Category: Basic Income

5 How do you stop the exploitation of labor?

Well, first of all, you establish the kind of social safety nets that are often dismissed by neoliberals and disaster capitalists and those they have duped as "government handouts to the undeserving."

First, we have to make the paradign shift within ourselves to recognize that subsistence and health care are basic human rights, along with education and decent water. Then, we have to make another paradigm shift, and recognize that the only people who benefit from cutting welfare programs are the so-called 1%.Because programs that enable people to refuse to work at […]

Full Post at www.patreon.com

Picture: John Devlin It’s the theory that connects everyone from civil rights leaders to American founding fathers, from left-wing politicians to titans of industry, a dream conceived in left-wing Academia, and possibly realised in Fife.

Universal Basic Income (UBI), the idea that everyone should be given a set amount of money each month, might seem like a money haemorrhaging fantasy, but it is gaining more traction in mainstream politics.

The concept is simple: a minimum amount of money is given to people to offset depressed wages and poor quality of life for many in even relatively rich countries.In developing […]

Full Post at www.scotsman.com

Edwin G. Dolan is an economist and educator whose writings regularly appear at EconoMonitor . The Niskanen Center is excited to welcome him as a new Poverty and Welfare adjunct focusing on Universal Basic Income research.

In recent post on EconLog, Bryan Caplan writes, “I’m baffled that anyone with libertarian sympathies takes the UBI [universal basic income] seriously.” I love a challenge. Let me try to un-baffle you, Bryan, and the many others who might be as puzzled as you are. Here are three kinds of libertarians who might take a UBI very seriously indeed.

Libertarian pragmatists Philosophical issues […]

Full Post at niskanencenter.org

In 1776, Tom Paine helped to start a revolution with Common Sense. Twenty-one years later he took the next step with a basic income proposal. His reasoning? Because everyone owned the earth in its natural state, we are all due its bounty.

Where are we going? To current opinion of the guaranteed basic income. Switzerland

Perhaps the one economic idea that appeals to the left and the right, a guaranteed basic income helps the poor and decreases government intervention. But still, voters in Switzerland rejected it.The Swiss proposal included a monthly basic income of 2500 Swiss francs (close to $2560) […]

Full Post at econlife.com

Residents walk in an alley in Dharavi, one of Asia’s largest slums, in Mumbai. The world’s second most populous country is considering cash handouts to people in an effort to eliminate poverty. India’s initiative comes in the middle of a cash crisis caused by the government’s crackdown on "black money."

The Ministry of Finance said it could replace the country’s welfare programs with the so-called ‘universal basic income’ which guarantees everyone enough money to cover their basic needs.

The "radical option" of universal basic income "may simply be the fastest way of reducing poverty," said the ministry. The assistance program will […]

Full Post at www.sott.net

The Economic Survey 2016-17 , released by the Union Finance Ministry of India has proposed a Universal Basic Income or UBI for 75% of India’s population. This income will amount to 7620 Rupees per year or INR 635 per month which the government will deposit into people’s bank accounts directly. This plan will require the government to spend something around 4.9% of India’s GDP and this money according to the Economic Survey will come from abolishing all the welfare schemes and subsidies that we Indians currently get from our government which amounts to 5.2% of the GDP. [i]

Yes, […]

Full Post at www.kractivist.org

I have posted before on the idea of a universal basic income which is looking to become more of a political reality all the time as politicians along with related think tanks around the world work together to consider what the consequences of such an income would mean on society. Since putting that post up there has been increasing news of different countries experimenting with the idea of a basic universal income. There was an excellent discussion also done in Basic Income: Prospects for a Radical Idea in a Transforming Welfare State for the country of Japan that highlighted […]

Full Post at welovecarbondioxide.wordpress.com

“No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come,” the former Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh famously said in 1991, alluding to Victor Hugo, as he announced the market reforms that are credited with improving the lives of hundreds of millions of Indians.

Last week, India’s chief economic adviser used the same language to laud a policy that promises to shrink poverty rates even further.

A universal basic income (UBI) – in its simplest form, the idea of paying every citizen a no-strings wage – was also “an idea whose time has come”, said Arvind Subramanian. Although in […]

Full Post at www.theguardian.com

Philippe Van Parijs will discuss his forthcoming book Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy.
Philippe Van Parijs is a professor at the University of Louvain (Hoover Chair of Economic and Social Ethics), a special guest professor at the University of Leuven and an associate member of Nuffield College, Oxford. He is one of the founders of the Basic Income Earth Network and chairs its International Board. His books include Real Freedom for All. What (if anything) Can Justify Capitalism? (Oxford UP, 1995), What’s Wrong with a Free Lunch? (Beacon Press, 2001), […]

Full Post at philosophy.stanford.edu

Yes, looks to me like that as well. However, the shoe has yet to be made fitting different feet. Different standard of living levels in different countries come to mind and many other things that may be required to make it really work.

If unemployed people are made to depend on UK Social Security or church-charity run soup kitchens alone, it will always have the smell of odour that results from an old-fashioned type of "charity" bundled with humiliation and arbitrariness. The answer here is a legally assured right.

A lesson to be learned from more recent church history (not alone). […]

Full Post at www.eslteachersboard.com