To end poverty, guarantee everyone in Canada $20,000 a year. But are you willing to trust the poor? Nicole Gray, a 24-year-old single mother living in Victoria, feels like a "beggar" every time she has to go into a government office and ask for help to pay her bills. She has finished her diploma to be an office medical assistant despite having gotten pregnant as a teenager. But job losses and the difficulty of raising her son, now 7, on her own have made her income unpredictable. Meanwhile, she says, the system is suspicious of every request and doubts every word. There are hundreds of rules. She has been sent away because she was missing one document. But what if we gave Ms. That approach has had limited success: The wage gap continues to grow, and one in 10 Canadians still struggles below the low-income line.
The idea of giving money to the poor without strings is not new. It has been tested with success in other countries, and now it has re-entered the Canadian political conversation. Economists continue to bounce the idea around. An international success story. Two Memoirs Tell the History of the Alaska Dividend | Alaska Dividend Blog. A Review Essay Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend is closer to a basic income than almost any other policy in the world today.
The lessons of how it was created and how it became so popular and successful are extremely important to the basic income movement. Two autobiographies available now tell different parts of the story of the Alaska Dividend. One is by Jay Hammond, the governor who, more than anyone else, is responsible for creating the fund and dividend. The other is by Dave Rose, the first executive director of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation. Each book tells the story of its author’s life. But followers of the basic income movement will be most interested the inside accounts of how the Alaska Dividend was created and became the sound and solidly supported program that exists today. The events leading up to the creation of the fund began in 1955 when Alaska called a constitutional convention in advance of statehood. But the fund was still not fully secure from diversion. Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend: A policy ripe for export — Maine Opinion.
In April I had the privilege of participating in a workshop in Anchorage with seven other co-authors of our forthcoming book on Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend, the only example in the world of a universal dividend paid to all citizens based on commonly owned natural resources, in this case the oil from Alaska’s North Slope. The Alaska Permanent Fund was created over 30 years ago as a way to save oil revenue for the future and avoid the “resource curse,” the boom and bust cycle that afflicts many economies rich in resources. Shortly after the fund’s creation, with support from all political parties, Alaska instituted annual dividends to all residents — children included — that have averaged around $1,400 per person per year.
The dividend is very popular and has contributed to Alaska’s having greater equality and a lower poverty rate than any other state. Our book explores whether this model can be used in other places and be linked to other kinds of resources. TEDxBologna - Bruna Pereira and Marcus Brancaglione - Citizen Basic Income in Brasil - 3 Translation. Revenu garanti pour tous : quand la réalité devance l'utopie - Réduction des inégalités. De Milton Friedman à James Tobin, l’idée d’un revenu minimum garanti suscite l’intérêt de nombreux économistes depuis quarante ans, mais n’a jamais vraiment été appliquée, à part sous la forme de programmes expérimentaux... mais néanmoins riches d’enseignement. Une des expériences les plus récentes et abouties à ce jour de mise en place d’un revenu garanti a été impulsée par la Namibian Basic Income Grant Coalition (Coalition namibienne pour le revenu de base), dans un village de Namibie.
Durant deux années (2008-2009), les 930 villageois de moins de 60 ans d’Otjivero-Omitara, recevaient ainsi un revenu de base mensuel (BIG, pour Basic Income Grant) représentant l’équivalent de 9 euros par mois, sans aucune autre condition que celle d’habiter le village et alors qu’un tiers des Namibiens vivent avec moins d’un dollar par jour. L’économie locale dynamisée Comme le montre le graphique ci-contre, les chercheurs sur place ont observé une croissance des revenus des habitants d’Otjivero. Revenu de base : une énième utopie ? Revenu de base, revenu de vie ou allocation universelle… Et si chacun, indépendamment de son statut, de son âge ou de son activité, disposait d’un revenu garanti, de sa naissance jusqu’à la mort ? À première vue, l’idée paraît utopique et suscite de sérieuses interrogations. Pourquoi les familles riches en profiteraient-elles autant que les pauvres ?
Cela va-t-il favoriser « l’assistanat » ? Comment le financer, pour quels résultats ? Observer les expérimentations sociales réalisées à travers le monde tend à renverser les idées reçues. Ceci est la « version longue » d’un article écrit pour Bastamag.net, média alternatif et militant qu’il faut soutenir ! De Milton Friedman à James Tobin, l’idée d’un revenu minimum garanti suscite l’intérêt de nombreux économistes depuis quarante ans, mais n’a jamais vraiment été appliquée, à part sous la forme de programmes expérimentaux… mais néanmoins riches d’enseignement. L’économie locale dynamisée Ce n’est pas tout. Amélioration du sort des enfants. The Citizen’s Basic Income to Help the Transition to Democracy. Essay presented to UN Regional Commissions’ High Level Meeting on Transition to Democracy, Beirut, Lebanon, January 15 and 16, 2012 It is an honor for me to be invited to participate in this “United Nations Regional Commissions’ High Level Meeting on Transition to Democracy”, in this panel on “Balancing Growth and Social Justice”, concerning mainly the Arab Countries, held in Beirut, Lebanon, on January 15 and 16, 2012.
This is a highly relevant opportunity to exchange ideas about the experiences of so many countries in the five continents about how we can raise the level of justice in our societies so as to live with a sense of solidarity and peace. In his “The Idea of Justice” (Penguin Books, 2009), the Nobel Prize economist Amartya Sen tells us about the importance of searching for justice, of building democracy, of the government built by debate, as well as of the nature, the viability and the extent of the demands of human rights.
How Basic Income inspired Brazil’s social policy. A Town Without Poverty?: Canada's only experiment in guaranteed income finally gets reckoning. September 5, 2011 Canada's only experiment in guaranteed income finally gets reckoning by Vivian Belik The Dominion - Photo: Dave Ron "It would be a major contribution for the functioning of a free society to have independent news sources, free from corporate or state control, internally organized in ways that exemplify what a truly participatory and democratic society would be. I was therefore delighted to learn of the Dominion... an ambitious and impressive effort to fulfill this urgent need. WHITEHORSE, YK—Try to imagine a town where the government paid each of the residents a living income, regardless of who they were and what they did, and a Soviet hamlet in the early 1980s may come to mind.
But this experiment happened much closer to home. Until now little has been known about what unfolded over those four years in the small rural town, since the government locked away the data that had been collected and prevented it from being analyzed. Pas de revenu minimum garanti sans analyse. On a beaucoup parlé récemment des façons de calculer le taux de pauvreté. Une solution qui refait surface pour la combattre est le revenu minimum garanti. Des personnalités aussi différentes que Milton Friedman, Martin Luther King et Charles Sirois ont proposé et défendu l'idée.
Au Québec, elle sera sans doute présente lors des prochaines élections, puisque aussi bien l'Action démocratique que le nouveau parti de gauche en voie de formation y sont favorables. Pour certains, il s'agit d'un revenu universel inconditionnel remplaçant tous les programmes sociaux existants ou presque. Pour d'autres, c'est un programme parallèle. Une forme particulière de revenu minimum garanti est l'impôt négatif sur le revenu proposé à l'origine par Friedman en 1962.
Ce modèle propose un montant de base au-delà duquel un impôt est perçu et en deçà duquel l'État verse au contribuable le montant manquant. Un tel programme est-il désirable et faisable? > Retour aux Chroniques Les Affaires. INDIA: Basic Income Pilot Projects are underway. Although barely reported in the media, two basic income pilot projects are have been underway in India since January 2011. One pilot is being conducted in part of Delhi and the other in eight small rural villages in Madhya Pradesh. The Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) began planning and raising money for the rural project in 2008.
The Delhi government eventually joined in, working with SEWA to organize an urban pilot project in Delhi. Publicity about the project has been deliberately kept low because opponents have been using scare tactics to disrupt and to discourage participation in the project. Families participating in the urban project receive 1000 Rupees per month (about US$22). Guy Standing, professor of economic security at Bath University (UK) and an honorary co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network, helped to conceive and organize the project. MONGOLIA: Government takes steps toward implementing an Alaskan-style BIG. The coalition government of Mongolia is taking steps to make good on promises made in the 2008 election to introduce an Alaska-style resource dividend. Mongolia is a large, sparsely populated land-locked country sandwiched between Russian and China.
About half of its citizens still live as nomadic herders. Most of the land in the country is unowned: herders can camp anywhere they find a spot. But the country has recently discovered some of the world’s most valuable mineral deposits, including gold, copper, coal, and other resources. The Mongolian government is moving toward implementation of three methods to ensure that every Mongolia receives a financial benefit from that sale. The second method is to make every Mongolian a shareholder in the state’s mining enterprise. The third method is the creation of a Sovereign Wealth Fund designed after studying the operation of the Alaska Permanent Fund, the Alberta Heritage Fund, and other existing Sovereign Wealth Funds.
Poverty in Latin America: New thinking about an old problem. PLENTY is a seasonal crop in Ocara, a parched district of Ceará, a state in Brazil's north-east. Most of its inhabitants piece together a living from odd jobs and family gardens until September, when the annual harvest of cashew nuts brings relief like a long-awaited rain. Recently, the contrast between fat months and lean ones has become less marked, for Ocara's poorest citizens are now drawing a year-round stipend from the government. It is not much, 120 reais ($52) a month at most for a family of five or more. But for Maria Rita Albino da Silva, a “farmer” and cheerful mother of two, it makes the difference between too little food and enough. Mrs da Silva, along with most of Ocara's population, is a beneficiary of Bolsa Família (“family fund”), a scheme set up in 2003 that provides a basic income to 7.5m of Brazil's poorest families, or 30m people.
It is the biggest of a new generation of social programmes across Latin America, known as “conditional cash transfer” schemes (CCTs). BRAZIL: ReCivitas continues to expand private-funded BIG. ReCivitas, the Brazilian organization that distributes a privately-funded basic income in a small village in Brazil, now has a pro-bono partnership with the biggest tax law office in Latin America, Mattos Filho, Veiga Filho, Marrey Jr. and Quiroga. This partnership will give ReCivitas legal support for contracts for people who invest in the BIG Bank that supports the initiative.
The BIG Bank, started by ReCivitas only a few weeks ago, already has 500,000 Brazilian Reals (About US$310,000)—thanks to donations and investments from as far a way as Japan. A small part of the interest to this fund will support the Basic Income, but the amount of investments in the fund is already enough to ensure that the project is sustainable at its current level. The organizers of ReCivitas say that the fund is very conservative and ethical and that the fund manager is one of the biggest in Brazil, Credit Suisse Heding-Griffo.
Brazil: Happy families. Brazil's Bolsa Família: How to get children out of jobs and into school. Alaska Dividend Blog. Basic income is a regular unconditional cash grant paid to all citizens without any means test or work requirement. It’s often dismissed as a utopian idea. However, a basic income, or something very close to it, exists today in Alaska. It’s called the Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) or sometimes “the Alaska Dividend.” The PFD has been paying annual dividends to Alaskans since 1982 with no conditions except citizenship, residency, and the willingness to fill out a form. After following the Alaska Dividend since 1999, and I want to share six lessons that supporters of progressive economic policy should learn from what I call “the Alaska model,” but first some basic background.
In 1956, Alaska ratified a constitution recognizing joint ownership of unoccupied land and natural resources. The PFD is derived from the returns of the APF’s investments. The APF and PFD are not perfectly designed, but they are an important and innovative example of democratic wealth existing in the world today. 1. 2. Le revenu de base en Namibie : une alternative à l'aide au développement ? Nous vous présentons ici une reportage édifiant sur l'expérience du revenu de base en Namibie, publié le 10 août 2009 dans l'hebdomadaire allemand "der Spiegel" et traduit en français par nos soins: Pauvreté Au village de l’avenir Une idée fait le tour du monde : la faim et la pauvreté peuvent être combattues par un revenu de base, versé à chaque citoyen, sans conditions. Philanthropie ? Communisme ? Utopie ? Dans un village de Namibie, le revenu de base est testé depuis plus d’un an.
Il appelle ses travailleurs « ses cadets », leur paie 2 dollars namibiens et 21 cents à l’heure, le salaire minimum, équivalent à 20 cents d’euro, ainsi qu’un peu de viande et de lait. Environ 30 milliards d’euros sont injectés annuellement dans le continent africain, par le biais d’organisations caritatives, de projets d’aide humanitaire ou d’aides directes aux gouvernements. Monsieur et Mme Lüttwitz, fermiers à Otjivera Haarmann a de l’allure ; il porte une barbe de cinq jours, discret mais décidé. Les miracles du revenu minimum garanti en Namibie. Happy but unequal Namibia: On we go. A New Approach to Aid: How a Basic Income Program Saved a Namibian Village. The full, red Namibian sun is setting outside his living room window, the workers are returning to their corrugated metal huts, and Siggi von Lüttwitz is hitting a wooden table with the palm of his hand to explain why the experiment cannot work. "They all drink, you know," he says, smoking an unfiltered cigarette, "and if you give them 100 dollars, they'll just drink more.
" By "they" Lüttwitz means the people of Otjivero, a settlement adjacent to his farmland. And by "they" he means people who are poor and black. Lüttwitz, a Namibian of German descent, is a farmer. He pays his workers, his "cadets," the minimum hourly wage of 2.21 Namibian dollars, which is about 20 euro cents, as well as rations of meat and milk, which he believes is sufficient. Is Africa Beyond Help? Most farmers in the area agree with Lüttwitz, and so do most people in the Western world. In the small Namibian village of Otjivero, a coalition of aid organizations is attempting to prove that both conclusions are wrong. NAMIBIA: Basic Income Grant: 'Let Others Taste What We Have Tasted' NAMIBIE : Subvention du revenu de base: 'Laissez d’autres goûter ce que nous avons goûté'
BIG: le financement du pont va dans sa troisième année.