In May 2022, Bernhard Neumärker gave two lectures addressing the potential of basic income in the climate crisis. His May 19 lecture was at the invitation of Students for Future Freiburg and was entitled “Climate Justice and New Ordoliberalism: The Case for Social Sustainability and Basic Income”. In his lecture, Prof. Neumärker shows how climate bonus systems can be designed as a partial basic climate income. He also demonstrates the extent to which net offset systems between CO₂ tax and basic climate income are ecologically and socially disadvantageous in terms of ecological visibility and incentivization when compared to a gross system with separate tax and transfer design. T, based on a German paper on Carbon Pricing and Social Inequality in Germany, he demonstrated that by having a per capita equal repayment of the CO₂ tax, one not only promotes fair redistribution and inequality reduction, but also achieves a higher socio-environmental target efficiency than with the usual means-tested social transfers. Watch this talk on our YouTube-Kanal.

On May 26, Prof. Neumärker gave a keynote speech at the 40th International Energy Workshop at the Konzerthaus in Freiburg. In his lecture “Decarbonization regulation by a tax-transfer system: The Carbon Tax – Climate Basic Income (CaTaBi) Scheme”, he presented his gross tax-transfer system “CaTaBi”, focusing on his governance approach of the so called “New Ordoliberalism”. Among other things, he showed to what extent only CaTaBi is politically strategy proof, while other uses of tax revenues always lead to the expectation of strategic manipulation of politics by interest groups (rent-seeking). In the ecosocial context of the climate crisis, one has to resort to ex post governance, which offers sufficient protection against unforeseen contingencies of climate development. Bernhard Neumärker, on the other hand, does not believe that tackling the climate crisis with statistical forecasts or scenarios ex ante is expedient. Instead, he argued for viewing the “environment” in terms of conflict economics and game theory as an adversary of “nature,” which would in fact react unfavorably to humans due to man-made climate and environmental damage.

In light of recent developments, Bernhard Neumärker drew a parallel between the climate crisis and the Ukraine war. Both crises would likewise reveal that “climate protection” and “national defense” as (global) public goods would only be taken seriously and sufficient investments would only be made if “protection” or “defense” were no longer only discussed in the abstract, but protection against an adversary/aggressor (be it “nature” or the Putin regime) was actively sought. The fact that Germany was only prepared to spend 100 billion euros on its military defense in a state of immediate threat clearly illustrated the underlying precautionary principle.

In his new paper: “Is a Penny a Month a Basic Income? A Historiography of the Concept of a Threshold in Basic Income“, Prof. Toru Yamamori examines the definition of Universal Basic Income under the question of a threshold. Based on its basic pillars: unconditionality, individuality, and universality, he discusses the advantages and disadvantages of a threshold and gives a historical overview of the history and different currents of the demand and definition of a Universal Basic Income. With this paper, he is the winner of the 2021 BIS essay contest in the Journal “Basic Income Studies”.

Without the (re)definition, do we run the risk of calling even one cent a Universal Basic Income when it is paid unconditionally and universally to every individual? What are the reasons and arguments for successively removing this threshold from the definitions? Toru Yamamori discusses why and whether we should reintroduce a threshold into the definition of a Universal Basic Income in this paper, which was awarded the prize for the best paper of 2021 by the journal Basic Income Studies published by De Gruyter Verlag.
The question of the definition of Universal Basic Income is a central theme of the FRIBIS UBI & Gender team, which explores the pillars of definition: universality, unconditionality and individuality from an intersectional feminist perspective. With his historical analysis of the meaning of a threshold, Toru Yamamori has created a starting point for further reflections on the definition of what we call Universal Basic Income from different situations, perspectives and locations, and what this Basic Income means for each of us.

Find the Paper here: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/bis-2021-0037/html

Jessica Schulz is the team coordinator of the Gender & UBI Team and interviewed Toru with respect to his paper.

How did you come to deal with this question of a threshold in particular?

To what extent is the question of a threshold value related to feminist questions about the unconditional basic income?

Prof. Dr. Toru Yamamori is a Professor of Economics at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan and Senior Academic Research Editor of BIEN (Basic Income Earth Network). His research includes the philosophical foundations of feminist economics and the oral history of the working class women’s liberation movement that called for unconditional basic income in Britain in the 1970s.

Michael von der Lohe, member of the FRIBIS team “Partizipation und BGE – ‘Narrative’ der Zukunft“, is again on the road throughout Germany with the Omnibus für Direkte Demokratie from April to November.

From 09-11 May, the initiative will be present on the square of the “Alte Synagoge” and invites on Wednesday, 11 May at 7 pm (Grünhof) to a lecture on the financing of the unconditional basic income and a question and answer session on basic income issues.

Place: Grünhof, Kreativpark Lokhalle, Paul-Ehrlich-Str. 7, 79106 Freiburg

Further information can be found here.

A recent lecture series at the University of Gießen (Winter Semeter 2021/22) took a look at “solutions for a just and more equitable economic order “. The series focused on rethinking the economy to achieve a more sustainable economic future.

Considering the topic, it is not surprising that Prof. Bernhard Neumärker was one of the speakers. As an ardent proponent of a New Ordoliberalism and the concept of social sustainability, Neumärker has been dealing with the feasibility of reforming the current welfare state for years. His Gießen lecture was entitled “Net Basic Income: crisis basic income as an entry point to resilient governance and welfare state reform”.

The Corona pandemic has aggravated already existing economic and social problems. Policies against the spread of the virus lead to a massive decline in earnings. So alongside the health crisis, many people have been plunged into a financial crisis as well. This is where Neumärker’s concept of a net basic income as a crisis basic income comes in. As an introductory model for resilient governance and welfare state reform, it could in the long term be transformed, step by step, into a fully-fledged basic income.

The Gießen lecture is in German, but you can find another lecture on Net Basic Income in English here.

The thesis that a basic income would have a positive impact on people’s participatory opportunities has been repeatedly postulated politically and discussed scientifically for some years now. Christian Greis traces the scientific debate in his sociological monograph “Zur Zukunft eines bedingungslosen Grundeinkommens” (On the Future of an Unconditional Basic Income), published in 2021, back to Ralf Dahrendorf’s reflections on a “guaranteed minimum income” in 1986. In the field of politically engaged art (theory), the entanglement of basic income and direct democracy can be traced back to the 1970s. Compared to the consideration of the UBI from the perspective of the concept of participation, the conceptualisation and research of the UBI as an economic-political ‘narrative’ represents an even more recent phenomenon. This is to be seen in the broader context of a remarkable general boom of the concept of narrative in contemporary Western culture: In various cultural fields such as politics, economics and science, there has been increasing talk of ‘narratives’ since the turn of the millennium. This mostly refers to narratives of the future that are based on crisis scenarios from
which concrete instructions for action in the present can (or should) be derived. The constellation that exists between basic income, (political) participation and future ‘narratives’ will be thoroughly examined for the first time in the planned anthology from both a scientific and an activist perspective. But it will also look at the history and the connection of these concepts to other fields. The volume will be published within the series of the Freiburg Institute of Basic Income Studies (FRIBIS). Contributions on individual links or individual elements of this constellation are also welcome.

Extended Deadline for submission of abstracts (max. 300 words): May 31st, 2022 to leon.hartmann@philosophie.uni-freiburg.de

Weitere Info und Kontakt / Further info and contact:
Leon Hartmann, M.A. – leon.hartmann@philosophie.uni-freiburg.de
FRIBIS Team Participation & UBI

The goal of the UBIE Athens Academy from Thursday 31 March to Sunday 3 April 2022 is to share knowledge, develop campaigns and foster networking around Basic Income in Europe.

UBIE offers a 4 days mix of seminars, workshops and debates around Unconditional Basic Income. For further information, please click here. The event is organized by UBIE in cooperation with Panteion University (Department of Social Policy) in Athens (the oldest University of Social and Political Sciences in Greece) and the European Citizens’ Initiative for Unconditional Basic Income in Greece, supported by the Freiburg Institute for Basic Income Studies (FRIBIS).

This will be a live event. If you only want to follow the evening debates, at the venue or via streaming, you do not need to register in advance. Simply keep an eye on their webpage.

Discussants and contributors at UBIE Athens Academy who are associated with FRIBIS are Claudia Cornelsen (Team Sanctions-Free), Julio Linares (Team NetFi) and Joy Ponader (Team Expedition Grundeinkommen).

After such a long time of Online Events during the pandemic, we hope all the participants in Athens enjoy the in-person experience.

In November and December 2021, philosopher and political economist Otto Lehto came to Freiburg as a FRIBIS visiting scholar. We asked him how basic income research has changed in recent years, what he had gained from his time at FRIBIS and about the research topics he hopes to focus on in the future.

Where does basic income research stand today?

“Basic income research has matured into a diverse, interdisciplinary field. More people than ever are now conducting top-notch qualitative and quantitative research. And valiant efforts are being made to harmonize economic, philosophical, and political considerations with each other. However, the subject tends to attract supporters of UBI more than those are who critical or neutral towards it, so researchers should be wary of motivational bias. There is also an excessive focus on short-lived RCT experiments and other forms of discretionary policymaking that, in my mind, undermines the viability of UBI as a long-term institutional reform of the basic human rights framework.”

What did you gain from your stay at FRIBIS?

“Freiburg is a lovely city. Aside from that, I valued my time at FRIBIS for three main reasons. First, I got to conduct research on Ordoliberalism in its birthplace. Secondly, I got to meet and work with many interesting FRIBIS scholars, including the Junior Research Group, and to conduct a series of in-depth discussions with Enno Schmidt. Thirdly, thanks to a shared passion between myself and Prof. Neumärker’s for J.M. Buchanan, I got to run a workshop on constitutional approaches to UBI, which hopefully will spawn more theoretical and empirical research on constitutional UBI.”

What will be the focus of your future work on UBI?

“There are three strands to my future work on UBI: 1) To study the link between UBI, social change, and “Permissionless Innovation”, i.e. the capacity of (poor) people to experiment and innovate from the bottom up in ways that contribute to adaptation and social flourishing.

2) To explore basic income models within the various schools of liberalism: Freiburg, Virginia, Chicago, and Vienna. 3) To explore the implementation and maintenance challenges faced by constitutional vs. policymaking UBI models in order to achieve and maintain institutional stability in a complex democratic society.”

Otto Lehto in conversation with Enno Schmidt: (Ordo-)Liberalism and Basic Income.

In an interview conducted by Enno Schmidt, Otto Lehto talks about the origins and theoretical foundations of liberalism, the Freiburg tradition of ordoliberalism and the extent to which the UBI is compatible with liberalism from today’s perspective.

Workshop on YouTube: A constitutional and contractarian perspective on Universal Basic Income

In September 2021, Otto Lehto organized a workshop for the members of the FRIBIS’ Junior Research Group, in which he discusses UBI from a constitutional perspective. (Recordings of parts of the workshop are now available on our YouTube channel.) In the first part of the video Otto Lehto talks about the importance of a constitutional and contractarian approach to the welfare state and basic income policy. In the second part, he uses James Buchanan’s constitutionalist UBI model as an example to present a constitutionalist, political economy perspective on the UBI.

We, the members of FRIBIS, would like to heartily thank Otto Lehto for his work at the Institute, from which we learned a lot, and for the wonderful time spent with him. We wish him every success on his further academic path and look forward to welcoming him back soon as a guest in Freiburg.

dm-drogerie markt founder and patron of FRIBIS, Götz Werner, has passed away

On 8 February 2022, Götz Werner passed away at the age of 78. He not only founded the Götz Werner Chair together with his wife Beatrice, but also established the dm-Werner Foundation, which makes the work of FRIBIS possible.

Towards the end of his life, Götz Werner’s efforts on behalf of Universal Basic Income increasingly focused on promoting academically sound UBI research. With the support of Freiburg University, the Götz Werner Chair of Economic Policy and Constitutional Theory, held by Prof. Dr. Bernhard Neumärker, was established at the University of Freiburg. FRIBIS was founded shortly thereafter and has since focused on the collaboration of academic research and civil society activism.

To quote Bernhard Neumärker on his very first meeting with Götz Werner and on GWP and FRIBIS:

“Götz Werner approached me in 2018 after a lecture I gave on Universal Basic Income from the perspective of “New Ordoliberalism”. At that time, the incredible momentum this was to have was neither foreseeable nor perceivable.

First, the Götz Werner Chair for Economic Policy and Constitutional Theory was established with the active support of Freiburg University. Then, in an energetic discussion between Götz Werner and the former rector, Hans-Jochen Schiewer, it was decided to establish and generously fund the Freiburg Institute for Basic Income Studies. What has emerged along the way is an interdisciplinary research institute that directly involves civil society actors around Basic Income issues. Thanks to his tireless and innovative efforts, Götz Werner achieved his life’s work, from which both FRIBIS and GWP benefit substantially and from which we all continue to learn.

Personally, I am grateful to Götz Werner for perceiving the core of basic income research from within the regulatory tradition of Freiburg University. I believe it is our task to successfully continue the academic research and socio-political work around Universal Basic Income and to commemorate Götz Werner’s memory in this way.”

Götz Werner’s Understanding of Universal Basic Income

Götz Werner’s tireless commitment to the principles and vision of Universal Basic Income and his entrepreneurial endeavours went hand in hand. His unique way of running a business has won many awards. Indeed, the German newspaper TAZ dubbed him “The Good Giant.” His words and deeds, his ideals and the way he lived his life were not at odds with each other. What he said about his view of humanity, about the task of companies and the essence of business, came alive in the “working community” among dm employees and could be experienced by customers on a daily basis.

For Götz Werner, a company was “a social-artistic cultural event”. Making a distinction between leisure and working time seemed absurd to him. For him, working time was synonymous with “life time”, which should not be turned into a commodity. The goal of the human being was “generating freedom”. For Werner, people were “never a means, but an end”. These insights stemmed from his own entrepreneurial practice and led him logically to the idea of a Universal Basic Income.

In the last years of his life, he expressed the following wish: that “my ideas will continue to have an impact as an entrepreneur and advocate of a Universal Basic Income and contribute to a world worth living in.” With the founding of the Götz Werner Chair