by Guest Contributor | Jul 23, 2016 | News
The Government of Ontario is moving to undertake a basic income pilot project. In recent weeks it has been receiving expert information and advice, for example from Jurgen De Wispelaere (formerly on the Board of Basic Income Canada Network and now a member of its new Advisory Council). On May 26th De Wispelaere presented to the government’s Deputy Ministers Social Policy Committee.
Two of the most knowledgeable experts concerning the Manitoba Mincome experiment of the 1970s are its former executive director, Dr. Ron Hikel, and University of Manitoba economist and researcher Dr. Evelyn Forget. At the recent North American Basic Income Congress in Winnipeg, Dr. Hikel spoke about Mincome and lessons learned that could be applied to the Ontario pilot. I also recommend watching Dr. Forget’s appearance on June 13th on Steve Paikin’s program, The Agenda: the 17 minute video reflects Evelyn’s sweeping knowledge of the history and results of Mincome.
Another encouraging sign of the Ontario government’s seriousness behind giving basic income a try was its appointment last month of the Hon. Hugh Segal as the pilot’s special advisor. A trailblazer for basic income in Canada over the past 40 years, Mr. Segal will now “deliver a discussion paper to the province by the fall to help inform the design and implementation of the pilot….The discussion paper will include advice about potential criteria for selecting target populations and/or locations, delivery models and advice about how the province could evaluate the results of the basic income pilot” (source).
Ontario’s Premier, the Hon. Kathleen Wynne, has publicly recognized that Ontario needs to investigate basic income as an alternative to welfare. Among welfare’s many problems: its profound stigmatization of “clients” of the system. And on that, I recommend David Calnitsky’s fine academic paper exploring the non-stigmatizing effects of Manitoba Mincome.
by Rob Rainer
Basic Income Advocate and Member, Advisory Council of Basic Income Canada Network
by Michael Lytton | Jul 12, 2016 | News
Abhijit V. Banerjee. Credit to: Financial Times
On June 18, The Indian Express—an English-language daily newspaper, published an article about the Swiss vote on UBI. The piece titled “The best way to welfare,” was written by Abhijit V. Banerjee, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (His book—co-authored by Esther Duflo—Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, won the 2011 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award)
Banerjee says that although the Swiss voted against a universal basic income, polls conducted after the referendum suggest that the debate is not over. He gives two reasons, the first being the widespread concern, especially in the West, about the future of work. An increasing topic of concern is that absent a radical reassessment of the fundamentals of how our economy works, there could be an enormous population of permanently unemployed whose jobs have become superfluous by automated and intelligent machines.
Banerjee then says the UBI debate is still alive because our current welfare systems are fragmented, bureaucratic and overly complicated. He reminds readers that reshaping its social security system is the primary purpose of Finland’s basic income experiment, scheduled to take place in 2017–2018, an experiment he says that is ‘clearly relevant’ for India.
For more information on the Finland experiment, read the Basic Income News reports listed below.
Banerjee cites Renana Jhabvala, an Indian social worker who gained prominence through her work on behalf of women in the informal economy, and, with Guy Standing among others, co-edited Basic Income: A Transformative Policy for India (published by Bloomsbury in 2014). The book reports on the results of three basic income schemes piloted in India between 2010 and 2013, in which 6,000 individuals received completely unconditional monthly cash payments. The book was reported in a Basic Income News item, December 8, 2014.
A summary of results of the project was released on the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) website. On the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) website, Guy Standing reports on the main outcomes of the social experiment. The UNRISD also hosted a seminar on May 13th 2016, titled “Informality and Income Insecurity: Is Basic Income a Universal Solution?”. Seven speakers are also featured in videos as part of this event.
Jhabvala estimates that there are more than 350 separate welfare programs in the India. “Why not,” says Banerjee, “have one universal basic subsidy that covers everything (perhaps except health and education) and let people decide how they will spend it, rather than trying to target subsidies based on our imperfect knowledge of what people need and deserve?”
Credit to: Give Directly
The immediate benefits are reduced poverty and less red tape, enabling the bureaucracy to be deployed elsewhere. And potentially the poor might use their financial security to plan their lives more effectively and invest in their families and businesses.
Finally, Banerjee mentions another pilot project, announced in April 2016 by the NGO GiveDirectly, that will test a universal basic income in Kenya. The plan is to provide at least 6,000 Kenyans with a basic income for 10 to 15 years. The parameters of the study are that it generates unbiased and transparent estimates of impact, that it is a long-term commitment, and that it is operationalized within well-defined communities. Banerjee is among a group of academic researchers who will test the impacts of the experiment.
More information at:
Stanislas Jourdan, “FINLAND: Government Forms Research Team to Design Basic Income Pilots,” October 15th 2015.
Vito Laterza, “FINLAND: Basic income experiment – what we know”, December 9th 2015.
Tyler Prochazka, “Dylan Matthews, ‘Finland’s hugely exciting experiment in basic income, explained”, December 13th 2015.
Kate McFarland, “FINLAND: KELA has sent preliminary report to Prime Minister”, April 5th 2016
Give Directly website
Wikipedia, “Renana Jhabvala“, 16th May 2016
Wikipedia, “Abhijit Banerjee“, 20th May 2016
Wikipedia, “Poor Economics“, 26th March 2016
by Andre Coelho | Jun 26, 2016 | News
Hugh Segal (credit to: Basic Income Canada Network)
Ontario’s political leadership aims at economic growth and job creation. That is particularly clear in the most recent News Release, announcing that the provincial government has appointed Special Advisor Hugh Segal to “help inform the design and implementation of the pilot”. Mr. Segal’s involvement will be of a technical nature, such as giving advice on potential criteria for selecting subjects, locations and evaluation of results.
Conservative former Senator Hugh Segal has long been a basic income supporter, having extensively written about and been cited on the subject (a couple of examples listed below).
Ontario is also investing in education, as a part of a four-part major economic plan for the region. Other priorities are related to housing, in an effort to “help grow Canada’s economy in a clean and sustainable way”. Ontario’s leaders reinforce the need to help “more people get and create the jobs of the future”, although the relation between that objective and the basic income implementation potential effects is not clear yet.
More information at:
Ministry of Housing, “Social infrastructure spending strengthens communities and grows the economy in Ontario”, Ontario Newsroom, 21st June 2016
Ministry of Community and Social Services, “Ontario moving forward with basic income pilot”, Ontario Newsroom, 24th June 2016
Hugh Segal, “Scrapping Welfare”, Literary Review of Canada, December 2012
“Learn about basic income”, Basic Income Pilot Canada
by Guest Contributor | May 4, 2016 | News
Article originally written in French by Basile Durand (MFRB), translated by Henri Geist (MFRB).
Answering the meteoric surge of interest provoked by the Finnish proposition to experiment with the basic income, the MFRB organized a conference on March third regarding UBI pilot programs and the Finnish Embassy in Paris. This conference was aimed at promoting understanding of the Finnish proposals and its motivations as well as opening the debate about the possibility of starting UBI experiments in France as well.
The conference was organized around four speakers and centered around the basic income and its experiments. The speakers included Olli Kangas, director of the research department of KELA (Finnish Institute of Social Welfare); Martine Alcorta, Aquitaine Limousin Poitou-Charentes regional councilor delegated to social and societal innovation, who aims to test a basic income in her region; Arnauld de l’Épine from Ars Industrialis, an international association for an industrial policy of the spirit technologies (founded by Bernard Stiegler) who said he is in favor of a contributory income; and Jean-Eric Hyafil, co-founder of the MFRB (French Movement for a Basic Income).
This article summarizes the discussions and includes some tweets exchanged during the conference with the hashtag #rdbfinlande.
Finnish experiments will start in 2017
Finland is currently in the process of establishing definitions and studying the feasibility of a basic income experiment. To cope with the complexity of social protection and the risk of poverty traps, a debate on the establishment of a universal income has taken shape in recent years. An intermediate report showing four types of experiments is due to be published in the coming days. Then Finland will choose one of the four experimentation options, which will be presented in the final report this November. The goal is to start the pilots at the beginning of 2017, which will run for a period of two years.
The first proposal offers a basic income distributed to everyone without conditions. The second proposal is a form of unconditional RSA, replacing the current social minima benefit. The third option is creating a basic income through a negative income tax. And the fourth option is left open for now. The questions of the amount of the basic income, the number of participants in the study and the unconditional nature of the benefit are also still under debate. On top of that, there are some additional concerns that must be sorted out, including fear of constitutional litigation or residency requirements. The introduction of the basic income requires a total overhaul of the welfare system, and this generates tension with some groups in society, particularly labor unions, which are major actors in the current system.
In France, a change of paradigm is necessary
Quoting Amartya Sen, who wished that everyone improved their own abilities without being constrained to find a job, Arnauld de l’Epine insisted on the importance of the freedom of choice, referring to the Declaration of Philadelphia or the Community Charter of Fundamental Social Rights of Workers which states that “Every individual shall be free to choose and engage in an occupation according to the regulations governing each occupation.” Building on the report of the French National Council of Digital, introduced in January, which proposed to experiment and study the project of basic income in France, Arnauld de l’Epine then supported the idea of establishing a guaranteed income to deal with automation and the rise of unemployment. The association Ars Industrialis is collaborating with Plaine Commune (agglomerations community of Seine-Saint-Denis) to test a supplemental income targeting young people.
Jean-Éric Hyafil recalled the cross-party nature of the MFRB. In its charter, the MFRB promotes an unconditional basic income without impairing the situation of the helpless or jeopardizing unemployment allowances, retirees or health insurance. Thus, one of the MFRB’s proposals would be to implement a national basic income gradually. The first step could be to implement an allowance like the RSA (French Solidarity Labor Income) for children, then by automation, individualization and finally the universalization of the RSA.
All speakers agreed on the need to experiment with a basic income prior to fully implementing such a policy, mirroring the process in Finland and Netherlands. In France, the experimentation project in Aquitaine is still in its embryonic state. But the agreement signed between EELV (French Ecologists) and the PS (French Socialists) during the last regional elections included the basic income experimentation project. Martine Alcorta stated she needed to study the subject in order to propose an experimentation model. The settings are thus not yet set. Quoting Amartya Sen. “Wealth is the ability to choose your life”, Martine Alcorta showed us her willingness to complete this experimental project.
France could therefore use the Finnish proposal to build its own experimentation, adapting it to the French context. By raising the subject, submitting ideas and reporting the various proposals, this conference gave us the opportunity to highlight the growing debate about the basic income. The MFRB stays at the disposal of all communities that desire to think about this important Twenty First Century idea.
Watch the video of the conference online (with English subtitles): https://youtu.be/mp5h9klZ0gI
by Kate McFarland | Apr 20, 2016 | News
Fort Portal CC Enzinho83 (Flickr)
Beginning in January 2017, the non-profit organization Eight will be awarding a basic income to all 50 households in a village in the Fort Portal region of Uganda.
The two-year project will be the basis of a scientific report as well as a documentary film, Village One.
Eight (so-named because 8 euros a week provides a basic income for one adult and two children in Uganda) was founded by Maarten Goethals, who has 14 years experience in development cooperation, and director and filmmaker Steven Janssens.
More information, including a short video introducing the project, is available here.
Eight is also on Facebook and Twitter.
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