The true costs of capitalist wealth (tags)
What drives the capitalist mode of production is the endless compulsion to increase abstract wealth, or, put more simply, the compulsion to turn money into more money... Society is richer than it knows, because it does not take all kinds of wealth factors into account in GDP.
The discussion about Corona (tags)
Corona can only become a kairos if we gain the theoretical capacity of recovery and create the conditions for a transformation. Taking the healthcare system away from the markets and obliging large companies to be oriented in the common good would be steps to infrastructure socialism.
Social Inequality and Universal Basic Income (tags)
The welfare state in Germany is not as efficient as in the Nordic countries. In Germany, more than twice as many persons are at risk of income poverty - particularly children and single parents. We have to make a decision: entrepreneurial paradise or a little less faith in the market.
Sowing Egoism and Harvesting Trump (tags)
Thomas Straubhaar urges rethinking globalization and inequality. "We have believed too long in the theory that free trade, free entrepreneurship and little state automatically lead to balance and that everyone would be rewarded in the end...We need a new reconciliation of social values."
For an Unconditional Basic Income (tags)
The basic income corrects the distribution effects of the labor market. It takes something from the higher paid to give to those who earn little or nothing. A leftist fights for a just social system. Robots and artificial intelligence replace human labor.
Basic Income: 80% of New Jobs are Low Wage (tags)
We must make crucial changes and need new approaches. Soon we willnot crate bad jobs but no jobs if the developments of 3D-printers, autonomous cars and further automation continue. Technical solutions will suddenly make countless people unemployed.
Unconditional Basic Income Raises the Right Questions (tags)
In the basic income society, work is what one wants, not what one must. Work is the contribution I make, not the obligation I meet to survive..."Alone I can become free but I cannot become free alone. The drama of becoming free is a social drama" (Swiss philosopher Stefan Brotbeck)
Why Should We Support the Idea of Universal Basic Income? (tags)
Work and income have already uncoupled because of automation and the digital world. The basic income will lead to guaranteeing everyone the right to work and to share socially, economically and politically in a less stressful and less authoritarian economy.
Unconditional Basic Income and Solidarity Economies (tags)
Without the social contract, we become wolves to one another. Basic economic, social and cultural human rights include the right to participate. Everyone should share in the wealth and prosperity brought by automation, labor-saving technology and higher productivity.
How Universal Basic Income Will Save Us From the Robot Uprising (tags)
As we head deeper into the 21st century, it's becoming painfully obvious that there are fewer and fewer jobs available. As noted by Marshall Brain, founder of How Stuff Works and author of Manna, there are more working-age people in the U.S. receiving some form of welfare than there are working-age people who do not.
The unconditional basic income - a social concept for Europe (tags)
The time is right for alternative economics after the "money-out-of-nothing" phase. Access could replace excess and enough could replace more. www.basicincome.org and www.freembtranslations.net
Geekouts Links Late May 2014 (tags)
Latest few months worth of links.
The unconditional basic income as a postpatriarchal project (tags)
"The unconditional basic income does not provide a readymade solution to the imbalance of genders that has grown over the centuries. Rather it is a postpatriarchal project in a strict sense as it does not present a magic bullet but counts on the freedom and ability of women and men..."
Erich Fromm on Karl Marx (tags)
The capitalist production method makes a few persons absurdly rich while the others hardly have enough to survive. Capitalism also makes people unfree and unhappy because their access to their true needs is blocked.
Unconditional Basic Income is not a Wrong Way: Book Review (tags)
Every step at preventing poverty is also a step at strengthening consumer demand. Steps toward basic income can achieve that change of distribution demanded in the book.
Opinion: Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income (tags)
author: Karl Widerquist e-mail:e-mail: marc1seed@yahoo.com A free Internet book "Youth and Skills: Putting Education to Work" (October 2012) is available from UNESCO.org. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002180/218003e.pdf
Labor Candidate Stewart Alexander Calls for a Basic Income Guaranteed (tags)
Presidential Candidate Stewart Alexander says, “Wall Street has a basic income guaranteed; it is called, too big to fail. The time has now come to introduce a basic income guarantee that will help meet the basic needs of the unemployed, the poor, the elderly, college students, the homeless, the basic needs of veterans, single parents, and the disabled.”
Performance-Oriented Society and Basic Income (tags)
The acquisition and accumulation of wealth are based on many natural and social conditions. Many societies and generations worked so today's possibilities of acquisition exist. The so-called performance justice is often only a veil for great injustices.
"Beyond Growth" congress in Berlin, May 20-22. 2011 (tags)
A "Beyond Growth" congress will be held in Berlin, May 20-22. 2011. The driving forces of growth, the limits of growth, the crisis of the work society, an economy beyond growth, justice and the globalized world, sharing and the good life will be discussed.
Developing a New Economic System (tags)
The stubborn Basel businessman Georg Hasler has a new economic system in mind. He joins two economic concepts that are often discussed these days: unconditional basic income and a radical change of property rights in ideas called free knowledge.
Basic Income: The Way out of a Sick Society (tags)
Without the social contract, we become wolves to one another. Without the social contract, the state becomes a trough for the super-rich. Basic income could enable everyone to participate in social, economic and political life. Without vision, the people perish.
North American Basic Income Congress in New York Feb 25-27 (tags)
The 10th North American Basic Income Guarantee Congress is taking place in New York from Feb 25-27. Under the theme "Models for Social Transformation," the US Basic Income Guarantee (USBIG) network and Basic Income Canada conference will survey the debate.
Breaking the Vicious Circle of Poverty (tags)
In 2008 in Namibia the Lutheran bishop Zephania Kameeta provided a whole village with an unconditional basic income. BIG (Basic Income Grant) is like a magic word, the code for a bold idea that poverty is not a hopeless fate but an enemy that can be forced to its knees.
Unconditional Basic Income - More than a Social-Political Concept (tags)
"Revolutions are very hard.. Sometimes holding fast to old structures will lead to the abyss. Then very high risks of a new beginning will be accepted to escape the far worse consequences of the collapse of the old structures." Basic income would prevent death from starvation.
A Global Ecological Argument for a Basic Income (tags)
Erik Christensen is an associate professor of economics in Denmark.
Social Security for All (tags)
A Christian view of the person that insists on an undeserved right to life opposes a merciless system that produces more and more wealth for a few and forces more and more people into poverty. The narrowing of work to paid work must be broken by the new model of work for all.
Erich Fromm and His Proposal for a Basic Income (tags)
Philosopher and psychoanalyst Erich Fromm never abandoned his vision of a humanist non-estranged society where persons were not commodified or mere goods producers. His book "Having or Being" was written at age 76.
Like the community centers in Vancouver Canada, the guaranteed basic income could create public spirit and social cohesion cushioning the young, seniors and long-term unemployed facing brutal capitalism.
Unconditional Basic Income for All (tags)
Laziness at everyone's expense is the argument brought by opponents of basic income because they haven't understood the cause.. The work incentive will change. One will work to increase quality of life and for the meaning of work itself.
The Great Chance: Basic Guaranteed Income (tags)
How else should the economy and society become more sustainable without a partial turning away from the growth society of more and more? The de-acceleration of work and life is necessary. A basic income could initiate both.
V.P. Candidate Alexander Wants Common U.S.-Mexican Currency (tags)
During a decade when border issues between the U.S. and Mexico have intensified and the Democrats and Republicans have gone on the attack against immigrants, Vice Presidential Candidate Stewart A. Alexander is proposing a common U.S.-Mexican currency and establishing a Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) for working people on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Theses on the Basic Income Discussion (tags)
Poverty can only be overcome globally. A change in perspective is necessary where social assistance is seen as positive and not negative. Without a committment to human dignity and a human future, barbarism seems inevitable.
For an Unconditional Basic Income (tags)
Martin Luther King called us to a radical revolution of values, from a thing-oriented to a person-oriented society. Like community centers, a basic income could have multiplier effects. The price of oil rose three-fold in four years. Lifestyles and priorities must change for an open future.
23 Theses on the Unconditional Basic Income (tags)
Without vision the people perish. Basic unconditional income like community centers could restore public spirit and interdependence. The anti-social or capital offensive leaves people mere consumers or cogs in the machine and represses our gifts, talents, desires and health.
The Abolition of the Unemployed (tags)
Researchers urge freedom instead of full employment. With a bsic income, the unemployed would have the freedom to seek for employment that suits them. No one would force them to accept any work. Basic income is a way to solve the dilemma of jobs destroyed by higher productivity.
Basic Income Creates Trust (tags)
No life of luxury would be possible with the basic income. People in paid work would always be financially privileged by the promotion prospects..The protestant work ethic does not aim at persons only motivated by material reward.
Do We Need a New Social System? (tags)
Only half of all employees today (in Germany) enjoy the old standard job.. The erosion of normal working conditions has been underway since the middle of the 1970s.. The basic income is the answer to the precariousness of working conditions.
"We Have an Upper Class Problem" (tags)
The unconditional basic income is a revolutionary idea but can only be realized in an evolutionary way.. We have long been in a foreign-provision economy. No one can provide for himself.. The state should offer people a basic income so they can live a modest humane life.
Working Without Coercion (tags)
Basic income is not a plant-closing bonus. Labor productivity will continue growing if the tax burden on the factor labor is reduced. The belief that full employment could return through economic growth is wishful thinking. Ecologically it could prove a horror.
Basic Income: Freedom for Every Individual (tags)
Katya Kipping rightly characterizes basic income as a democracy package. Solving a material question and strengthening civil rights and personal autonomy are joined.
"Unemployment is a Victory" (tags)
Higher productivity allows a maximum in prosperity to be realized with a minimum in human labor. Freedom, not full employment, is the alternative today.
Basic Income Strengthens Workers' Negotiating Power (tags)
Basic income would be an effective instrument against the growing poverty, a kind of democracy package and a good vehicle for self-determined reduced working hours..Some leftists have a hard time because they follow a certain work fetishism
Basic income would revolutionize today's work society. Workers would gain negotiating power and employers would have to pay more for onerous work. Everyone would receive a basic income without being tested for neediness or beingforced to a return favor.
Monthly Pay for Everyone (tags)
A basic income means an income-securing existence allowing participation in social life. The basic income would do away with work coercion and tests of neediness.
Social Cuts Cause Suffering (tags)
"Nothing is stronger than an idea whose time has come" (Victor Hugo).. Liberated from their existential worries, people could develop their talents.. A basic income could expand the efficiency of our society.
NGO of the Week: Basic Income Network (tags)
The internationally practiced social cuts sold as combating unemployment have terrible social and economic effects. A grave psychic depression has already seized society. Since the world economy becomes ever more efficient, what will become of 80% w/o work?
Time Autonomy for Everyone (tags)
Given the enormous advances in productivity, radical reduction of working hours is an overdue demand. However working hours are actually lengthened.. Power relations are hidden behind the distribution structures.
Eleven Arguments for a Basic Income (tags)
Social logic is more future-friendly than profit logic. With the end of cheap oil and the dollar crash on the horizon, a basic income would make the future human rather than predatory Social Darwinism, winner-takes-all, hire-and fire and right of stronger could be dinosaurs.
The demand for a basic income attacks one of the basic pillars of the capitalist society:the notion that only persons who work may eat. Every person on this earth has a right to share in socvial life and wealth only because he or she exists as a person.
Basic Income as a Democratic Civil Right (tags)
The ecnomic conditions in which the utopia of Aristotle or John M Keynes could become a real utopia objectively exist. We live under our real economic possibilities.The end of the work society is not the end of work but the transition to a really free society of citizens.
The Unconditional Basic Income (tags)
Alternatives to the work society are necessary. A political movement is only credible today if it positions itself to the changes of the world of work and presents alternatives to the crisis of the work society. Basic income is a first step to freedom.
Five Reasons for an Unconditional Basic Income for All (tags)
Participation in modern societies is only possible when one has an income.. The pro-posal to grant a basic income to every person independent of gainful work results from human rights and from pragmatic-economic considerations.
10 Reasons Why a Basic Income is Necessary Today (tags)
A basic income could heal our fragmented society caught in work fanaticism and work fetishism.. A basic income could change social attitudes and goals and give real meaning to the human rights to life and participation.
Paid Work and Basic Income (tags)
The goal of basic income advocates is to neutralize capitalism in one of its central premises: the generalziation of paid labor as the only or at least dominant path of securing existence. The future would be brighter if this were on the agenda.