”
The presentation of the poster will be followed by a party featuring talks, music, and food and drink.
For news and updates, see the official website of the campaign: www.wirwollenabstimmen.de (german)
Omnibus featured image photo credit: OMNIBUS für Direkte Demokratie gGmbH.
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by Kate McFarland | Mar 23, 2016 | Research
Source: Springer
Economist Maximilian Sommer (Katholische Universität Eichstätt – Ingolstadt) has published a book-length investigation into a financially feasible basic income scheme for Germany, encompassing arguments for an unconditional basic income, implementation details, and anticipated consequences of the policy.
The model that Sommer proposes is based on a negative income tax.
From the publisher’s description:
“This book analyzes the consequences that would arise if Germany’s means-tested unemployment benefits were replaced with an unconditional basic income. The basic income scheme introduced is based on a negative income tax and calibrated to be both financially feasible and compatible with current constitutional legislation. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) the author examines the impact of the reform on the household labor supply as well as on both poverty and inequality measures. It is shown that by applying reasonable values for both the basic income and the implied marginal tax rate imposed on earned incomes, efficiency gains can be reconciled with generally accepted value statements. Furthermore, as the proposal includes a universal basic income for families, child poverty could be reduced considerably. The estimates are based on the discrete choice approach to labor supply.”
Free previews of the books are available at the publisher’s website.
Reference:
Maximilian Sommer, “A Feasible Basic Income Scheme for Germany: Effects on Labor Supply, Poverty, and Income Inequality“, Springer, 2016
by Albert Joerimann | Feb 14, 2016 | News
Daniel Häni. Credit to: The Establishment.
Within the past two months, the well-known German magazine Der Spiegel has published two comprehensive articles about Basic Income.
The December 25th edition of Der Spiegel contains an article that discusses models of Basic Income and the current popular initiative in Switzerland, as well as some calculations on the cost of introducing it in Germany, Finland and Switzerland.
The author, Florian Diekmann, distinguishes between two basic formats: a “humanistic” approach that lets people make a free choice on the base of a real income guarantee, and a “neoliberal“ model that would get rid of a large part of the traditional social security payments as well as the social bureaucracy. The Swiss proposal is presented as an example of the “humanistic” model, and the Finnish pilot in its current design as the “neoliberal” model. For Germany, following the Swiss model would result in a Basic Income of €1,500 per month/person and following the Finnish model €664 per month/person. (Currently, most German supporters of the Basic Income talk about a BI of approximately €1,000 per month/person.) All in all, Basic Income would cost Germany €1.2 trillion per year under the Swiss model, €530 billion under the Finnish model and about €800 billion for the level proposed by the German BI supporters. In comparison, the current annual amount of social expenditures in Germany is about €850 billion.
Diekmann also compares the proposed amounts of a Basic Income to the level of all incomes in Germany for the year 2011. For the Swiss model, the BI corresponds to nearly two thirds of all private incomes; for the Finnish model, in contrast, it is barely 30%.
On January 28th, Der Spiegel published an in-depth interview with Daniel Häni and Philip Kovce, the authors of the book Was fehlt, wenn alles da ist? (What’s missing if everything is there?). (See the book review on this webpage as of November 15th, 2015)
Philip Kovce
In the interview, Häni and Kovce emphasise that one of the core motivations for a Basic Income is the social transformation from alienated work into intrinsically motivated, freely chosen activities. They believe that, if provided a guaranteed, unconditional Basic Income, most people would continue to be active and work to create value, albeit on a radically different fundament. To achieve such a change, Häni and Kovce acknowledge that a long process will be necessary, but they stress that this process is one which has been initiated already, due to recent changes in working conditions and the evolution of the economy in the second, third and now the fourth industrial revolutions. Nobody can seriously expect the return to full employment under the conditions and in the form we experienced in the 1970s.
More information at:
Language: German
Zeit Online, “Digital revolution: The boss of Deutsche Telekom is in favour of a Basic Income [Digitale Revolution: Telekom-Chef Höttges für bedingungsloses Grundeinkommen]“, December 29th 2015
Giovanni di Lorenzo, “The difference between humans and computers will be lifted soon [Der Unterschied zwischen Mensch und Computer wird in Kürze aufgehoben sein]“, January 14th 2016
Carsten Knop, “A Basic Income is helpful for everybody [Ein Grundeinkommen hilft allen]“, Frankfurter Allgemeine, January 21st 2016
by Guest Contributor | Oct 28, 2015 | Opinion
Refugee support clothing depot (Hamburg)
by Rainer Ammermann
Much can be said about the possible links between the current refugee influx to Germany and the idea of unconditional basic income. Now, I want to highlight just one obvious intersection: thousands spend countless hours to build and maintain a support infrastructure for refugees independent from public services. They are not paid and they do in part work others might judge as stupid or heavy. They are driven only by the obvious need and the feeling to be part of a group or a movement of common interest. Although involvement in civil society activities in Germany is traditionally high, the challenge to support thousands of refugees and migrants at short notice shows once more the desire to work and to participate as a deeply rooted intrinsic and social value. With this in mind we do not need to worry about a lack of willingness to work once an unconditional basic income is implemented. But some have to worry that the jobs they offer may not provide the values necessary for real useful work.
One impressive project of refugee support is the clothing depot in a Hamburg trade fair hall. Within days and weeks it has become a well equipped logistics centre completely run by hundreds of volunteers. Of course, people in the core team bring in some professional experience, but no extra money drives them. Most volunteers in the store sort clothes, pack boxes and stack pallets. Some organize free drinks and food for the volunteers, others run and further develop the software used to process packages and orders, and so on. The centre is open 7 days a week from 9 to 9. New in this project is not the fact that volunteers work in a clothing depot, but the large scale of the project and that it is managed independently of established aid organizations with a fluid and self-organizing crowd of supporters. One can start working there without formal registration and without becoming a permanent member of a team or social group. Many people there work in anonymity apart from the first name on their chest.
I work there several hours about twice a week. I am impressed by the atmosphere of a relaxed but effective bustle based on freedom and mutual respect. Although I feel some kind of duty to contribute to this kind of community work (a socialist value), at the same time I enjoy the total freedom of choice each day to start and stop working whenever I like outside public service structures (a libertarian value). No formal accountability undermines my motivation while I can trust in the self-organizing crowd of people that the service is going on well in the time I focus on other things. I call this “my libertarian-socialist working feeling” (while this doesn’t fully reflect my personal political stance) and I feel it bears a huge potential for a more humane and effective world of work. May it stimulate somehow the inevitable way towards unconditional basic income.
Have some insights here and here.
Rainer Ammermann is an activist in the Basic Income Network Hamburg.
