Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) Congress 2021

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.

FRIBIS publishes two new papers on Net Basic Income

Bernhard Neumärker, Bianca Blum, Burhan Yalcin and Sema Yalcin have jointly published a new paper in the FRIBIS Discussion Paper Series, which is available in both German and English. Its topic is the counterfinancing of the Net Basic Income in times of debt-financed relief ​during the Corona Crisis.

In addition, Bianca Blum and Bernhard Neumärker have also published another paper in the journal World 2021, 2(2), entitled Lessons from Globalization and the COVID-19 Pandemic for Economic, Environmental and Social Policy. The paper analyzes the current economic and social crises, which have only been exacerbated by the outbreak of the Corona pandemic. The authors discuss not only the extent to which Basic Income offers a non-bureaucratic solution to the social and financial hardships of the current crisis, but also the role it could play in addressing the social and environmental challenges of the post-crisis period.

On October 7, at 6:00 p.m., FRIBIS will host a Zoom event on Net Basic Income. Bianca Blum and Bernhard Neumärker, along with Susanne Wiest, the parliamentary petitioner for the crisis basic income, as well as Enno Schmidt (Freiburg Götz Werner Chair) will take a stand on their publications and report on their experiences with the parliamentary petition.

If you would like to participate in the event, please subscribe to our newsletter here. In doing so, you will receive the event link in good time and always stay up to date on the latest developments at FRIBIS.

Online-Event NetFi: First results of Circles network analysis

The FRIBIS team “Network Analysis and Financial Diaries” (NetFi) is researching community currencies and investigating their use in UBI pilot projects. In the online event n August 5th 2021, the team discussed various network analysis methods that can be used to learn about transaction data from the community currency project CirclesUBI. They also discussed the benefits and risks associated with using community currencies for UBI pilots. In addition, the team briefly reported on the international research collaboration BIRAL and its future projects.

Watch the recorded event.

Julio Linares is Co-President of Circles Coop eG.  in Berlin, and Social Outreach officer for the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN).

Teodoro Criscione is Ph.D. Student in Network Science at the Department of Network and Data Science at Central European University, Vienna, Austria.

Valentin Seehausen (host) is team coordinator of NetFi, founder of Open Currency Technology and research assistant at the Frankfurt School Blockchain Center.

Talk by Prof. Bernhard Neumärker: Towards a UBI via the Net Basic Income

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).

PhD Fellowship on Basic Income for Nature and Climate

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.

View the full tender

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).

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