by Kate McFarland | Dec 9, 2016 | News
Launched on Thursday, December 8, the US-based Economic Security Project (ESP) — co-chaired by future of work expert Natalie Foster, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, and Roosevelt Institute Fellow Dorian Warren — has committed to donate $10 million over the next two years to projects related to exploring “how a ‘basic income’ could rebalance the economy and ensure economic opportunity for all”.
The goal of ESP, in the words of its press release, is to help Americans interested in basic income achieve the transition from “conceptual discussion to meaningful action”.
Stressing both the potential of basic income and the need for further investigation, Warren states, “We believe we can end the downward spiral for working families in America by providing a guaranteed basic income for every man, woman, and child – but the precise approach for implementing a cash benefit system needs additional research.”
Mission and Belief Statement
ESP released its Belief Statement at its launch, accompanied by more than 100 signatures from entrepreneurs, academics, activists, artists, politicians, and others who share the vision of the initiative (including Basic Income News editor Kate McFarland, as well as many people more famous than she).
We believe people need financial security, and cash might be the most effective and efficient way to provide it.
The time has come to consider new, bold ways to make our economy work again for all Americans. In a time of immense wealth, no one should live in poverty, nor should the middle class be consigned to a future of permanent stagnation or anxiety. Automation, globalization, and financialization are changing the nature of work, and these shifts require us to rethink how to guarantee economic opportunity for all.
A basic income is a bold idea with a long history and the potential to free people to pursue the work and life they choose. Now is the time to think seriously about how recurring, unconditional cash stipends could work, how to pay for them, and what the political path might be to make them a reality, even while many of us are engaged in protecting the existing safety net.
The undersigned commit to work over the coming months and years to research, experiment, and inspire others to think through how best to design cash programs that empower Americans to live and work in the new economy.
The ESP Belief Statement continues to gather numerous signatures online.
Grant Recipients
ESP has selected six initial grant recipients, to which it has already dedicated over $500,000 in total:
- The Center for Popular Democracy, a progressive advocacy group that is beginning to explore how to strengthen America’s safety net in ways that could lead to a universal basic income.
- The Roosevelt Institute, a progressive think tank that has recently released a report on basic income, and which is now undertaking more extensive research on UBI and cash transfers, including macroeconomic modeling, behavioral research, and public opinion surveys and focus groups.
- The Niskanen Center, a libertarian think tank that has published frequently on basic income and other cash transfer policies, such as a universal child benefit. The center plans to carry out policy research on various means of implementing cash transfer programs in the US.
- The Alaska Group American Center, which is fighting recent cuts to Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend, the unconditional cash payment to state residents that has been influential in much discussion of basic income.
ESP indicates on its website that it is open to funding a variety of projects — from scientific research to advocacy campaigns to artistic and cultural projects — and accepts proposals online.
Coming Next
ESP is preparing to launch a series of articles, written by project advisors and diverse other contributors, on themes related to the path to a basic income in the US.
Photo CC BY-SA 2.0 401(K) 2012
by Kate McFarland | Dec 4, 2016 | News
The U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, a non-governmental organization that promotes “programs and policies that cultivate creativity, empathy, and collaboration”, released a new platform on November 19, 2016 — aimed at protecting Americans’ right to culture under a Trump presidency.
The platform consists of 10 policy demands — from a public service jobs program to criminal justice reform to investment in arts education — including a basic income grant.
About the basic income grant, the USDAC writes (pp. 22-23):
[R]ising costs, falling spending-power, the uncertainty of the economy, macroeconomic policies that have placed corporate success above individual well-being. For artists and cultural organizers as for others, the current system mandates overproduction, often exacerbated by under-compensation. For example, existing subsid[ies] for artists operates almost exclusively on a project basis, forcing artists who apply for support to constantly seek novelty and conform to arbitrary deadlines rather than allowing work to evolve and emerge according to a more organic timetable. Competition for scarce resources is incredibly intense and hugely discouraging for those who don’t fall under currently favored criteria …
In virtually every field, decision-makers fail to prioritize necessary time for reflection, restoration, and conviviality. It’s a challenge to discern, integrate, and act on cultural development needs when competition for survival eats what could otherwise be time for creativity, connection, and pleasure. We long for a future in which overproduction and overconsumption will no longer distort our society, with a universal cultural benefit: the ability to live in balance with each other and the life of this planet.
In its abridged platform, USDAC emphasizes that similar challenges confront workers in many occupations and that the organization is not making a “special pleading for artists”.
USDAC proposes a basic income grant large enough to cover basic needs such as food, housing, and medical care, distributed in the same amount to all regardless of other income.
To fund the BIG and other reforms, the organization proposes taxes on advertising and financial transactions, as well as the sell of “social impact bonds” to private investors.
Read the full platform here: “Standing for Cultural Democracy: The USDAC’s Policy and Action Platform”
Reviewed by Dawn Howard.
Cover photo: CC BY-SA 2.0 Edith Soto
by Kate McFarland | Dec 2, 2016 | News
The Albert Shanker Institute — a Washington DC-based nonprofit organization that promotes research and discussion related to education, work, and democracy — will be hosting a conference on “The Challenge of Precarious Labor” on Monday, December 5.
BIEN cofounder Guy Standing, widely known for his writings on the precariat (the class of precariously employed workers), will participate in the first panel, “The Political Economy of Precarious Labor”.
Themes of other panels include “Precarious Labor in Labor Law and Policy”, “Organizing Precarious Labor” and “Organizing Academic Precarious Labor”. Overall, the conference’s stated aims are to “develop a deeper understanding of changes in the political economy of global capitalism that have led the increasing prevalence of precarious work,” share experiences among those involved in organizing precarious labor, from the service sector and domestic work to adjuncts in higher education,” and “discuss how to address the rise of precarious work through law and public policy.”
The event will not be streamed live; however, it will be filmed, and videos will be available after the conference.
See the following page for a complete schedule and more information:
https://www.shankerinstitute.org/precarious-labor-conference
Reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan
Photo Credit: Enno Schmidt
by Kate McFarland | Nov 25, 2016 | News
Karl Widerquist, BIEN co-chair and co-founder of Basic Income News, was interviewed on a TRT World program, The Newsmakers, as part of a special segment on poverty.
In the six-minute interview, Widerquist discusses poverty and inequality in the United States and argues that a universal basic income is necessary for freedom, addressing the question of whether it is fair to give money to those who don’t work.
TRT World is the international English-language TV channel of Turkey’s national public broadcaster Turkish Radio and Television Corporation. The Newsmakers is a 30-minute program aired multiple times daily. As the channel describes it, “With in-depth reports and strong, unfiltered debates – The Newsmakers examine the people and the stories that are shaping our lives.”
Stay tuned after Karl’s interview to see the artwork of Stephen Wiltshire, a British artist who can draw cities from memory after only briefly viewing them from helicopters.
Photo: Abandoned house in New Orleans, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Gilbert Mercier
by Kate McFarland | Nov 20, 2016 | Research
Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg, Professor Emerita of Social Work at Adelphi University, evaluates the relative merits of income guarantees and job guarantees in a recent article for the national US labor journal New Labor Forum (published by the Murphy Institute and the City University of New York).
The paper ends inconclusively (and with a Philippe van Parijs quote):
There are important drawbacks to both approaches. The UBI is expensive, inefficient and, in the United States, counter-culture. By contrast, the JG suffers from public denial of the magnitude of unemployment, its dependence on government expansion, and the enmity of powerful interest groups. Yet the serious problems that both strategies address impel us to continue to discuss, debate, advocate, agitate, modify, and perhaps find alternatives. As Van Parijs writes, “. . . seismic events do occur, and it is important to prepare intellectually for when a political opportunity suddenly arises.”
Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg, “Employment or Income Guarantees: Which Would Do the Better Job?” New Labor Forum 2016, Vol 25(3): 92-100
Download: https://njfac.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/NLFJobsIncomGuar.pdf
Photo CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Brian Dys Sahagun
