BIEN

The wave of basic income experiments in the last two years was a positive development in giving Universal Basic Income (UBI) some level of attention and political legitimacy in Western countries.

It is time to recognize the experimental wave is coming to an end.

Basic income activists in the next wave of UBI political discussions should push for policy changes in the direction of basic income. There are ongoing and completed trials testing cash transfers in countries with different stages of economic development. It makes more sense to build a foundation for policy changes as these results trickle out over the next few years rather than pushing for yet another experiment.

Interesting Engineering

The nature of work has changed dramatically since the 1950s.

In that glorious post-war period, work was primarily a man's purview, while women did so-called "invisible" work - taking care of children, maintaining the home and cooking.

It wasn't unusual for a man to retire 40 years laterfrom the same employer he started with. That employer picked up the worker's health and life insurance, and some employers even paid school tuition for their workers' children. There was a sense of continuity. 

Windsor Star

“How do we have freedom if we don’t have options to choose?”

Floyd Marinescu, one of the founding members of CEOs for Basic Income, asked the audience at TEDxWindsor this question Saturday afternoon during his talk at the Chrysler Theatre.

CEOs for Basic Income is a group of 120 Canadian CEOs, business owners, and controlling shareholders that support a universal basic income.

A new website was created, and just launched, to provide updated news and information about UBI (Unconditional Basic Income), with the goal of furthering the discussion about how UBI impacts purpose, identity, and dignity. It will convey content from general news and include original material from the editor-in-chief and UBI activist, Scott Santens. The website is called Basic Income Today.

Basic Income Earth Network

Last Saturday, May 25^th 2019, an event took place in Maricá, a city on the coast of the state of Rio de Janeiro, where the mayor Fabiano Horta (representant from PT, Partido dos Trabalhadores), vice mayor Marcos Ribeiro and the secretary of Solidarity Economy, Diego Zeidan, announced that, from July 2019 onward, 50000 citizens, a third of its 150000 inhabitants, will receive a Citizen’s Basic Income of 130 Mumbucas, a local electronic currency, equivalent to 130 reais, or US$ 32,5 per month.

The plan is to have all Maricá’s citizens receiving this unconditional cash, at least until the end of the present city government legislature.

Washington Post

Yolanda, an unemployed 40-year-old single mother of two, says it felt good to buy her daughter a birthday gift last week. 

The special purchase, one that she would not have been able to afford under normal circumstances, was made possible by the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED).

Yolanda, whose name we changed to protect her privacy, is one of 130 Stockton, Calif., residents who has been receiving $500 monthly since February as part of the guaranteed basic income program being piloted by the city and The Economic Security Project. 

Toronto Life

In February 2018, Jessie Golem, a freelance photographer in Hamilton, found out she’d been selected to participate in Ontario’s basic income pilot project. She felt like she won the lottery. The three-year pilot, launched by the Wynne government, was meant to provide 4,000 low-income individuals in Hamilton, Lindsay and Thunder Bay with a maximum of $16,989 per year per person (or $24,027 per couple).

Basic Income Earth Network

The Universal Basic Income (UBI) Lab Sheffield, a campaigning group working from the city of Sheffield, northern UK, has written to all the 84 city councilors in the region, as a move to have them support a local basic income experiment.

The main driver behind the initiative is to “ensure that nobody is economically left out, and that nobody lives in poverty”, in the words of Sam Gregory. This basic income experiment, as proposed by the UBI Lab Sheffield, would be applied in one of three ways:

Basic Income Earth Network

Stimulus to work

Richard O., 43, is a father of nine children. The couple and the eldest son, aged 18, receive a basic income. Richard paid school fees for his children to study and bought goats, $150 and $200 USD each. He also bought a cow for $250, which provides milk for the family. Now he wants a bull, which costs $300. Richard says basic income has encouraged him to work harder: “when there is opportunity, ambition grows”, he explains. “The benefit has created the possibility for people to dream of a better life.” Richard is dreaming.

The Conversation

Governments around the world are declaring “climate and environmental emergencies” to highlight the unsustainable ways in which humans, over a few generations, have transformed the planet.

We’ve made enough concrete to cover the entire surface of the Earth in a layer two millimetres thick. Enough plastic has been manufactured to Clingfilm it as well. We annually produce 4.8 billion tonnes of our top five crops and 4.8 billion head of livestock. There are 1.2 billion motor vehicles, 2 billion personal computers, and more mobile phones than the 7.6 billion people on Earth.