Category: Basic Income

Cashrelief.org , a non-profit organization based in New Delhi, India, plans to launch a two-year cash transfer program in a poor village in India by April 1, 2017. Like a basic income, the transfers will be unconditional and available to all residents of the village.

Pilot Design

Cashrelief’s planned two-year pilot study will examine the effects of unconditional cash transfers in a poor village in India. The cash transfers will be set at an amount just above India’s poverty level of 972 rupees (about 14 USD) per month for an individual, and will be distributed to households. For […]

Full Post at basicincome.org

Two major in-kind poverty alleviation policies in operation are the PDS and MGNREGA. (Illustration: C R Sasikumar) What Prime Minister Narendra Modi ’s speech of December 31 made clear was that India was firmly moving away from the anti-poverty policies pursued by all previous governments. The new approach, made possible by technology, is to get away from the Amartya Sen-advocated in-kind income transfers to some version of cash transfers.

Two major in-kind poverty alleviation policies in operation are the PDS and MGNREGA. Both involve largescale government involvement. The former has the government (Food Corporation of India) involved in procurement, storage, […]

Full Post at indianexpress.com

Indian government to endorse universal basic income ‘as way forward’, says leading UBI advocate

India’s Chief Economic Advisor has already confirmed country’s annual financial report will discuss free money
Click this image to show the full-size version.
India is a rising economy but a substantial proportion of the population remains in poverty Getty India is going to endorse a Universal Basic Income (UBI), according to a leading advocate of the system. The world’s largest democracy will release a report in January stating that UBI is “basically the way forward,” according to Professor Guy […]

Full Post at defence.pk

One needn’t spend too much time examining the current state basic income movement to deduce that pilot projects are en vogue this year.

Finland’s two-year experiment –in which 2,000 randomly-selected unemployed people will receive an unconditional payment of €560 per month instead of the country’s standard unemployment benefits–was launched on January 1. Several Dutch municipalities are also planning experiments , expected to begin early in 2017, in which existing welfare benefits will be replaced by unconditional benefits for current claimants. Meanwhile in Canada, the government of Ontario is finalizing its plan for a pilot study of a basic income […]

Full Post at basicincome.org

LONDON ― A groundbreaking pilot project launched this week in Finland. The government is going to give a randomly selected group of 2,000 unemployed citizens a monthly income of $587 with no strings attached and no need to report how they spend it. The project aims to test the feasibility of a program ― called basic income ― that’s worked in earlier pilot projects elsewhere in the world.

Basic income ― also known as universal basic income and basic minimum income ― is a modest amount paid individually and equally to citizens, without behavioral conditions. It has proven to reduce […]

Full Post at buzzjour.com

Reuters At least two recent news reports in the foreign press seem to suggest that the Indian government could soon consider paying the citizens a basic income. A 3 January report in Business Insider and a 4 January report in UK-based The Independent say that the Indian government could implement the idea of Universal Basic Income (UBI), which will make all citizens eligible to get free money irrespective of whether they are employed or not or have other sources of income.

Both Business Insider and The Independent cite professor Guy Standing, an economist who co-founded an advocacy group, Basic Income […]

Full Post at www.vccircle.com

(© picture-alliance/dpa) The idea of a basic income will hopefully be further developed, Kaleva writes: “The experiment should provide an answer to the burning question of whether a basic income will boost employment or not. The goal of a basic income is to simplify the social security system, to remove obstacles to motivation and to reduce the stifling bureaucracy that tends to lead to passivity. The relationship between incomes and social benefits is currently a complex one, where everything affects everything else and there is no incentive for personal initiative. … Hopefully the experiment being conducted by the social […]

Full Post at www.eurotopics.net

One of the most propulsive forces in our social and economic lives is the rate at which emerging technology transforms every sphere of human labor. Despite the political leverage obtained by fearmongering about immigrants and foreigners, it’s the robots who are actually taking our jobs. It is happening, as former SEIU president Andy Stern warns in his book Raising the Floor , not in a generation or so, but right now, and exponentially in the next 10-15 years .

Self-driving cars and trucks will eliminate millions of jobs, not only for truckers and taxi (and Uber and Lyft) drivers, but […]

Full Post at www.openculture.com

Finland Is Testing It, but Basic Income Could Break the Modern Welfare State

The country of Finland will give 2,000 of its citizens a basic income—amounting to €560.00/$587.00—for nothing. The rock band Dire Straits used to sing about Money for Nothing in 1985. But even in their interpretation, you would have to know how to strum a tune on a guitar before the money would come. Is basic income such a nutty idea as to cause economic collapse?

Not in Finland, which is one of the first to apply the “concept” of basic income. A lottery will determine the […]

Full Post at www.lombardiletter.com