The Basic Income Earth Network Congress will be held from Wednesday 18 – Saturday 21 August 2021. It will focus on the question of how to take Basic Income from idea to reality.

The conference will be hosted on Whova, a specialist online conference platform, and will be attended by members of FRIBIS and staff of the Götz Werner Chair:

August 19, 2021

• Valerija Korosec: UBI in Slovenia, from idea to reality. 10:45 AM – 12:05 PM (Europe/London)
• Alexander Spermann: Basic Money plus Education Money as a partial UBI for Germany. 10:45 AM – 12:05 PM (Europe/London)
• Enno Schmidt and Sarath Davala: Glimpses of life in the Care Economy. 12:30 PM – 1:45 PM (Europe/London)
• Patrick Brown: Universal Basic Income As a ‘Real Peace Dividend’ for Post-Conflict Societies. 2:00 PM – 3:20 PM (Europe/London)
• Bernhard Neumärker: The Net Basic Income: UBI in Times of Crisis. 2:00 PM – 3:20 PM (Europe/London)
• Leon Hartmann: Universal Basic Income as a discursive space of the future. 2:00 PM – 3:20 PM (Europe/London)
• Selvi Sachithanandam: “Idea to Reality – Basic Income in Post Conflict Sri Lanka”. 2:00 PM – 3:20 PM (Europe/London)
• Diana Bashur: Why a Basic Income can be key to Peacebuilding. 2:00 PM – 3:20 PM (Europe/London)
• Chloe Halpenny: #BasicIncomeBoughtMe: Mobilising basic income research using social media. 3:30 PM – 4:50 PM (Europe/London)
• Diana Bashur: United Nations Development Programme: A roundtable on Basic Income. 5:00 PM – 6:15 PM (Europe/London)
• Chloe Halpenny: Mobilising youth to make basic income a reality: A workshop on meaningful youth engagement in advocacy. 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM (Europe/London)
• Julio Linares: Latin American Perspectives and Experiences. 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM (Europe/London)

August 20, 2021

• Laura Brämswig: How to make UBI a political reality by means of direct democracy. 9:00 AM – 10:20 AM (Europe/London)
• Rejitha Nair: Legal concerns relating to UBI in India. 9:00 AM – 10:20 AM (Europe/London)
• Julio Linares: How has the Covid-19 pandemic affected policy-making and policy-discourse around UBI? Findings of a global survey. 9:00 AM – 10:20 AM (Europe/London)
• Valerija Korosec: Worldwide Potential Impacts of the ‘ECI-UBI 2020/21/22. Signature Collection Campaign’ to the UBI Movement. 9:00 AM – 10:20 AM (Europe/London)
• Malcolm Torry: Minimum Income Standards in the Basic Income debate. 9:00 AM – 10:20 AM (Europe/London)
• Malcolm Torry: Two questions on interpretations of BIEN’s definition of Basic Income. 10:45 AM – 12:05 PM (Europe/London)
• Bernhard Neumärker and Bianca Blum: Globalization, Inequality, Environmental Damage and the Corona Pandemic – Lessons for Economic, Environmental and Social Policy. 10:45 AM – 12:05 PM (Europe/London)
• Sarath Davala: Two questions on interpretations of BIEN’s definition of Basic Income. 10:45 AM – 12:05 PM (Europe/London)
• Marcel Franke: Envy and blame in the UBI discussion. 10:45 AM – 12:05 PM (Europe/London)
• Julio Linares: The Money of Basic Income: Towards Economic Democracy. 2:00 PM – 3:20 PM (Europe/London)
• Patrick Brown: Learning from the CPPLG: How to set up a politicians’ network to support Basic Income. 2:00 PM – 3:20 PM (Europe/London)
• Chloe Halpenny: Moving Canada’s political needle: Reflections from grassroots activists. 3:30 PM – 4:50 PM (Europe/London)
• Milan Wenner: The narrative of technological unemployment: should it be used in order to argue for an UBI? 3:30 PM – 4:50 PM (Europe/London)
• Julio Linares: Have Covid politics opened up UBI politics? Building on new survey findings to develop novel approaches to the politics of UBI. 3:30 PM – 4:50 PM (Europe/London)
• Sascha Liebermann: Political Activism and BIG: International Experiences and Perspectives. 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM (Europe/London)

More information about the congress can be found here.

What does an unconditional basic income actually mean and how can it be paid for? And how does the Corona crisis affect the implementation of an UBI? Prof. Bernhard Neumärker addresses these questions in his lecture “The sustainable way to an unconditional basic income via a net basic income for the Corona pandemic” (held in German). The lecture was given on March 24, 2021 as part of an online panel discussion organized by the Evangelische Akademie Tutzing in cooperation with the Evangelisches Bildungswerk Regensburg.  Further informations can be found here (in German).

The PhD project is part of the larger Basic Income research project in Indonesia that studies how basic income is potentially linked with nature protection and tackling climate change, and how these possible linkages can be addressed in an embedded social-ecological context that is highly relevant for climate stabilization and reversing biodiversity loss at planetary scale and, at the same time, enhancing human well-being. A context that is well-represented in jurisdictions that are rich in forest ecosystem and biodiversity yet with poor population as observed in the provinces in Indonesia where tropical rainforests remain intact such as those in Papua.

The closing date for applications is on 15 July 2021 at 23:59 CEST. Following decision by the
selection committee and administrative process the successful candidate will start as soon as
possible thereafter.

Please send your application documents as an email to Dr.rer.pol. Sonny Mumbunan
(sonny.mumbunan@ui.ac.id). For further information on the conditions and benefits of the
position in Germany, please contact Ms. Gudrun Kaufmann (gudrun.kaufmann@fribis.uni-freiburg.de).

Photo by Ferran Fusalba Roselló on Unsplash

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.