![Roberto Merrill and Sara Bizarro, “Quem dá e torna a tirar, ao inferno vai parar? Um rendimento básico para todos [Who gives and takes away goes to hell? A basic income for everyone]”](https://i0.wp.com/basicincome.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/foto.jpg?resize=1%2C1&ssl=1)
by Andre Coelho | Apr 27, 2017 | News
This article was a response to another article, posted by well-known leftist politician Francisco Louçã, on the 22nd of February 2017. That article was critical of basic income, to which Roberto Merrill and Sara Bizarro now counter-argument.
They start by clarifying some aspects about the basic income experiment in Finland, in which no subject is expected to lose earnings, only to turn 560 € of those earnings unconditional. As for financing basic income in Portugal, Merrill and Bizarro suggest that distributing 450 €/month to every Portuguese citizen would cost 16.2 billion €/year if, after clawing back from taxes it benefitted 30% of the Portuguese population. Benefitting only 5% of the population would only cost an extra 2.7 billion €/year. They also refer other possible tax sources, like automation, financial operations and property.
Rebating Louçã’s conceptual objection that it is unfair to give a basic income to everyone and then, through taxes, clawing it back from the relatively richer, Bizarro and Merrill cite the example of seat belts in vehicles. This example is used to show that it does not make sense to target specific groups to get a basic income, when all need basic security – even if some already have it at the time being. That would be tantamount to just installing seat belts only in those vehicles that would have an accident.
More information at:
(in Portuguese)
Roberto Merrill and Sara Bizarro, “Quem dá e torna a tirar, ao inferno vai parar? Um rendimento básico para todos [Who gives and takes away goes to hell? A basic income for everyone]”, Público (online), April 4th 2017
by Andre Coelho | Apr 8, 2017 | News
Event room at Coolabora. Credit to: Graça Rojão.
On the 25th of March 2017, a meeting of the Fórum Cidadania & Território (link) took place in Covilhã, a mountain city in Serra da Estrela, Portugal. This regular gathering of individuals and institutions was at Coolabora, a local non-governmental organization (NGO), and apart from particular issues related to citizenship and territory, it was also dedicated to presenting and discussing basic income.
Fórum Cidadania & Território is a formal network of NGO’s and individuals concerned with social issues, development and non-discrimination in Portugal. Hence it represents a larger universe of activity than the strict number of people attending these meetings allows for. In this 14th meeting, organized and hosted by Coolabora, activists promoting basic income in Portugal were invited, in this case André Barata, André Coelho and Pedro Ferrão.
André Barata presented basic income as a natural outgrowth of social democracy, nowadays very much torn apart and distorted. According to him, basic income is justified not so much because automation in upon us, but mainly as a right of citizenship. Countless generations of human beings have created everything upon which we live today, and so a basic income is a way for every person to get a fair share of that heritage. André Coelho exhibited a few slides to explain how a basic income could be financed in Portugal, referring to a study offered by Miguel Horta. He also reviewed what he considers to be the advantages of basic income, over our current social welfare systems. Paulo Ferrão spoke of the next BIEN Congress, taking place in Lisbon, and called for participation in the basic income week taking place while the Congress is ongoing (25th through 27th of September, 2017).
After these points, the debate was opened to the audience, who took the opportunity to pose questions and discuss the traditional arguments against basic income (e.g.: disincentive to work, difficulty in paying for a basic income).
by Andre Coelho | Mar 29, 2017 | News
RTP3: Fronteiras XXI (debate panelists)
On the past Thursday, 15th of March 2017, basic income was discussed for the first time on a prime-time television program in Portugal, through the recently created channel RTP3.
The program, which ran for 1hr 30 min, was framed as a group interview and debate, moderated by journalist Carlos Daniel. The program included some related reporting and excerpts from other interviews. Four participants made up the panel, and the main theme of the discussion was automation and its societal consequences.
Manuela Veloso, a robotics researcher in the United States and head the Machine Learning department of the Carnegie Mellon University, was one of the panelists. Asked if automation will be good or bad, she first pointed out its inevitability. Machines are capable of capturing much more data than human minds cannot possibly manage to cope with in order to make decisions: people will have to rely on machines for support in decision making. She also argued that although machines will naturally replace some human work, other human tasks will be created with the increasing use of automation in industry and services.
Another participant was Carvalho da Silva, a lifetime syndicalist and researcher in sociology. Carvalho da Silva pointed out certain caveats when facing what many are calling a “technological revolution”. He said that we should not be deterministic about it (casting doubts about its impact on jobs), since ultimately decisions are political. He underlined that the entire situation must be contextualized and inserted into a crisis framework, where many more jobs have been lost than those estimated to be lost to automation. Like Manuela, he also highlighted the job creation potential of these new technologies.
António Moniz, a sociologist specializing in work and enterprises, and a researcher on the impact of automation in society was also invited. António pointed out that machines are demanding higher professional standards from people tasked to handle them. He relativized the question of job destruction due to automation, believing that there is no direct relationship between introduction of machinery and loss of jobs (although the numbers shown during the program clearly depicted elimination of jobs in large swathes due to automation).
Finally, João Paulo Oliveira, an executive manager of a large paper production company in Portugal, was also present. He alerted the audience to the fact that the adoption of automation is extremely fast these days, so that all politicians must be made aware of its effects on society. According to him, an important aspect of this transformation is education, which must be more in tune with demand. According to him, the marketplace will determine what the “jobs of the future” will be, and the education system must follow suit.
The program included short pieces and interviews, inserted between presentations by the panel. One of those segments was with Gabriele Bischoff, a long time syndicalist and president of the Workers’ Group of the European Economic and Social Committee. Shocked to learn that a company in Belgium already uses chip implants in its employees, she highlighted the importance of respecting workers’ fundamental rights and the need to provide them – especially young workers – with good quality, stable jobs, which can give them, dignified life standards.
Another segment featured Guy Standing, a lifetime researcher of economic and social issues; a professor and activist defending the basic income concept. He summarized the basic income principle and, when questioned as to how the Portuguese people can finance it, he clearly stated that “It’s a matter of fiscal priorities”. According to him, if, for example, such regressive practices as the systematic saving of banks in the past decade were eliminated and the money used for the benefit of all citizens, a basic income could have been already administered in Portugal. Standing also predicted that within the next five years some country will implement the basic income concept, which will lead other countries to gradually follow suit.
Guy Standing. Credit to: RTP3
During the program, simple graphics were shown, both for briefly explaining what basic income is and to report on the estimated number of jobs likely to be lost (and gained) to automation in the next 15 years. Notably, the next Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) Congress, happening in Lisbon on September this year, was also cited.
The conversation about the future of work naturally led into a debate about basic income. Each of the participants was directly asked what they thought about the idea and its anticipated consequences. Maria Veloso was quick to support it, although questioning its feasibility. She regards the idea as a freedom gaining instrument, in an age of relentless automation and ever-expanding learning opportunities. She also referred to its role as a secure financial platform that allows people to engage in activities not bound by economic viability, in such a way that work is aligned with what each person wants to do in life. Clearly against was Carvalho da Silva, despite his past as a syndicalist. According to him, basic income is against the work ethic, and he assumes that people will lose their motivation to work under that regime, hence also losing a great deal of their meaning in life. He also thinks that basic income is the perfect instrument for the far right political branch to push in neo-liberal agendas slashing the welfare state. On the other hand, António Moniz was more cautious, supporting the basic income idea in general but warning that its effects on the marketplace and especially on companies must be well understood. João Paulo Oliveira was not convinced by the basic income concept or its rationale, as presented by Guy Standing or his fellow panelists. According to him, basic income will just kill competitiveness as more and more people move away from work.
by Kate McFarland | Mar 7, 2017 | News
As previously announced in Basic Income News (and BIEN’s calendar), the 2017 Summer School in Political Philosophy & Public Policy at University of Minho (Braga, Portugal) will be on the theme “Philosophical Ideas for a Brave New World of Work”. The conference will take place from July 13 through 15.
A second call for papers for the conference has recently been released:
If you would like to participate, please send us an e-mail at bragasummerschool@gmail.com with your name and institutional details by 20 May 2017. If you would like to present your work to the summer school please send us a title and abstract of 300-500 words. The registration fee is 70 euros.
The conference is organized by Jurgen De Wispelaere (University of Tampere), James Hickson (University of York) and Roberto Merrill (University of Minho), and will feature keynote speakers Ruth Yeoman (Oxford University) and Lucas Stanczyk (Brown University/Harvard University).
For more information, see PHILOSOPHY OF WORK @BRAGA.
Photo: CC BY 2.0 University of Washington
by Andre Coelho | Mar 3, 2017 | News
On February 6th Paulo Pinto published a podcast on basic income for the Portuguese radio station Rádio Renascença. Motivated by the recent growth in interest for what is often considered the “radical project” of basic income in Finland, Paulo Pinto condenses all the available information about basic income and shortly interviews André Coelho, Basic Income News’s lead-editor and activist.
After presenting a possible definition of basic income, André cites a couple of problems related to the Finish experiment, namely the quantity disbursed to individuals not covering basic expenses in the Finish context, and only unemployed people participating in the experiment. He also clarifies that many criticisms are covert manifestations of lack of trust in people, who allegedly cannot be trusted with unconditional money.
Listen to the full conversation:
(Language: Portuguese)
Paulo Pinto, “Dinheiro grátis [Free money]”, Rádio Renascença – Economia das coisas, 6th February 2017
