Online Event: Political Participation and Basic Income

Does a society whose citizens have access to an Unconditional Basic Income exhibit
more direct democratic participation? Could Joseph Beuys’s art and work concept
point in the direction of the need for a basic income? What do we hope to gain from
the “Expedition Basic Income” project when trying to implement subsidized basic
income experiments in cities and communities via direct democracy?

On June 18th 2021 at 2 pm (GMT). Duration: 11⁄2 hours. Public event, Language:
german

Andreas Urs Sommer is a professor for philosophy with a focus on cultural
philosophy at the University Freiburg.
Laura Brämswig is founder and co-leader of the project “Expedition Basic Income”.
Michael von der Lohe is the director of “Omnibus for direct democracy gGmbH”
and an expert on Joseph Beuys’ concept of art and work.

Host: Gudrun Kaufmann

To join the event, please send an email to contact@fribis.uni-freiburg.de, and you will receive the zoom link to the event via email.

Biral Seminar June 14th

BIRAL, a collaboration between the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), the Basic Income Research Group of the Gyeonggi Research Institute (GRI), the Jain Family Institute (JFI) and FRIBIS, invites to a roundtable discussion. Participants in this event will discuss messaging and framing techniques to build support for guaranteed income or UBI in varying political and cultural contexts.

Participants include Anne Price, president of the Insight Center for Community Economic Development; Barb Jacobsen, coordinator of Basic Income UK; Tatiana Roque, professor at UFRJ and vice president of the Brazilian Basic Income Network; and Catherine Thomas, PhD candidate at Stanford University and interdisciplinary graduate scholar.

Register here:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYtfu6prDkqE9JpzhjToyUBdJUeeNAhclfr

You can find a recording of the discussion on the Youtube channel of BIRAL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJFWz8Ba1d0

NABIG Annual Congress on June 17th to 19th

The 19th Annual North American Basic income Guarantee Congress (NABIG) will be held virtually between June 17 and 19, 2021. The event will be open to the public, its topic is “Basic Income: Knowledge, Activism, Policy”. More than 90 prominent participants from academia, activism, politics, and the arts will be in attendance. Further information at: https://www.nabigcongress.com/

You can find recordings of the contributions at https://www.crowdcast.io/nabigcongress

Online-Talk: Basic Income and Gender

What opportunities does the UBI open up specifically for women? What is necessary? Does a UBI correspond more to women’s understanding of and relationship to work, the economy and income than to male-dominated ideas?

Can UBI promote gender-justice and gender-equality? Might it transform gendered notions of work, value and care? What political, economic and social demands emerge from a focus on women’s voices?

With:

Almaz Zelleke, Professor of Practice in Political Science at the New York University in Shanghai, China. Almaz Zelleke specialises in UBI issues and specifically in UBI and gender. She is a member of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) and the North American Basic Income Guarantee (NABIG) Network and of USBIG.

Dr. Liz Fouksman, Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Social Justice at the Centre for Public Policy Research, King’s College London. Liz is an economic anthropologist. Her current research focuses on the grassroots views of the long-term unemployed in South Africa and Namibia on questions of redistributory justice, universal basic income and work. 

Renana Jhabvala, president of SEWA Bharat, the All-India organization within SEWA family (Self Employed Women’s Association), 1,8 million women strong. Renana Jhabvala is co-initiator of UBI for women projects in Delhi and of the large UBI project in several villages in India in 2013 in Madhya Pradesh.

Toru Yamamori, Professor in Economics at the Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan. His research is focused on feminist economics, economic philosophy and history of economic thought, and he has conducted an oral history on working-class women’s liberationists in the long 1970’s Britain. He is academic research editor of BIEN.

Moderation: Enno Schmidt, Research assistance at the Götz Werner Chair for Economic Policy and Constitutional Economic Theory at the University of Freiburg, Germany, co-founder of the Swiss UBI initiative and referendum about the introduction of UBI.

To register for the event, send an email to contact@fribis.uni-freiburg.de. You will receive the login details via email.

Discussion Panel on Stimulus Checks and UBI on Mai 20th

[from actionnetwork.org:]
In March 2021 US President Joe Biden passed a $1.9 trillion fiscal stimulus package. This included a third Economic Impact Payment of up to $1400. Most US residents qualify for Economic Impact Payments. All you need is a valid Social Security Number and an income of less than $75,000, if you earn more than that your payment will be reduced or phased out.

This is a popular policy, many people have started referring to this third payment as Biden Bucks. These payments, including the first of up to $1200 in March 2020 and second of up to $600 in December, have provided people across the US with vital income support as they cope with the fallout of the pandemic.

So, this is cash, paid with very few conditions almost universally across the US. A programme that is just a few steps away from a basic income.

Register for the panel discussion on Thursday, Mai 20th at 6 pm GMT between Natalie Foster, Almaz Zelleke (FRIBIS-Team UBIG) and Martin Sandbu.

Geoff Crocker on Post-Covid Economics

Geoff Crocker of the FRIBIS Team ‘Financing UBI’ (FUBI) writes in “Prospect” magazine, describing the complex way the state currently borrows money from itself to finance COVID aid spending, and how much simpler it would be if it consistently and openly created the money itself debt-free, and paid it out to everyone by means of a basic income – without danger of inflation. 
In fact, Crocker says, this is clearly taking place anyway in financing the lockdown, but it is clouded by traditional orthodox complex concepts, which make it inefficient, as well as unnecessarily creating risk free margins for intermediaries in the stock market.

The full article is available on the Prospect Magazine website.

Workshop: Ethics of UBI in a Changing Economy

On April 23rd, an online-workshop on the ethics of a Universal Basic Income is hosted by the King’s College London.

The workshop tackles the theoretical issues surrounding the normative justification(s) for UBI and evaluate the practical feasibility of UBI in comparison to competing policy responses from a political economy perspective. To register for the workshop, send an email to EUBI1@easychair.org.

Tender for Post-Doctoral Researcher in Bath, London

The Institute for Policy Research (IPR) at the University of Bath is seeking a post-doctoral research associate for the FRIBIS-Team Microsimulations.
The Research Associate will conduct microsimulation research for the group and organise its collaborative activities, under the direction of Prof Nick Pearce, Director of the IPR. Expertise and experience in using microsimulation models such as EUROMOD is essential.
The post is offered for two years in the first instance, with the possibility of extension in due course.The full tender is available on the website of the Bath University