by Guest Contributor | Apr 21, 2022 | Opinion
The idea of Basic Income is catching on around the world as it is getting more and more support, especially after cash payments many countries paid during the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine.
A Basic Income is a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without a means-test or work requirement. This is the first phrase you can see when you open BIEN’s website. So where should states get money for it? For example, from natural resources, as Alaska Permanent Fund does, and from taxes including a tax on robots, carbon tax, as well as a tax on cryptocurrencies, etc. The view that the state should supplement the income of the poor has a long history. For example, one way to increase the incomes of the poor proposed by Milton Friedman is a negative income tax. The idea is quite simple: richer people pay taxes and poorer ones get some percentage of this.
Ukrainians receive financial aid in the amount of 6500 hryvnias (just over US$200) under the program “ePidtrymka” for loss of part of wages (income), work (economic activity), which are temporarily stopped because of military actions during the current military struggle in Ukraine. It’s just a one-time payment with several strict conditions, including a territorial one. The deadline for submitting applications was March 31, 2022. So, what should other people do after April 1? Why shouldn’t children, women, single parents, young people, the disabled, and the unemployed be taken care of? Every Ukrainian needs to be paid because of the economic collapse and losses of income.
But is $200 enough to help someone who lost a family, home, or job? Is $200 enough to help anyone start life over in Europe or in an almost destroyed country? If this person is gravely ill? What about mental health, which was destroyed, of children, women, and youth? Every Ukrainian needs to be paid at least 500 Euros every month at best for the war’s duration until normal life is fully restored. I believe these brave people deserve more! Ukrainian people should be rewarded with UBI forever. This will be the greatest social experiment in history as well as a clear example for other countries and peoples.
Not only thousands of Ukrainians but also thousands of Russians are dying because of the actions of the Russian authorities. Let’s remember the dramatic events in Bucha, Ukraine, and in other cities. The Ukrainian government suspects soldiers from Khabarovsk, Buryatia, the Far East, and others of committing crimes. These are depressed regions with low incomes and high unemployment, despite their vast territories and natural resources. Residents have little choice: either to serve in the army and security services or to migrate to richer regions of the country. So, these hungry soldiers saw that people in Bucha were living their normal comfortable life. Maybe that’s why they were so cruel? Of course, it’s hard for me to reflect on why they acted like animals. But I strongly believe that they wouldn’t invade another country if they were receiving a basic income.
The situation is similar in other Russian regions like Tuva, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria Republic, Altai, Jewish Autonomous Region. That doesn’t mean that in other regions the situation is better. Maybe just a little. Official statistics (according to the “new methodology”) indicate that there were more than 16 million people below the poverty line at the end of 2021 in Russia. According to the old methodology, there were more than 20 million people in need. Official Russian statistics are underestimated by two to three times, according to the experts. Anyway, what will happen to Russians after the war and devastating economic sanctions? Of course, I’m not making a comparison between “lost a job” and “lost a life”. However, in my opinion, very few people would participate in an unjust war if they had a basic income and a stable and prosperous life. Therefore, Russians also need a basic income. People would be critical of the propaganda if they have more opportunities.
Ukraine is a brave country that is fighting against Russia’s military intervention and is protecting the entire world from danger. Of course, the other countries support Ukraine. Ukrainians need to be paid basic income. I may repeat it forever. Basic Income has the potential to eliminate the need for war, and that’s why it is important to raise awareness of what Basic Income can do. Ukrainians need to live their calm normal life instead of hiding in their basements as they do right now. Millions of people were forced to flee Ukraine, many had to bury their children or parents in the yards. Nobody knows their feelings. I hope that nobody will ever do that again.
The war has affected the entire global community. Does the world forget the Chernobyl accident in 1986? Doesn’t the world read or hear about Russian soldiers in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant? Quoting a CNN report, “Although Chernobyl is not an active power plant, the sarcophagus above the reactor that exploded nearly 36 years ago needs to be maintained to avoid further radiation leaks. There is also a considerable amount of spent nuclear fuel that needs to be looked after”.
These miserable soldiers were ordered to dig trenches in that area, which is particularly radioactive. This zone right now is under the control of Ukrainian soldiers, but Russian soldiers may come back. This may be a bigger ecological problem than CO2 emissions for the whole world. What about the threat of Russian use of tactical nuclear weapons? Why do people worry about CO2 while so many people keep dying right now: young, old, children, men, and women? What could happen to the world after nuclear weapons are used?
Ukraine is a strong country. We are proud as well as terribly sorry about all the events that happen there. Crying and praying for it to end soon, to stop people’s unfair death. This is the whole world’s inexcusable mistake. We could have avoided so many deaths if a Basic Income had been introduced to the world. UBI will reduce humanity’s aggression and destroy the economic, political, and psychological causes of war.
Instability in the world is increasing. Food, gasoline, gas, and service prices are increasing all over the world, including in Africa and Asia. I know that heating prices are high right now in Europe. Soon it will be summer, but later fall and winter will come. The whole planet suffers from Russian military action in the center of Europe and is terrified at the thought of a world nuclear war. We should think about basic income today. No, that’s not right. We should have thought about it yesterday before these disasters. The 99% shouldn’t suffer from the decisions of the 1%. People need to be more independent from the government.
Article by: Irina Soloveva, Jr.
by Andre Coelho | Dec 18, 2018 | News
Picture, from left to right: Artem Demidenko (sociologist, psychologist), Nataliya Protasova (Board Chair of Basic Income Ukraine organization), Artem Kuharenko (Podolsk village council), Kateryna Drei (Head of Basic Income Ukraine organization)
After Pavlograd, there is another basic income experiment being assembled in Ukraine. This time it was announced, on the 15th of December 2018, by Artem Kuharenko, the head of the Podolskoe village council, in the Cherkasy region. Along with Natalya Protasova, who chairs the Board of the Basic Income social organization in Ukraine, Kuharenko informed that the pilot will involve all of the village’s inhabitants (550), over a two-year period.
This basic income experiment will disburse a regular, unconditional cash transfer of 200 €/month to all Podolskoe villagers. Funds are being collected, from budget surpluses and crowdfunding. Kuharenko, the youngest village mayor in the country, with only 25 years of age, aims to raise his village’ inhabitants standard of living, increase the attractiveness of rural life and bring in more people, especially young ones.
There is no information, at the moment, about how the experiment is to be conducted, namely if there will be a control group (e.g.: another village), or how recipients will be monitored (e.g.: measurements of income, social activity, health, work load, etc.).
More information at:
André Coelho, “Ukraine: Basic income experiment has started being prepared in Ukraine”, Basic Income News, December 12th 2018
Euromaidan Press, “Youngest mayor in Ukraine gives village a second life”, 20th May 2017
by Andre Coelho | Dec 12, 2018 | News
The City of Pavlograd, in Ukraine, has decided to perform a basic income experiment, in order to measure the effect (on the individual level) of unconditional cash transfers on the labor market, objective and subjective well-being, financial health, changes in mental and physical health, among other social indicators. This decision was made on the 29th of November 2018, the day when the Head of the City, Mr. V. Movchan, proclaimed: “The city administration is interested and supports the proposal of the social organization “Basic income” (Ukraine) on the joint implementation in [the] city [of] Pavlograd a pilot project for the introduction of basic income, the purpose of which is to ensure a decent standard of living for the city’s residents”.
The experiment is presently in the beginning of its preparation phase. A working group is being assembled, comprising elements from Pavlograd executive bodies, social society, sociologists from several countries, public organizations and researchers. The plan, for the experiment, is to disburse the equivalent to a 100 €/month to each of the 2000 randomly selected Pavlograd adult citizens (the average monthly salary in Ukraine is around 9000 UAH, or 286 €), for a 24-month period.
City officials have communicated that the City is not yet capable of contributing to the experiment’s financing, but will cover the immediate costs of communications and announcements, physical work spaces and guaranteeing crucial human resources to start the experiment assemblage. For now, the money for the cash transfers themselves is being considered as a fund-raising initiative among public and private charitable organizations in Ukraine, as well as foreign organizations.
More information at:
In Ukrainian:
“У якості експерименту дві тисячі павлоградців посадять на безумовний дохід”, дHIпPOГPAд, November 30th 2018
by Joerg Drescher | Jul 6, 2015 | Opinion
In general terms, power is “to make someone want what you want”. You can use hard power – physical force or punitive measures, such as economic sanctions – to achieve this goal. However, there is another way – you can appeal to the reason of those, whose behaviour you want to change, by rewarding (sometimes seducing or bribing) means. The latter is called soft power.
In this article I use the conflict between Russia and Ukraine to show how a basic income – a regular payment to individuals irrespective of their income – could strengthen soft power.
As some of you may already know, I witnessed 2013/14 the revolution in Ukraine. Last year, right after the revolution, Crimea was illegally annexed by Russia and soon after Russia-supported terrorists have started a military aggression against Ukraine in the east of the country. As a response, the European Union, the United States and several other countries have introduced economic sanctions against Russia. This was legally backed up by the General Assembly of the United Nations, when more than 100 countries voted to affirm the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine and made it very clear that the phoney ‘referendum’ in Crimea was illegitimate and illegal.[1]
However, a group of investigative journalists found out that the realisation of the EU sanctions is not controlled. Each member state decides on its own, whether to implement the sanctions or not. As a result, almost no assets of sanctioned Russian and pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians, officers and businessmen were seized as intended by the EU. Later, the Institute for Economy Research in Vienna conducted a study on how the EU economy could be affected by their own sanctions. The findings showed that in a worst-case scenario about two million jobs and a value added of 100 billion euros could be lost within the European Union, if the sanctions were, in fact, implemented.[2] On top of that, Ukraine is far from being the only problem in Europe. The euro crisis, the situation in Greece, and a swing to the far right are setting alarm bells ringing in the EU.[3]
Thus, an euro-dividend proposed by Philippe van Parijs[4] – a similar idea to basic income – would make the unemployment issue in the EU less dramatic, because it provides a social security net. Either proposal could solve the euro crisis or the situation in Greece, and also help stop driving excluded people to political extremists.[5]
Now you may think that basic income would rather strengthen hard power than soft power, since the EU member states would get an opportunity to sanction Russia without having negative effects on their own economy. Your way of thinking is right. However, basic income does also strengthen soft power.
According to Joseph Nye of Harvard University, a country’s soft power rests on three resources: “its culture (in places where it is attractive to others), its political values (when it lives up to them at home and abroad), and its foreign policies (when others see them as legitimate and having moral authority).”[6]
Taking these resources into account, a basic income could strengthen soft power, because it makes it easier for the EU to implement the foreign policy by imposing sanctions against Russia (legitimated by the UN) and, most importantly, by having a moral authority – as the EU would show it cares about its people and does not leave them economically alone with the effects of those sanctions.
This picture, which was at the barricades on the Maidan in Kyiv, shows that Ukraine wants to go with the EU instead of being dependant on Russian gas and adopting an authoritarian system like in Russia (picture by Ralf Haska)
Thinking back how the “Revolution of Dignity” in Ukraine started, it is obvious that the EU attracted Ukrainians with its culture and political values. When the former president Victor Yanukovych refused to sign a long-negotiated Association Agreement with the European Union, it caused deep indignation among many Ukrainians.[7] Even now, when Ukraine is war-torn and facing huge economic recession, to a great extent, due to the corrupt regime of Yanukovych, the EU is still more attractive than the authoritarian regime of Russia to most Ukrainians.
However, Ukrainians have to pay an enormously high price for their European choice. Beside the fact that there is an on-going military conflict in Eastern Ukraine resulting in tragic human loses, displacement and destruction of homes and infrastructure, they have to accept painful reforms, which decrease their income. They have to face inflation, increasing costs (mainly for energy), the devaluation of the national currency (hryvna lost more than 100 per cent from its value before the revolution) and unemployment (thousands of civil servants lost their jobs in the state sector and the jobs in the private sector are not secure).
A basic income could help Ukraine solve several problems – mainly related to corruption and social politics.[8] Ukrainians are not job-, but rather “income-less”: myriad volunteers have been helping and supporting more than a million internally displaced persons, the army, bereaved family members of killed or wounded civilians and soldiers all over the country. Even the most needy Ukrainians are willing to share what little they have to help and defend their country. The question may arise: what for?
If the EU is selling its moral values by caring more about the welfare of its economy and defending its assumed status quo rather than caring about the well-being of its people, it might lose its soft power by disappointing not only Ukrainians, but also its own people. Therefore, I think a basic income could strengthen soft power – by being attractive through common shared values and bringing back the end of the community of states to its origin: keeping peace within and among countries and in the world.
Sources:
[1] Samantha Power, answer at Facebook, approximately 2:30 minutes, 16. May 2015
[2] Video of Joerg Eigendorf (English, approximately 3 minutes), Die Welt, 19. June 2015
[3] “Strange Bedfellows: Putin and Europe’s Far Right”, World Affairs, by Alina Polyakova, autumn 2014
[4] Video of the lecture by Philippe van Parijs: “No Eurozone Without a Eurodividend” (approximately 1,5 hours), BIEN-Congress in Munich 2012
[5] Interview with Guy Standing (approximately 2 minutes), 14. February 2010
[6] “The Future of Power” by Joseph S. Nye, chapter “Sources of Soft Power”, PublicAffairs, 2011
[7] “Opinion: Basic Income and the Ukrainian Revolution” by Joerg Drescher, 30. December 2013
[8] “Opinion: Universal and Guaranteed Income? A Matter of Basic Rights” by Emanuele Murra, 30. April 2012
Further readings on soft power:
A Theory of Soft Power and Korea’s Soft Power Strategy
by Joerg Drescher | Mar 31, 2015 | News
After the crimes in World War II dignity became part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and of many constitutions. The Ukrainian constitution also contains a right to be treated dignified. In the German constitution the first task of the state is to respect and protect the human dignity.
But who or what is a state?
Georg Jellinek, a German political philosopher in the 19th century defined: state territory, constitutive people and state power. It is comprehensible, that a territory cannot treat somebody dignified, but people and the state power can do. In principle, the members of the state power are also part of the constitutive people, but they have another status with the task to fulfil what is written in the constitution.
Does this mean, only the state power is responsible for dignity in a state? Of course not! The state power can only define the framework wherein dignity is possible.
However, what does dignity mean?
The German word for dignity, “Würde,” is closely related with the word “Wert” – value. In former times it described the rank, the prestige or merit of a person. But since the time of the enlightenment the German meaning has chanced to an abstract moral value. Immanuel Kant, for instance, described dignity as absolute inner value, which cannot be compensated. Each human being is unique and irreplaceable. In principle, dignity means the unconditional recognition of a human as human. “Unconditional” says, that dignity cannot be purchased or reduced by a particular behaviour. (The case of Breivik in Norway is a good example, because he was treated with dignity despite his killing of 77 people)
However, dignity is related to a concept of human. But this concept is less connected to the question “How is a human?” “How to be human” (actions of a human), but rather to the question “What is a human?” in the sense, what makes a human a human.
A natural scientist might answer, that a human is a living being, which pursues metabolism within an area until its death. For that, a human has certain skills and attributes which could pursue him to search for reliable ways (like reading on Gundry MD reviews, for instance) so that he can provide this metabolism. This means, in the eyes of a natural scientist, dignity would be given, if a human has “dignified” conditions to pursue its metabolism: give some food, clothes, and a dwelling, that a human can live “appropriate to its species” and voila – a human is a human.
Scholars of the liberal arts, such as philosophers, would not be satisfied and want to find differences, which raise humans from animals.
One thesis is, that humans have unlike animals a conscious freedom to choose, which is almost independent of instincts. External borders of this freedom are given by physical laws – a human cannot do everything that it wants (e.g. fly in the sky or travel on water without tools). Internal borders can be seen in moral ideas – not everything that a human can do is allowed. This inner borders are built during life and they are influenced by the respective society. Thus, dignity can be understood as achievement of civilization: to see a human in a foreign human and to respect its personhood.
What possibilities do a state have to guarantee dignity?
If dignity is something that we learn, education plays an elementary role. This is why states decide on the main content of basic education.
If dignity is something which is connected with freedom, it is the task of the state to guarantee this freedom. For that purpose there are state institutions as for example the police.
If dignity has something to do with a human’s ability to develop as human by developing its potentials and skills, it is the task of the state to define such a framework, that each human can do so freely.
And in this area there is an idea: Each person should receive monthly a sum from the state, to be able to live. Work is divided from livelihood. This idea has different names – basic income, guaranteed minimum, citizen’s income and others. In principle this state payment can be seen as monetary equivalent of dignity. The payment is also unconditional and it differs from social help, while no (often “not dignified”) proof of neediness must be given.
This lecture was held on 30th March 2015 in Kiev/Ukraine at the international conference “Philosophy of humans as way of humanism and dignity.” After the so called “Revolution of dignity” in the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014 when several people were killed by state security personnel, the search for new solutions in Ukraine is very high.
