by Cordelia Holst | Jul 5, 2017 | News
Organized by the Universal Income Project, the goal of the Create-a-thon is to spread awareness and raise support for the idea of basic income. Forty people attended the weekend-long event in March, including filmmakers, artists, entrepreneurs, technologists, songwriters, and activists.
The weekend kicked off with speakers from the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, the Insight Center, HandUp, and the City of San Francisco, the focus of their talks being inequality in society and how basic income could address these issues. After this first session, attendees were invited to pitch their project ideas to the group, work groups were formed and the scope for the work to be produced over the weekend was discussed. The teams worked in conference rooms with whiteboards and flip charts, face-to-face and through Slack channels. The weekend was filled with work sessions from morning to evening, with discussions, exchanges of ideas, and debates ongoing throughout the project processes, as well as on lunch and dinner breaks. The participants got to know each other better and shared diverse viewpoints on the most important issues in societies both in the US and around the world.
According to Shandhya, one of the organizer of the Create-a-thon, “These participants came up with over 20 project pitches, which coalesced into eight inspiring projects that ran the gamut from podcasts to public displays, and included a legislative scorecard as well as plans for a basic income board game.”
The Economic Security Project provided extra motivation by offering a cash stipend of up to $3000 to projects that would spread awareness and raise support for the idea of basic income. The Economic Security Project is “a two year fund to support exploration and experimentation with unconditional cash stipends”. Several of the weekend’s projects received funding for further development.
As Philippe Van Parijs, co-author of Basic income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy, highlights, “In the effort to achieve Basic Income in our society we will need Visionaries, Machiavellian Thinkers and Indignant Activists.”
The Basic Income Create-a-thon is a forum that can provide a framework for activists to gather and cooperate.
See interviews with participants in this video.
by Austin Douillard | Feb 15, 2017 | News
On January 23rd, Sean Kline, Director of the San Francisco Office of Financial Empowerment, spoke at a Questions & Answers event where he discussed his ideas for universal basic income (UBI) pilots in San Francisco, as well as other cities across the United States.
https://www.facebook.com/universalincome/videos/1841786812757686/
Kline was hosted by Jim Pugh, the co-director of the Universal Income Project, and they spoke at the Covo center in San Francisco.
“We’re at a galvanizing moment for cities to think more creatively about how they can generate revenue for really progressive policies,” Kline said. His speech focused on implementing basic income projects in cities in part because, “there’s a real appetite to do more at the city level.”
His focus at the city level is in part a response to the criticism of basic income projects: that they represent what Kline called a “Trojan horse that would or could eliminate other crucial social safety nets either in one fell swoop or through a paper cuts.”
Kline responded to this critique that we should not view UBI as a wholesale transformative policy that would immediately replace other social welfare programs. Instead, he spoke about a variety of “incremental paths” for UBI that could start small and grow. In this way, UBI could build on already existing programs that are already functioning and accepted.
To illustrate this point, Kline cited the Alaskan Citizen’s Dividend and the related Pension Fund in Norway, which both give a portion of oil profits back to the people. He said that even social security is a form of an income grant for a portion of the population. Kline claimed that a transition to basic income could build on these already-established programs and grow. “There are a lot of things that don’t have to sound quite so radical that we can build on,” he said.
Kline is currently searching for funding sources to implement city-level basic income experiments. The specifics of his proposals and their funding possibilities are still being considered and negotiated with potential funders. Currently, the Universal Income Project is funded by the Roosevelt Institute and the Citizens Engagement Laboratory.
More information at:
Universal Basic Income Facebook page
by Guest Contributor | Jan 26, 2017 | News
San Francisco is not launching a basic income pilot yet
By: Sean Kline, Director of the San Francisco Office of Financial Empowerment
There is a lot of interest in basic income, and whether it could transform income inequality. The Office of Financial Empowerment (OFE)’s interest in basic income is a direct extension of its broader concern for economic security and intergenerational poverty.
Never heard of the OFE? We are the folks behind Kindergarten to College, the first and largest universal child savings program of its kind in the country now serving 27,000 public school children; Smart Money Coaching, which delivers financial coaching to low-income people at 27 sites across San Francisco; Summer Jobs Connect, which equips youth with a bank account, financial education, and strategies to save during summer employment; Bank On, which helps low-income residents access safe accounts at responsible banks and credit unions; and policy efforts to fight predatory financial practices and help families build assets.
Given the powerful evidence for cash transfers, both domestically and internationally, the OFE recently began exploring whether a basic income demonstration in San Francisco could add evidence to policy debates about reducing income inequality and increasing financial security. Here is what action we are taking:
- Actively participating in the Economic Security Project
- Planning a convening of UBI experimenters in Fall 2017
- Seeking funding to conduct a pilot in San Francisco and potentially with other cities across the country.
- Designing basic income demonstrations to pilot test
The OFE has engaged in thoughtful conversations inside and outside of city government to understand what such a demonstration could look like and what type of new research would be most helpful to inform policy. The OFE is not embarking on any proposal at this moment, but continues to explore when and how to launch a demonstration. In 2016, the OFE joined a three-city consortium to submit a proposal to the MacArthur Foundation for $100 million to fund the first large-scale basic income demonstration in the United States. While unsuccessful in this funding effort, the OFE has continued to explore smaller research demonstrations of a basic income at a cost of between $5 million and $30 million.
Reviewed by Kate McFarland
Image: San Francisco, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Florent Lamoureux
by Kate McFarland | Jul 31, 2016 | News
A panel discussion about the effect of basic income on artists and the arts community was held in San Francisco on June 20. The discussion addressed such questions as the following:
- “What kind of impact would basic income have on the creative community?”
- “Are arts groups currently supportive of basic income, or even talking about it?”
- “What’s the best way to get creatives involved in the basic income movement?”
Participants included Alexis Frasz of Helicon Collaborative, Aaron Perry-Zucker of the Creative Action Network, Tania Ku Infinity Pictures, and Rebeka Rodriguez of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
A video recording of the panel discussion is available on YouTube.
Photo: “Painted Ladies We Love” from the Hearts in San Francisco art installation (2009); Wally Gobetz (flickr).
by Kate McFarland | Jun 27, 2016 | News
Former SEIU president Andy Stern, along with Natalie Foster of Institute for the Future, will be leading a discussion of universal basic income at the SPUR Urban Center in San Francisco, CA, USA, on Tuesday, June 28 at 6 pm Pacific Time.
From the event description:
National labor leader Andy Stern is one of the country’s leading thinkers about the future of work and jobs. In his new book, Raising the Floor, Stern concludes that the United States needs to consider what may be the biggest idea of the 21st century, a Universal Basic Income (UBI). Join us for a discussion with the author about how a universal basic income could work, and be paid for, in order to help all Americans.
Stern’s book, Raising the Floor: How a Universal Basic Income Can Renew Our Economy and Rebuild the American Dream, was published earlier this month to great publicity. For more background, see recent interviews with Stern in The Atlantic, The Guardian (and here), Yahoo Finance (video), Bloomberg (video), and CNBC (video), and a commentary written by Stern for CNBC.
For more information about the upcoming event, or to register, visit the event page at SPUR’s website.
SPUR Urban Center photo (2010) CC Anita Hart
