[Grundeinkommen-Info] BIEN NewsFlash 42, November 2006

[Yannick Vanderborght]

BIEN - Basic Income Earth Network - NEWSFLASH 42, November 2006
www.basicincome.org
The Basic Income Earth Network was founded in 1986 as the Basic Income 
European Network. It expanded its scope from Europe to the Earth in 2004. 
It serves as a link between individuals and groups committed to or 
interested in basic income, and fosters informed discussion on this topic 
throughout the world.

The present NewsFlash has been prepared with the help of Paul Nollen, 
Margit Appel, Karim Azer-Nessim, David Casassas, Jurgen De Wispelaere, 
Katrin Mohr, Guy Standing, Eduardo Matarazzo Suplicy, Philippe Van Parijs, 
and Karl Widerquist.
This NewsFlash can be downloaded as a PDF document on our website 
www.basicincome.org
_____

CONTENTS

1. Editorial by Guy Standing, co-chair of BIEN

2. BIEN 11th CONGRESS: A subjective account by Philippe Van Parijs

3. Basic Income Studies

4. Nobel Laureate Edmund Phelps sympathetic yet opposed to basic income

5. Milton Friedman dies aged 94

6. Tribute to Antônio Maria da Silveira, by Eduardo Matarazzo Suplicy, 
co-chair of BIEN

7. Special section on the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend

8. Events

9. Glimpses of national debates

10. Publications

11. New Links

12. About the Basic Income Earth Network
_____

1. EDITORIAL by Guy Standing

To those unfamiliar with it, Africa might seem the most unpropitious part 
of the world for a basic income. It is the most impoverished continent, and 
administrative structures of government are scarcely among the most 
developed. Yet the casual observer could be mistaken.

Part of the reason is that the capacity of governments to operate standard 
forms of social security is weak and prone to be very costly as well as 
inequitable, particularly bearing in mind that only a minority of people is 
in formal employment. Yet the need for basic income security is acute. 
Forced by a series of social and economic shocks and emergencies that we 
have all seen on our TV screens, foreign aid agencies have been turning to 
simple cash transfers. Initially, they have tried to target them by trying 
to identify the poor to whom they should give such transfers. Then they 
have found that this exercise is futile, misguided or simply very expensive 
to carry out. And they have realised that the costs of means-testing have 
threatened to eat up much of the money available for the poor and 
economically insecure. The fine people working on the ground have passed 
the message back, and to their credit the administrators of international 
development or emergency aid have been listening.

Thus it is that Africa has become a continent in which forms of basic 
income are being introduced on an experimental basis. And, guess what, they 
are working just as BIEN members would expect. No doubt the likes of the 
IMF will tell African governments that they cannot afford a basic income 
scheme, as they have done recently in Namibia. They will quietly overlook 
the huge subsidies being given to the rich, to large corporations and 
selected export-oriented sectors. They will support ‘tax incentives’ for 
multinationals. But they will oppose the one policy that could dramatically 
and effectively reduce poverty while boosting the livelihoods of 
communities ravaged by AIDS, malaria, drought, ecological decay or economic 
devastation. Shame on them.

We must energise the debate in Africa. And a start was made at the BIEN 
Congress held in Cape Town on November 2-4, 2006. The BIG (Basic Income 
Grant) Coalition is reorganising in South Africa, and it was wonderful that 
at the end of the Congress Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Laureate and one 
of the great figures of the anti-apartheid struggle, gave 
<http://youtube.com/watch?v=gf3n-L5FDy0>a moving and effective speech in 
favour of a basic income. More good news followed the Congress. A day 
afterwards the Minister of Social Development of the South African 
Government issued a statement saying that he favoured the introduction of a 
basic income in South Africa. The time surely will come when the President 
and the Finance Minister will see that their legacy could be made by their 
introduction of anti-poverty grants.

As for the Congress itself, many congratulations should go to Ingrid van 
Niekerk and her colleagues at EPRI and at the University of Cape Town for 
organising and hosting the event. My fellow co-chair, Eduardo Suplicy, was 
in customary fine form, fresh from his wonderful re-election victory as 
Senator for Sao Paolo, where he received nearly nine million votes. He 
joked that some people in Brazil accuse him of talking too much about a 
basic income. Shame on them too!

Guy Standing, co-Chair of BIEN

2. BIEN 11th CONGRESS: 2-4 November 2006, Cape Town (SA)

The Eleventh BIEN CONGRESS was held by the Economic Policy Research 
Institute (EPRI) on 2-4 November 2006, at the University of Cape Town in 
Cape Town, South Africa (www.epri.org.za).

The <http://www.etes.ucl.ac.be/BIEN/BIEN/BIEN_2006_MinutesGA.pdf>minutes of 
the General Assembly have been posted on the website, as a PDF document. 
The main decisions of the Assembly include:

1. Approval of <http://www.etes.ucl.ac.be/BIEN/BIEN/BIEN_Statutes.pdf>BIEN 
New Statutes, with more specific details for BIEN's new worldwide era.

2. Recognition of a new national affiliate network: "Basic Income Guarantee 
Australia" (BIGA)
Basic Income Guarantee Australia (BIGA)
Founded in 2002
<http://www.basicincome.qut.edu.au>www.basicincome.qut.edu.au
Coordinator: John Tomlinson 
(<mailto:j.tomlinson at qut.edu.au>j.tomlinson at qut.edu.au)
Quensland University of Technology, School of Humanities and Human 
Services, Beams Rd., Carseldine, Australia 4034
Tel.: +07 38644528
Fax.: +07 38644995

3. Presentation of the "Report to the General Assembly on the State of 
Basic Income by Country", written by Eri Noguchi and Ingrid van Niekerk 
(soon available).

4. Venue of the next Congress: Dublin in 2008 (3-day Congress in late June 
or the first week of July or late August).

5. Elections:
Co-chair – Guy Standing
Co-chair – Eduardo Suplicy
Secretary-Treasurer – David Casassas
Newsletter Editor – Yannick Vanderborght
Website Coordinator – Karl Widerquist
Regional Coordinator – Ingrid van Niekerk
Regional Coordinator / at-large member – Eri Noguchi
Fundraiser / at-large member – Louise Haagh

Please note that Sean Healy of BIEN Ireland has been appointed Conference 
Organizer.

Basic Income Studies receives financial support from BIEN

In September Basic Income Studies submitted an application for BIEN funding 
to the tune of EUR1200 per annum for a period of four years (2007-2010). 
This grant, together with continuous support from the Spanish Basic Income 
Network, would allow BIS to bridge the starting phase of the project until 
such time as subscriptions match the costs of producing the journal 
(primarily professional copy-editing services). After careful analysis of 
the BIS application, BIEN's Executive Committee, at its Cape Town meeting 
on November 1, decided to respond positively to their request. The EC 
believes the project embodies one of the core objectives of BIEN, i.e. to 
stimulate debate in and disseminate well-informed research on basic income, 
and as such merits our support.
 From 2007 onwards BIEN will partially fund the BIS project, subject to a 
mid-term revision at the 2008 Dublin Congress. Before the 2008 GA, BIS will 
be required to submit to the BIEN EC a written report accounting for its 
financial situation, including detailed information about the use of the 
funding received from BIEN. In addition, BIS will have to indicate its 
prospects of attaining financial self-sufficiency by the end of 2010, as 
projected in the BIS proposal. Finally, BIS also undertakes to actively 
search for external funding support and, when successful, to repay BIEN. 
Renewal of the BIEN funding commitment for another two years (2009-2010) 
will require approval by the 2008 General Assembly.
BIEN and BIS look forward to a fruitful collaboration and the continued 
success of the journal (for further information on BIS, see below, section 3).

A subjective account by Philippe Van Parijs

In 2004, BIEN decided to become a worldwide network. Would the newborn 
survive?  Much depended on whether it would manage to organize a successful 
first congress.  And it did, thanks to the obstinate and competent efforts 
of Ingrid Van Niekerk and her team. Held on the wonderful upper campus of 
the University of Cape Town, one of Subsaharan Africa's oldest and most 
prestigious academic institutions, it gathered over one hundred 
participants coming from all six continents.

To South African basic income supporters, the congress offered a unique 
opportunity to discover why basic income aroused interest in such different 
contexts as Mexico, Norway or Australia.  And for participants from the 
rest of the world, it constituted an exceptional occasion for understanding 
the specific relevance of basic income and other universal cash transfers 
in places like South Africa and neighbouring Namibia.  As South African 
economist Pieter Leroux once put it, those who believe basic income will 
first be introduced in the North may be making the same sort of mistake as 
Karl Marx was making when he expected the socialist revolution to occur in 
England and Germany rather than Russia and China.  Among many other 
contributions, several plenary sessions and parallel workshops helped make 
sense of this conjecture.

First of all, South Africa, like other countries in the South, has a huge 
informal economy, in the sense that, even when wages are regularly paid, 
they are nowhere recorded in an easily detectable way.  In this context, 
implementing a means test is very tricky: doing it seriously would be 
prohibitively expensive, and doing it erratically would breed resentment, 
invite clientelism and undermine the legitimacy of the system.  Hence the 
particularly strong case for by-passing the typical Northern path of a 
means-tested guaranteed income and going straight for universal delivery, a 
case further strengthened by familiar considerations about rates of take up 
and dependency traps.

One might object that selectivity could operate without a means test, by 
relying on guaranteed employment at a minimum wage in public works 
projects, as illustrated by the Indian state of Maharashtra 
(Mumbai).  Several contributions were devoted to this issue. The argument 
against this alternative, in the South African context, is that the country 
lacks the organizational capabilities to credibly provide a right to 
employment to a sizeable proportion of the people concerned.  One would end 
up with a bulky public sector of poorly paid, poorly motivated, poorly 
equipped, poorly trained, poorly supervised and hence poorly productive 
workers, which could only be made more productive at a prohibitive 
opportunity cost to the rest of the economy, in terms of material and human 
capital.

With no credible alternative in the form of means-tested or 
public-works-based schemes, a basic income is made particularly urgent, 
several participants argued, by the presence of AIDS.  To face the 
challenge of the epidemics, the South African government introduced free 
ARV medication and a disability grant currently pitched at about 600 Rand 
per month as long as people are sick. Before getting sick, and after the 
ARV treatment starts having effects they are entitled to nothing. Given 
that most people affected cannot fall back on a job when getting better, 
this creates a major moral hazard problem with disastrous consequences: 
discontinuing the treatment enables the patient to keep receiving the 
disability grant, while keeping him/her more contagious than he/she would 
otherwise be. This creates an AIDS trap in which people get stuck and from 
which the illness keeps spreading. Lowering the patients' disability grant, 
it was argued, while giving a modest basic income to all members of each 
household, would greatly alleviate this problem.

However useful it may be on these various grounds, a universal basic income 
needs to make financial sense, and several contributions focused on this 
issue.  Admittedly, in a less developed country, it will need to be fixed, 
at least initially, at a "destitution level", rather than at a "decent" 
level.  Thus, South Africa's Basic Income Coalition has been pressing for a 
basic income of 100 Rands (about USD 14) per month.  But would the cost of 
delivering it to every person not be prohibitive?  South Africa has 
considerable experience with the delivery of two types of cash grants: an 
old age pension of 820 Rands (about USD 120) per month to all women over 60 
and all men over 65 with no contributory pension, and a universal child 
support grant of 190 Rands (about USD 26) per month to all children up to 
age 14. The estimated all-inclusive cost of delivery (administration, 
transport and security) reaches an average of 37 Rands per grant in rural 
areas, while dropping as low as 17 Rands in some urban areas.  For a grant 
of 820 Rands, this is reasonable. For a grant of 100 Rands, the delivery 
bucket might sensibly be considered too leaky. Fortunately, one can be 
confident that the leakage should shrink dramatically. Firstly, a universal 
grant paid to every member of each household unavoidably generates major 
economies of scale relative to a more selective scheme. Secondly, there is 
scope for a far more comprehensive use of the available technology (direct 
bank transfers are still the exception, and smartcards will be usable for 
payment, not just for identification). Finally, designing differently the 
contract with the agencies in charge of the delivery should also permit 
major savings as suggested by the much lower estimated average cost of 
delivery for Namibia's pension scheme (9 Rands).

Even with a much lower administration cost, the basic income grant still 
needs to be funded.  The economists behind the Basic Income Coalition are 
advocating a rise of VAT from 14 to 21%.  The Trade Union Confederation 
COSATU prefers a rise in the income tax rates.  With a basic income of 100 
Rands, the downward redistribution of GDP would increase by 5% under the 
latter option, but only by (an arguably less disruptive) 2% under the 
former, as people under the current tax household would also 
contribute.  Alternative possibilities have been discussed at the congress, 
such as a natural-resources-fund, as worked out for Nigeria by economist 
Sala-i-Martin, or a "total-economic-activity tax", i.e. a small 
proportional tax on each electronic payment, as proposed for South Africa 
by Margaret Legum.  Such a tax is already in use to fund part of Brazil's 
"bolsa familia" programme. As electronic payment spreads ever more widely 
and deeply, even in less developed countries, a universal basic income 
might become more feasible, non only because of dramatically lower delivery 
costs, but also because of the emerging availability of an exceptionally 
simple and painless form of taxation.

Countless other issues were discussed at the parallel workshops and plenary 
sessions, including the pros and cons of conditionalities for universal 
child support grants (South Africa vs. Brazil), the prospects for a global 
or at least a regional (NAFTA) basic income, or the sometimes uneasy 
relationship between basic income and Trade Union interests on the one 
hand, feminist concerns on the other.  But, perhaps the most striking 
feature of the Congress, compared to its ten predecessors, was the presence 
of religion.  At the opening plenary session, one of the leaders of the 
South African Council of Churches noted that this should come as no 
surprise, as the South tends to be far more religious than the North, and 
its churches more actively involved in social issues. For many 
participants, the most memorable speech of the whole congress is likely to 
be the one by Namibia' Lutheran bishop and SWAPO member of parliament, 
Zephania Kameeta, who jumped out of his prepared script to stigmatize 
endless conferences that generated "words, words, words", while human 
beings were suffering, starving and dying. Last but not least in terms of 
the impact words can have, the closing plenary session included a 
video-taped address by South Africa's Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who 
pronounced <http://youtube.com/watch?v=gf3n-L5FDy0>a forceful and well 
argued endorsement of universal cash grants. The next day, Cape Town's 
Sunday paper's headline read: "Tutu pleads for Basic Income grant", and two 
days later, South Africa's Minister for social development Z. Skweyiya, for 
the first time, expressed support for the implementation of a basic income 
in the country.

After the end of the Congress proper, BIEN held a remarkably smooth and 
efficient <http://www.etes.ucl.ac.be/BIEN/BIEN/BIEN_2006_MinutesGA.pdf>11th 
General Assembly meeting, the smoothness of which owed much to swift yet 
smiling guidance by Richard Caputo, the first incumbent of the newly 
created function of BIEN rule keeper. The bulkiest item on the agenda 
consisted in a thorough overhaul of BIEN's 1988 statutes, which had only 
been slightly adjusted when BIEN turned global in 2004. 
<http://www.etes.ucl.ac.be/BIEN/BIEN/BIEN_Statutes.pdf>All revisions were 
approved unanimously. And so was the re-election of the Executive 
Committee, almost all members of which accepted to carry on, be it in some 
cases with modified tasks (Jurgen De Wispelaere did not run for 
reelection). A detailed proposal for Dublin as the 2008 venue was adopted 
enthusiastically. The wish to alternate venues between North and South was 
confirmed. Sao Paulo sounded like a realistic and attractive possibility 
for 2010.

Philippe Van Parijs, chair of BIEN's International Board

Please note that papers presented at the Congress will be made available in 
the coming months. Note that the presentation of Daniel Raventos, head of 
the Spanish Basic Income Network and a plenary speaker in Cape Town, is 
available at http://www.nodo50.org/redrentabasica/textos/index.php?x=543

3. BASIC INCOME STUDIES

Basic Income Studies Essay Prize 2006

Basic Income Studies awarded its first Essay Prize at the Eleventh Congress 
of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) in Cape Town, South Africa, 
November 4, 2006. The award is designed to encourage promising research on 
basic income and related policies. The BIS Essay Prize is awarded to an 
essay that exemplifies the high standard of quality and original basic 
income research that BIS hopes to promote. The winner is chosen from essays 
presented on alternating years at the BIEN Congress and U.S. Basic Income 
Guarantee Network Congress.

The Prize Essay and three essays worthy of honourable mention were selected 
by a panel of judges from Basic Income Studies and the Basic Income Earth 
Network, who represented the fields of economics, politics, philosophy, and 
development studies.

The 2006 Essay Prize was awarded to Michael Howard’s article entitled, “A 
NAFTA Dividend: A proposal for a guaranteed minimum income for North 
America.” In his article, Michael Howard of the University of Maine, 
applies Thomas Pogge’s argument for a global resource dividend on a 
regional basis in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The paper is both 
novel and important, and it is well-developed both in terms of its 
comparison with the related proposal for a basic income for the European 
Union and in its examination of the specifics of the North American Free 
Trade Area. The winning essay will be published in an upcoming issue of 
Basic Income Studies.

Three other essays were awarded an Honourable Mention:
“Good for women? Advantages and risks of basic income from a gender 
perspective” by Julieta Elgarte (Universidad Nacional de La Plata, 
Argentina and Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium);
“Why Switzerland? Basic Income and the Development Potential of Swiss 
Republicanism” by Eric Patry (Institute for Economic and Business Ethics, 
University of St. Gallen, Switzerland); and
“Australia's Disabling Income Support System” by Jennifer Mays (Centre for 
Social change Research, Queensland Univers
ity of Technology, Australia).

These essays made important contributions to the examination of the 
argument over basic income from the perspective of feminism, republicanism, 
and the disabled rights movement respectively. The editors of Basic Income 
Studies wish the authors all the best in their future research.

Announcement Basic Income Studies, Volume 1, Issue 2

Later this month Basic Income Studies (BIS) will release its second issue, 
with original articles by Stuart White on basic income and reciprocity, 
Simon Wigley on basic income and cumulative advantage, and Philip Harvey on 
the cost of a basic income compared to a negative income tax scheme. Volume 
1, Issue 2 also carries a research note by economic historians Guido 
Erreygers and John Cunliffe, in which they introduce a virtually unknown 
social constitution drafted in Brussels in 1848, in which an unconditional 
basic income figured prominently.

In the debate section, guest-editor Loek Groot presents five short comments 
by an interdisciplinary group of scholars discussing the possibility of 
using experimental research design in the study of basic income proposals. 
Contributions to this debate discuss the reasons for conducting a basic 
income experiment (Loek Groot), the questions such a design needs to answer 
(Karl Widerquist), and the comparative advantage and disadvantages of 
social experiments over the study of natural experiments (Hans Peeters and 
Axel Marx) or laboratory experiments (José Noguera and Jurgen De Wispelaere).

The book review section features critical reflections on recent books by 
Ailsa McKay (reviewed by Almaz Zelleke), Clive Lord (reviewed by Laura 
Bambrick) and Russell Muirhead (reviewed by José Noguera).

A full content list with links to each article will be included in the next 
BIEN Newsflash. Interested readers are invited to visit our website at 
<http://www.bepress.com/bis>www.bepress.com/bis, where the articles of the 
previous issue can still be sampled. BIS is always interested in good 
contributions. Please see the website for instructions for submitting a 
paper, and don’t hesitate to contact the editors at 
<mailto:BIS-editor at bepress.com>BIS-editor at bepress.com if you want to 
discuss a possible contribution.

BIS is published by The Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress), sponsored by 
Red Renta Basica (RRB) and supported by BIEN and USBIG.

4. NOBEL LAUREATE SYMPATHETIC YET OPPOSED TO BASIC INCOME

On October 9th 2006, it was announced that Columbia University's Edmund 
Phelps was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics. An economic theorist with 
a keen interest in economic and social policy from a left-liberal 
perspective, Phelps discussed basic income on several occasions. In his 
Rewarding Work (Harvard Univ. press, 1997), he remembered "being part of a 
group advising Senator Robert Kennedy, all of whom, from James Tobin to the 
young Martin Feldstein, were supporters of the [Negative Income Tax] 
scheme" and none of whom "saw the importance of tying such support to 
work." However, in the absence of such a link, Phelps argued, "all too many 
young people would lack the vision and the will to resist yet another year 
of avoiding life's challenges and risks". True, a Negative Income Tax would 
"temper the tendency of welfare to keep people away from jobs", but it 
"would do nothing to restore jobholding as the means of self-support and 
the vehicle for personal growth and the sense of belonging and being 
needed". And this would not only be economically damaging but also morally 
wrong: "Unlike those who would dispense welfare willy-nilly to anyone whose 
income falls below a certain level, I believe that the only genuine 
entitlement is a reward of self-support and integration for those willing 
to fulfill a social contract with their fellow citizens by working and 
earning."

In this light, Rewarding Work advocated a detailed plan for wage subsidies 
for low-paid full-time employment. He returns at more length to basic 
income in his contribution to the special issue of 
the<http://bostonreview.net/BR25.5/phelps.html> Boston Review (republished 
as P. Van Parijs & al., What's Wrong with a Free Lunch?, Beacon Press, 
2001): "Most of Western Europe, particularly the Continent, has already 
gone a long way toward providing universal - that is, unconditional - 
benefits to its citizens (and in most cases other residents): subsidized 
housing, free medical care, and free education services, among other 
services. Now Philippe Van Parijs makes the strongest imaginable case for 
going the rest of the way by means of a universal basic income. But I 
remain opposed. For me, there are two sticking points. One of them has to 
do with consequences. The demogrant device has no monopoly on the 
beneficial effects that make us like it, whatever the balance of its total 
benefits and total cost. The alternative to it - a subsidy to employers for 
every low-wage worker in their full-time employ - would have some of those 
effects and some other benefits as well... The other sticking point is that 
the demogrant idea seems in an important respect to go against the grain of 
the traditional American conception of a liberal republic. This conception, 
I will argue, would cause many Americans to hesitate to embrace a universal 
basic income while being willing, at least in principle, to contemplate 
low-wage employment subsidies."

Please note that Eduardo Suplicy, co-chair of BIEN, gave an interview on 
Edmund Phelps to the Brazilian daily “<http://www.estado.com.br/>O Estado 
de São Paulo”, on October 10th, 2006.

5. MILTON FRIEDMAN DIES

On November 16, 2006, the Chicago economist, Nobel laureate and founding 
father of monetarism Milton Friedman has died aged 94. He was commonly 
credited for having been the first to propose the "negative income tax", 
sometimes presented as the "right-wing" version of an unconditional basic 
income. The expression "negative tax" is actually much older: it was coined 
by the French economist Augustin Cournot ("Recherches sur les principes 
mathématiques de la théorie des richesses", 1838) and clearly used in its 
current sense by the British economist Abba Lerner ("Economics of Control", 
Macmillan, 1944) in a book which Friedman reviewed in the Journal of 
Political Economy (1947). Yet, it is undoubtedly Friedman who most 
contributed to popularising the idea of a negative income tax worldwide.

The June 2000 issue of BIEN's NewsLetter (the forerunner of the current 
NewsFlashes) included an interview of Milton Friedman by Eduardo Matarazzo 
Suplicy, currently co-Chair of BIEN and recently re-elected as Senator for 
the state of São Paulo in Brazil. On March 29, 2000, Suplicy wrote to 
Milton Friedman, a rather unlikely bedfellow for a prominent left-wing 
politician, with a number of precise questions. Friedman answered  promptly 
and conscientiously (11 April 2000). The full text of Suplicy's questions 
and of Friedman's answers has been posted on BIEN's website. To read it, 
please 
<http://www.etes.ucl.ac.be/BIEN/Resources/MiltonFriedman_EduardoSuplicy2000.htm>click 
here.

See also the obituary by Samuel Brittan in the Financial Times: 
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/cb74eef8-7599-11db-aea1-0000779e2340.html

6. TRIBUTE TO ANTONIO MARIA DA SILVEIRA, by co-chair of BIEN Eduardo 
Matarazzo Suplicy

It was five days that Milton Friedman, Nobel prize in Economics in 1976 had 
passed away, at 94 years old, when, unfortunately, I heard about the death 
of Antonio Maria da Silveira, professor from Universidade Federal do Rio de 
Janeiro and from FGV, on November 21. We were friends for more than 30 
years. Antonio Maria was the first Brazilian economist who proposed the 
institution of a guaranteed minimum income program through a negative 
income tax. It was in the article Redistribuição de Renda (Redistribution 
of Income), published in Revista Brasileira de Economia, in April 1975.

He had just concluded his PhD in Economics at Carnegie-Mellon Institute and 
it was his purpose to help thinking which should be the best way to 
eradicate absolute poverty in Brazil. He used to say that Arnold Toynbee 
and Pope John XXIII were his sources of inspiration. But, to write about 
this work and others on Minimum Income, Antonio Maria took as a base the 
works of economists like Milton Friedman, Robert Lampman, Karl Marx, John 
Maynard Keynes, James Tobin, Friedrich Von Hayek, Nicolas Georgescu-Roegen 
Frank H. Knight, Herbert Simon, Gunnar Myrdal, Joseph A. Schumpeter, 
Philippe Van Parijs, and Guy Standing.

Graduated in engineering, initially he was professor at the Instituto 
Tecnológico da Aeronáutica - ITA, in São José dos Campos. When I came back 
from my PhD at Michigan State University, in 1974, he invited my to deliver 
a speech at ITA, and I invited him to hold a seminar at EAESP-FGV, for my 
pupils and for professors like Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira, Yoshiaki 
Nakano, Robert Nicol, Luiz Antonio Oliveira Lima and others.

In 1991, when I presented my first draft bill to the Senate for the 
institution of the Guaranteed Minimum Income Program, Antonio Maria helped 
me intensively in its elaboration and in the persuasion of the senators, 
who approved it by unanimity. In 1992, when he came back from a period of 
symposiums in Europe, he told me about the proposal of an Unconditional 
Basic Income. So we started to interact with the members of the Basic 
Income European Network, BIEN, which since 2004 turned into the Basic 
Income Earth Network. In December 2001 I presented a new draft bill at the 
Senate, now for the institution of the Citizen’s Basic Income, 
unconditional. It was approved by the National Congress in 2003 and 
sanctioned by President Lula in 2004, becoming into law to be implemented 
gradually, starting with the most in need.

In June 2002, in the magazine Econômica, Antonio Maria published an 
article, Renda Básica na previsão de Keynes (The Basic Income in the 
prevision of Keynes) where he stressed that, in 1930, John Maynard Keynes, 
in his Possibilities for our grandchildren, foresaw that, with the 
accumulation of capital, someday the goods and basic services will be free. 
Once that we avoid the wars and revolutions, recognizing the science and 
scientists to plan better the number of children, within one hundred years, 
therefore in 2030, the vital needs of everybody could be serviced. In 1939, 
in How to pay for the War? Published in the Times, Keynes suggested that, 
in face of the difficulties generated by the war, it should be important to 
separate 2% of the Gross Domestic Product to pay a basic income to the 
English people.

Antonio Maria and I participated in the debate among the economists of PT 
in Belo Horizonte, in 1991, when José Márcio Camargo proposed that the 
minimum income program should be started with families and should be 
related to educational opportunities. It happened that way by the 
initiatives of Cristovam Buarque, in Brasília, and José Roberto Magalhães 
Teixeira, in Campinas, who created Bolsa Escola (Scholarship Help) and 
Programa de Garantia de Renda Familiar (Family Income Guarantee Program), 
which were multiplied and turned into what today is the Bolsa Família, and 
tomorrow will be the Citizens' Basic Income. Antonio Maria da Silveira 
deserves a great credit in this battle.

Antonio Maria taught and participated in the post graduation examining 
board of several economists who occupy positions of responsibility today in 
the country. In all of them he cultivated the seed of citizen’s basic 
income as the main instrument for the fight against poverty and the 
eradication of hunger for the construction of a fairer and less unequal 
nation.

In his 35 years of professorship, he always delivered his inaugural class 
with the believe that we would be able, shortly, to guarantee to everyone a 
sufficient income to meet the basic needs of each one – and how it should 
be good for Brazil when it happens.

7. Special section on the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend

The Department of Revenue of the State of Alaska (US), where the only 
existing basic income scheme in the world was introduced in the early 
eighties, has been starting the payment of the annual Permanent Fund 
Dividend (PFD) in October. The amount of this year's dividend is US$1106.96 
(corresponding to an increase of 30.9% over the 2005 value of US$ 845.76). 
To help smooth out year-to-year volatility in dividend amounts, the size of 
each year's dividend is calculated using a formulas that averages the 
Alaska Permanent Fund's realized earnings over the previous five years. 
Among other items, the formulas includes an estimated number of eligible 
dividend applicants. For 2006, this estimated number was 602,350.

For further information: https://www.pfd.state.ak.us/

On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the creation of the Alaska 
Permanent Fund and of the 25th year that the Dividend has been distributed 
to all residents of Alaska, as long as they are living in the State for an 
year or more, co-chair of BIEN Eduardo Matarazzo Suplicy wrote to Professor 
Scott Goldsmith, Professor of Economics at the Institute of Social and 
Economic Research, University of Alaska Anchorage. Suplicy asked Goldsmith 
a few questions on the development of the proposal as well as to what 
extent is the Alaskan very succesful experience being considered by other 
places in the world, including Irak.

Questions were sent by Suplicy on Friday, October 06, 2006, and Goldsmith 
replied on October 12, 2006.

SUPLICY: Was there a new referendum between the years 2000 and 2006 to find 
out to what extent the people of Alaska is still supporting this important 
system?
GOLDSMITH: There has been no referendum.  The dividend is extremely popular 
and it would be political suicide to propose a vote to eliminate the 
dividend.  However there is a proposal which has been discussed for several 
years, to change the formula for calculating the earnings of the permanent 
fund each year, and that could change the way the dividend amount is 
calculated.  Currently the annual draw from the fund, part of which is used 
to pay the dividend, is based on actual or realized earnings.  The proposal 
is to change to a system used by most endowment funds which is to draw a 
fixed percentage (say 5%) of the value of the fund each year.  This has 
several advantages such as automatic inflation proofing of the fund and 
more stability in the amount of the draw from year to year.  This proposal, 
known as the "percent of market value" of POMV would require a new method 
of calculating the dividend.  Because people are suspicious that this would 
result in the size of the dividend declining, although it is not 
necessarily the case that the dividend amount would decline if there were a 
switch to POMV, it has not gained enough political support to be instituted.

SUPLICY: To what extent have the other American states considered to follow 
the Alaskan example?
GOLDSMITH: I am not aware of any other state that has a dividend 
distributed directly to all individuals.  Alberta, in Canada, distributed a 
one time dividend last year, but it is not an annual event.  Several states 
have various types of permanent funds, funded by natural resource revenues, 
but they are earmarked for various public purposes like education.

SUPLICY: What has been the repercussion, in Alaska and in other American 
states, of the decision of the province of Alberta, in Canada, to institute 
an annual dividend of around 400 Canadian dollars to all citizens of Alberta?
GOLDSMITH: As indicated, I believe the Alberta dividend was a one time 
event predicated on an oil revenue surplus due to high oil prices.  There 
have not beeen any repercussions in the US that I am aware of to this event.

SUPLICY: Has there been any recent news about the possibility of Iraq to 
follow the example of the Alaska Permanent Fund?
GOLDSMITH: The possibility of instituting a dividend in Iraq has been 
proposed a number of times over the last several years and I was involved 
for a time in a proposal to develop a plan for such a dividend.  That 
proposal died, and I have not seen any suggestions in at least a year for 
an Iraqi dividend.

SUPLICY: Which were the main reasons for the decrease of the Alaskan 
Permanent Fund Dividend to diminish from the year 2000 to 2005, and which 
was the main reason for the 30% increase in its value in 2006?
GOLDSMITH: The size of the dividend depends on the earnings of the fund and 
the size of the eligible population. The eligible population does not 
change much from year to year (all residents are eligible after living in 
the state for a year).  The dividend account each year is essentially the 
average of half the earnings for each of the previous 5 
years.  Consequently the size of the dividend varies with the earnings of 
the fund, but with a considerable lag. The dividend increased in size when 
the stock market was doing well in the late 1990s.  Subsequently the stock 
market declined, fund earnings fell, and the size of the dividend went 
down.  Now the stock market has moved back up, and fund earnings are 
growing. The higher earnings are finally having a significant influence on 
the size of the dividend.

SUPLICY: How has the Alaskan population received the good news of the 30% 
increase in the value of the dividend in 2006?
GOLDSMITH: The size of the annual dividend is always a source of interest 
and speculation. Alaskans are accepting of whatever the size of the 
dividend is. The management of the fund and the determination of the size 
of the dividend are transparent--there are no secrets--so people either 
understand or have faith that the managers of the fund are doing their job 
as best they can. People seem to understand the connection between the 
stock market and the size of the dividend.

Finally, note that on September 27, 2006, the Anchorage Daily News, 
Alaska's main Newspaper, published the following news from The Associated 
Press:

"Hot Springs, Ark. -- Former presidential candidate and billionaire 
publisher Steve Forbes on Tuesday said giving the Iraqi people a portion of 
oil profits would help secure the country against insurgents.
Forbes, the CEO of Forbes Inc. and editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine, said 
the country should create a fund similar to Alaska's Permanent Fund, which 
annually distributes dividends to eligible residents.
"Imagine if something like that was done in Irak. Suddenly, everyone would 
want an address in Irak," Forbes told a crowd of about 350 people at the 
Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce/Associated Industries of Arkansas 
luncheon in Hot Springs. "Suddenly, the bulk of the population would be on 
the side of fighting the fanatics who are trying to disrupt oil production". "

8. EVENTS

*SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA (ES), 30 November – 1 December 2006: VI Symposium 
of Red Renta Básica

The 6th Symposium of Red Renta Básica, Spain’s official network of BIEN, 
has been held at the Faculty of Political Science of the University of 
Santiago de Compostela on Thursday November 30 and Friday December 1 2006.
The programme included an opening plenary session with the Minister of 
Economy of the Government of Galicia, Ramón Máiz (Universidad de Santiago), 
and Daniel Raventós (Universitat de Barcelona & President of Red Renta 
Básica), as well as roundtables on "20 Years Arguing for Basic Income: 
Philosophical Assessment and Persepectives”. Participants to the 
roundtables included Antoni Domènech (Universitat de Barcelona), Ramón Máiz 
(Universidad de Santiago), David Casassas (Université catholique de 
Louvain), María José Añón (Universitat de València), José Antonio Noguera 
(Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), José Luis Rey (Universidad Carlos III 
de Madrid), Luis Moreno (CSIC – Centro Superior de Investigaciones 
Científicas), Daniel Raventós (Universitat de Barcelona), Xavier Godàs 
(Barcelona City Council), Sara Berbel (Institut Català de la Dona), 
Santiago Lago (Universidade de Vigo) and Xavier Vence (Universidade de 
Santiago de Compostela).
The final session was focused on “Basic Income Assessed by Galician Social 
Actors”, with the participation of members of Galician political parties, 
trade unions and grassroots movements.
For further information, see www.redrentabasica.org

*BERLIN (DE), 16-17 December 2006: General Assembly of the German Network

The German Basic Income Network (Netzwerk Gruindeinkommen) will hold its 
General Assembly at the Humboldt-Universität in Berlin on December 16-17, 
2006. An opening discussion forum on "Working differently and living better 
with a basic income" ("anders arbeiten und schöner leben mit 
grundeinkommen") shall take place on the evening of December 15 (7pm), with 
the participation of Götz Werner (Universität Karlsruhe) and Wolfgang 
Engler (Hochschule für Schauspielkunst Berlin). During the next two days, 
talks and workshops shall provide further opportunities to foster the 
German debate on basic income, which has been particularly lively since a 
couple of years.
For further information: http://www.grundeinkommen.info/

*NEW YORK CITY (US), 23-25 February 2007: Sixth Annual USBIG Congress

The USBIG Network will hold its Sixth Annual Congress in conjunction with 
the Eastern Economics Association Meeting, February 23-25, 2007, at the 
Crowne Plaza Times Square Manhattan Hotel in New York City. Speakers 
include Dalton Conley, Stanley Aronowitz, Eduardo Suplicy, and William 
DiFazio. Dalton Conley is the director of the Center for Advanced Social 
Science Research and professor of sociology and public policy at New York 
University, and he is the author of Honky, Being Black, Living in the Red, 
and the Starting Gate. Stanley Aronowitz is a Distinguished Professor of 
Sociology at the City University of New York and author or editor of twenty 
three books including, Just Around Corner, How Class Works, The Last Good 
Job in America, and The Jobless Future. Eduardo Suplicy is a member of the 
Brazilian Senate and author of From the Distribution of Income to the 
Rights of Citizenship. William DiFazio is a professor of Sociology and St. 
John’s University in Queens, New York and author of several books including 
Ordinary Poverty.
For further information: 
<http://www.usbig.net/>www.usbig.<http://www.usbig.net/>net

*NEW YORK CITY (US), 6-8 May 2007: The basic income guarantee in 
international perspective

Within the framework of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the 
Wurzweiler School of Social Work, Yeshiva University (New York City), 
Richard Caputo organizes a session on “The basic income guarantee in 
international perspective” . The Conference is scheduled for 6-8 May 2007 
at the Sheraton New York . Interested persons should contact Richard Caputo 
at <caputo at yu.edu>

*REGINA (CA), 6-8 June 2007: Economic Security for All in Saskatchewan: 
Weaving an Unbreakable Social Fabric.

This conference is organized by Prof. Jim Mulvale at the Department of 
Justice Studies of the University of Regina. Themes and topics submitted to 
discussion will include: re-establishing a strong social safety net, 
re-committing to the principle of universality in income support, health 
care, and access to education, ensuring a living wage for working people, 
moving toward a guaranteed annual income or "basic income" in Saskatchewan 
and Canada.
For further information: jim.mulvale at uregina.ca

9. GLIMPSES OF NATIONAL DEBATES

*AUSTRIA: MINIMUM INCOME DISCUSSED BY SOCIAL DEMOCRATS

In view of the campaign for the Federal elections of October 1st, 2006, the 
Austrian basic income network was invited to a meeting with the head of the 
Social Department of the City of Vienna, Renate Brauner (Social Democrats). 
Brauner tried to convince the representatives of the network, that though 
she shares the analysis regarding the raising poverty in Austria and the 
failing distribution of wealth the Social Democrats are not ready to give 
up work as the cornerstone of their social policy. She urged basic income 
supporters not to argue against the policy of full employment, by referring 
to the network's statement that full employment has to be called "a myth".

During the election campaign the Social Democrats and the Green Party both 
pleaded for a means tested basic income (“Grundsicherung”): 800 Euros for 
everyone who works or is not able to work and whose income or social 
benefits is less than this amount. The Social Democrats, who won the 
majority of the votes and are leading the coalition talks, surprisingly 
declared the “Grundsicherung” to be a condition for any coalition 
government with the conservative “People’s party”. With the help of the 
mass media whose interest suddenly increased dramatically (TV, large daily 
newspapers and their online issues) a lively discussion about 
“Grundsicherung”, basic income, taxes, the future of work and “Leistung” 
(effort) is on the way. Different members of the Austrian Network have been 
asked for interviews in the actual debate and use the possibility to point 
out the basic income idea.

A means tested basic income, as it is favoured by the Social Democrats, 
would certainly be helpful to stop the rising poverty in Austria. There are 
460.000 poor people in Austria and another 600.000 who are threatened by 
poverty. But the concrete concept is not acceptable, in the view of the 
Austrian BI-network as well as in the view of the Austrian Green party. The 
critic concentrates on three main points: 1) the concept contains the 
condition, that available wealth has to be utilized, 2) further it has to 
be proofed that there is no job (with no regards to the job conditions) 
available and moreover 3) social insurance benefits like unemployment 
benefits or the Austrian “Notstandshilfe” are partly turned into social 
benefits without the desirable legal framework.

Despite the fact that the Green party pleads for another form of means 
tested basic income, like the majority of the Non-Profit Organisations in 
the Social Sector, organised in the Austrian Anti-Poverty-Network, it is 
not possible to gain “official” political support for the Basic Income 
idea. The Green spokesman for Social Affairs, Karl Öllinger, recently 
conceded that it would be “exciting to think about the separation of work 
and income in our time” but he doesn’t believe that it is possible to 
finance a basic income.

*NAMIBIA: BASIC INCOME COALITION REPLIES TO CRITIQUE BY THE IMF

BIEN NewsFlash 41 (September 2006) reported that in its recent "Country 
Report" on Namibia (No. 06/153 April 2006), the International Monetary Fund 
indicated that the recent proposal to introduce a Basic Income Grant (BIG) 
providing a monthly cash grant to all Namibians below 60 years old would be 
very costly, and may jeopardize macroeconomic stability.

The Namibian Basic Income Grant Coalition responded to the IMF, in a 
detailed letter which was printed in the 
<http://www.insight.com.na/>Namibian Insight 
<http://www.insight.com.na/>Magazine. The BIG Coalition stated that the 
IMF's calculations were deliberately flawed. The IMF responded that they 
were apparently not aware that a recuperation of the money through the tax 
system forms part of Namibia's BIG proposal. And yet the tax recuperation 
was always part of the proposal, and is well documented, Claudia and Dirk 
Haarmann from the Namibian BIG coalition argue.

In their letter, they explicitly referred to the Brazilian law on basic 
income: "The IMF points to Brazil as a possible role model in terms of its 
cash-transfer programme. We could not agree more! The Bolsa Familia 
programme, which the IMF refers to, has in itself already universalised and 
replaced four previous fragmented cash-transfer systems. It is currently 
extended to 11.2 million families. Moreover, the latest developments seem 
to have gone by unnoticed in the IMF’s recommendations. President Lula has 
signed a law (10.835/2004), which - addressing the shortcomings of the 
current conditional cash-grant system - enacts the gradual implementation 
of a BIG in Brazil! Thereby Brazil is the first country to have taken this 
bold empowerment step for the poor. The question is, when is Namibia ready 
to follow this role model and introduce a BIG?"

For further information and to get a copy of the letter to Insight 
Magazine, please send an e-mail to Claudia & Dirk Haarmann 
<cd.haarmann at gmx.net>

*GERMANY: PRIME MINISTER OF LUXEMBOURG SUPPORTS EU-WIDE MINIMUM INCOME

On November 11, 2006, Jean-Claude Juncker, the Prime Minister of 
Luxembourg, gave an interview to the prominent German daily "Frankfurter 
Rundschau". The article was entitled "Europe needs a basic income for all", 
and in the interview Juncker made a strong plea for minimum standards in 
the whole EU. He seems to think every EU-citizen is entitled to a minimum 
standard of living, but remains unclear whether this would have all the 
other features BIEN normally associated with an unconditional basic income.
The interview has been posted at 
http://www.gouvernement.lu/salle_presse/Interviews/2006/11novembre/20juncker_rundschau/

10. PUBLICATIONS

*ENGLISH

CLARK, Robert F. (2006), Giving Credit Where Due: A Path to Global Poverty 
Reduction, Lanham (Maryland): <http://www.univpress.com/>University Press 
of America.

According to the World Bank, approximately one billion people live on less 
than US$1 a day. Giving Credit Where Due: A Path to Global Poverty 
Reduction critically examines the level and quality of the international 
community's response to such extreme poverty. This work traces the ethical 
and religious underpinnings of social welfare policy; describes income 
support systems in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere; and proposes a 
new strategy for reducing global poverty. Under this approach, developing 
countries would establish a refundable tax credit to put a floor under the 
incomes of their people who live on less than US$1 a day. A global tax 
credit fund would be created by the United Nations and financed with 
contributions from rich nations and private donors. The fund would enable 
the UN to share in the costs with countries that adopt the tax credit 
approach. Giving Credit Where Due addresses the inevitable objections to 
the approach, such as badly administered, even corrupt, revenue systems in 
many developing countries. It offers constructive ideas for making the 
refundable tax credit a reality in a changing global environment.
Robert F. Clark is an independent writer and consultant. He has more than 
35 years of experience with human services and community-based programs. He 
is the author of Victory Deferred: The War on Global Poverty (1945-2003) 
and The War on Poverty: History, Selected Programs, and Ongoing Impact, 
both from the University Press of America.

HARMAN Eva (2006), "Can It Start Small, but End BIG? Expanding Social 
Assistance in South Africa", Human Rights Review, 7:4. 81-99.
Author's email: <mailto:emharman at fulbrightweb.org>emharman at fulbrightweb.org

Generating heated politics in South Africa is a proposal to introduce a 
universal basic income grant, known as "BIG." The "gaps" in the existing 
system of social assistance grants have caught the attention of activists 
and politicians across the political spectrum. Most concur on the need to 
expand the system, but the issue of how its "gaps" should be closed is a 
matter of great political divergence. To cast light on the significance of 
these debates, Eva Harman shows how the system's "gaps" are more 
complicated than measurements of poverty and inequality may suggest. 
Following the social and economic relations that develop around social 
grants, her analysis foregrounds a tension in the existing assistance 
system. Social grants provide a critical source of income for recipients 
and their kin, assisting them to confront the challenging realities of 
current labor market conditions. At the same time, social grants act as 
conduits for historical forces to articulate with local conditions and 
reshape relationships between citizens, the state, and the market. This 
tension points to the ambiguity of the BIG proposal and of its potential to 
engender a larger transformation, Harman argues.

LEVY, Horacio & SUTHERLAND, Holly (2006), 'A Basic Income for Europe's 
Children?', University of Essex: Institute for Social and Economic 
Research, EUROMOD Working Paper em4/06, September 2006, 30p. Downloadable 
at http://ideas.repec.org/p/ese/emodwp/em4-06.html

This paper explores the prospects for a guaranteed income for every child 
in the European Union and its potential effects on child poverty, taking as 
one starting point the ideas set out by economist Anthony Atkinson. It 
examines the extent to which existing levels of financial support for 
children through national taxes and benefits fall short of a series of 
illustrative minimum levels of income corresponding to proportions of 
median income. It estimates the cost of bringing the amount of support up 
to these levels for all children as well as the corresponding impacts on 
income poverty among EU children. From this the cost in each country of 
providing basic incomes for children is estimated such that potential EU 
child poverty reduction targets are met. This cost could be met at national 
level or, alternatively, at EU level. The effect of financing the 
guaranteed child income using a European flat tax is investigated. The 
analysis uses EUROMOD, the European tax-benefit microsimulation model and 
illustrates the implications of the choices that must be made when 
designing such a scheme for the extent of redistribution between countries 
and towards children.

VAN PARIJS, Philippe (2006), "Bottom-up Social Europe. From subsidiarity to 
Euro-Dividend", Plenary address at the conference organized at the 
initiative of the Finnish presidency of the European Union, The EU's 
evolving Social Policy and National Models. Seeking a New Balance, 
Helsinki, 9-10/11/2006, available as DOCH 165, Université catholique de 
Louvain: Chaire Hoover d'éthique économique et sociale, November 2006.

In matters of social policy, the subsidiarity principle makes a lot of 
sense, but direct EU involvement is indispensable to prevent Europe ending 
up doing worse than the US in terms of social solidarity. Imposing minimum 
standards will be insufficient. EU-level funding of the most redistributive 
component of the social transfer system will be required.
There are three models for organizing such funding: a means-tested 
"Euro-Stipend" as proposed by P. Schmitter and M. Bauer; co-payment as 
often practised for social assistance by member states and their local 
authorities; and a EU-wide universal basic income or Euro-Dividend, be it 
initially restricted to a specific age group, such as children. Only the 
third model is consistent with the preservation of healthy and diverse 
national welfare states.
The conditions for the political feasibility of such an active EU 
involvement in social policy are not yet fulfilled, however. They include 
the thickening of an EU-wide civil society, EU-level electoral institutions 
that foster the construction and defence of an EU-wide general interest and 
the democratization of competence in English as the EU's lingua franca.

*FRENCH

PRALONG, Estelle & JOZ-ROLAND, Emmanuelle (2006), "Une politique féministe 
est-elle possible? Quelques pistes!", L'émilie (Geneva), 1504, 
August-September 2006.

This issue of the Swiss feminist magazine "L'émilie", founded in 1912, is 
devoted to an exploration of various reforms that could foster gender 
equality. It includes a short interview with Yannick Vanderborght (Facultés 
Saint Louis in Brussels & Hoover Chair in Louvain, Belgium), which focuses 
on basic income and its possible impact on gender inequalities.
Magazine's website: http://www.lemilie.org/

*GERMAN

Netzwerk Grundeinkommen Österreich & Netzwerk Grundeinkommen Deutschland 
(eds.) (2006), "Grundeinkommen- in Freiheit tätig sein. Beiträge des ersten 
deutschsprachigen Grundeinkommenskongresses", 
Berlin:<http://www.avinus.de/>Avinus Verlag, IBSN 3930064731

This book includes a collection of papers and inputs given at the first 
basic income congress in German language "Basic income: being active in 
freedom", which was hosted in Vienna in October 2005 by the Austrian and 
German Basic Income Networks. Edited by the two networks, the book deals 
with the freedom-enhancing potentials of a basic income, questions of 
social cohesion, different forms of work, and future perspectives of a 
basic income. It contains contributions by Eduardo Suplicy, co-chair of 
BIEN, Liselotte Wohlgenannt, Ronald Blaschke, Anne Allex, Erich Kitzmüller, 
Katrin Mohr, Manfred Fühlsack and many others. It will be officially 
launched in Vienna on December 11th and on December 15th in Berlin.

*ITALIAN

Special issue of Infoxoa, Rivista di quotidiano movimento, 20, October 
2006. http://www.infoxoa.org/

This issue includes several articles on basic income, such as Guy 
Standing's "Perchè il basic income in Italia?", Philippe Van Parijs' "Basic 
Income un idea semplice e forte", and M.J. Bertomeu & D.Raventos' "Il 
reddito di base come diritto di esistenza". For further information: 
<infoxoa at infoxoa.org>

VANDERBORGHT Yannick & VAN PARIJS Philippe (2006), Il reddito minimio 
universale, Milano: Univesità Bocconi Editore EGEA, 159p., ISBN 88-8350-081-4.
This Italian translation of "L'allocation universelle", which was 
originally published in French in 2005, includes a new Preface by Chiara 
Saraceno (Universita di Torino).
An expanded version of the book shall be published in English in 2008 by 
Harvard University Press.
Publisher's website: www.egeaonline.it

*SPANISH

PINILLA-PALLEJÀ, Rafael (2006), "Más allá del bienestar. La renta básica de 
ciudadanía como innovación social basada en la evidencia". Barcelona: 
Editorial Icaria. 272p. ISBN 84-7426-845-1 www.icariaeditorial.com/

The book explores the need for a new paradigm beyond the limitations of the 
traditional welfare states, with the basic income proposal as one of its 
key pillars. To do so the author suggests an evidence-based approach to 
policy innovations and social change, where wide political agreements based 
on all the available scientific evidence are a necessary condition for 
successful policy reforms. Finally the book offers a concrete and detailed 
proposal for a sustainable basic income in Spain, carefully grounded on the 
Spanish fiscal and economic reality.

PISARELLO, Gerardo and DE CABO, Antonio (eds.) (2006), La Renta Básica como 
nuevo derecho ciudadano [Basic Income as a New Citizen Right], Madrid: 
<http://www.trotta.es/>Trotta, ISBN 84-8164-863-9.

Contributions by María José Añón, Marco Bascetta, María Julia Bertomeu, 
Giuseppe Bronzini, Antoni Domènech, Luigi Ferrajoli, Andrea Fumagalli, 
Pablo Miravet, José Antonio Noguera, Laura Pautassi, Daniel Raventós, 
Ingrid Robeyns and Corina Rodríguez Enríquez.
“The alarming increase of exclusion and poverty has raised many questions 
with regard to the efficacy of the so-called Welfare State and to the 
quality of contemporary democracies. One of the answers to these questions 
has been the minimisation of social rights, which have quite often been 
reduced to targeted measures and to decisions that are revocable depending 
on the willingness of the politicians currently in power. The proposal that 
this book is devoted to goes in the contrary direction. […] It would mean a 
new kind of social right that would be similar to the right to vote and to 
universal education and wealth care. It is a provocative proposal. Among 
other reasons, because it obliges us to discuss from philosophical, 
political, economic and legal perspectives many classical subjects and 
because it urges us to revise old prejudices: from the relation between 
income and wage-earning work to the allegedly merit- and contribution-based 
nature of current societies” (from back cover).

VAN PARIJS, Philippe & VANDERBORGHT, Yannick (2006). La renta básica. Una 
medida eficaz para luchar contra la pobreza. Prólogo de Daniel Raventós. 
Traducción de David Casassas. Barcelona: Paidos, 156p, ISBN 84-493-1932-3, 
www.paidos.com

This Spanish translation of "L'allocation universelle", which was 
originally published in French in 2005, includes a new Preface by Daniel 
Raventós (Universidad de Barcelona, and head of the Spanish Basic Income 
Network Red Renta Basica).
An expanded version of the book should be published in English in 2008 by 
Harvard University Press.
Note that a critique of the book was published online by the far-right 
Spanish website "Libertad Digital". The critique can be viewed at 
http://libros.libertaddigital.com/articulo.php/1276232499. It was for a 
great deal inspired by a 
<http://chroniquespatagones.blogspirit.com/archive/2006/10/28/allocation-universelle-redistribution-classique.html>similar 
critique published in French by a right-liberal website.

11. NEW LINKS

*DESMOND TUTU SUPPORTS BASIC INCOME
At the end of the 11th BIEN Congress (Cape Town, November 2006), Archbishop 
Desmond Tutu, Nobel Laureate and one of the great figures of the 
anti-apartheid struggle, gave a moving and effective speech in favour of a 
basic income. It can be viewed on 
<http://youtube.com/watch?v=gf3n-L5FDy0>YouTube.

*CITIZEN'S INCOME NEWSLETTER (UK)
The third edition of the Citizen’s Income Newsletter (United Kingdom) for 
2006 is now available on 
www.citizensincome.org/resources/newsletter%20issue%203%202006.shtml
Note that the 
<http://www.citizensincome.org/resources/newsletter%20issue%201%202007.shtml>first 
edition for 2007 is also available.

*BELGIAN BASIC INCOME PARTY LAUNCHES NEW WEBSITE
Vivant, a small Belgian political party led by BIEN Life-member Roland 
Duchâtelet, has launched a new website entitled "Enjoy Living".
See the Dutch version athttp://www.vivant.org/site/nl/home/
and the English version at http://www.vivant.org/site/en/home/

*WORLD CITIZENS ACTION
This group initiated by Lisinka Ulatowska supports a plan for a Basic 
Income for all funded by the United Nations . The plan includes four phases.
1. Create a Draft Plan consisting of basic income approaches from around 
the world, how to implement them and endorsements by interested world leaders.
2. Circulate this among all Heads of State and Government, world leaders, 
experts and grass roots and insert feedback into the document; combine this 
with a lobby via the UN until informed world public opinion is buzzing in 
support and several Governments decide to go ahead.
3. Create a universal structure to implement the basic income, which can 
eventually accommodate all governments as they are ready. This would 
include helping Governments and communities to decide on an approach and 
training people to implement it, and the necessary financial consultants 
and banking facilities. Consult with and lobby Governments via the UN.
4. When sufficient governments have joined, apply for status as a 
Specialized Agency of the UN.
See or http://www.worldcitizensaction.com or contact Lisinka Ulatowska: 
<lisinkalu at versatel.nl>

*ECONOMIA ERETICA
GianCarlo Moiso (Casale Monferrato, Italy) has posted an English 
translation of his essay "Un reddito garantito per tutti" at 
<http://www.economiaeretica.it/>http://www.economiaeretica.it/

12. ABOUT THE BASIC INCOME EARTH NETWORK

Co-chair:
Eduardo SUPLICY, Federal Senator, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Guy STANDING, Professor of Economic Security, University of Bath, and 
Professor of Labour Economics, Monash University

Further details about BIEN's Executive Committee and International Board 
can be found on our website, as well as further details about the 
Recognised National Networks.

MEMBERSHIP

All life members of the Basic Income European Network, many of whom were 
non-Europeans, have automatically become life members of the Basic Income 
Earth Network.
To join them, just send your name and address (postal and electronic) to 
David Casassas  <dcasassas at ub.edu> Secretary of BIEN, and transfer EUR 100 
to BIEN's account 001 2204356 10 at FORTIS BANK (IBAN: BE41 0012 2043 
5610), 10 Rond-Point Schuman, B-1040 Brussels, Belgium. An acknowledgement 
will be sent upon receipt.
BIEN Life-members can become “B(I)ENEFACTORS” by giving another 100 Euros 
or more to the Network. The funds collected will facilitate the 
participation of promising BI advocates coming from developing countries or 
from disadvantaged groups.

B(I)ENEFACTORS:
Joel Handler (US), Philippe Van Parijs (BE), Helmut Pelzer (DE), Guy 
Standing (UK), Eduardo Suplicy (BR), Robert van der Veen (NL)

BIEN's Life Members:
James Meade (+), Gunnar Adler-Karlsson (SE), Maria Ozanira da Silva (BR), 
Ronald Dore (UK), Alexander de Roo (NL), Edouard Dommen (CH), Philippe Van 
Parijs (BE), P.J. Verberne (NL), Tony Walter (UK), Philippe Grosjean (BE), 
Malcolm Torry (UK), Wouter van Ginneken (CH), Andrew Williams (UK), Roland 
Duchâtelet (BE), Manfred Fuellsack (AT), Anne-Marie Prieels (BE), Philippe 
Desguin (BE), Joel Handler (US), Sally Lerner (CA), David Macarov (IL), 
Paul Metz (NL), Claus Offe (DE), Guy Standing (UK), Hillel Steiner (UK), 
Werner Govaerts (BE), Robley George (US), Yoland Bresson (FR), Richard 
Hauser (DE), Eduardo Matarazzo Suplicy (BR), Jan-Otto Andersson (FI), 
Ingrid Robeyns (UK), John Baker (IE), Rolf Kuettel (CH), Michael Murray 
(US), Carlos Farinha Rodrigues (PT), Yann Moulier Boutang (FR), Joachim 
Mitschke (DE), Rik van Berkel (NL), François Blais (CA), Katrin Töns (DE), 
Almaz Zelleke (US), Gerard Degrez (BE), Michael Opielka (DE), Lena Lavinas 
(BR), Julien Dubouchet (CH), Jeanne Hrdina (CH), Joseph Huber (DE), Markku 
Ikkala (FI),  Luis Moreno (ES), Rafael Pinilla (ES), Graham Taylor (UK), W. 
Robert Needham (CA), Tom Borsen Hansen (DK), Ian Murray (US), Peter 
Molgaard Nielsen (DK), Fernanda Rodrigues (PT), Helmut Pelzer (DE), Rod 
Dobell (CA), Walter Van Trier (BE), Loek Groot (NL), Andrea Fumagalli (IT), 
Bernard Berteloot (FR), Jean-Pierre Mon (FR), Angelika Krebs (DE), Ahmet 
Insel (FR), Alberto Barbeito (AR), Rubén Lo Vuolo (AR), Manos Matsaganis 
(GR), Jose Iglesias Fernandez (ES), Daniel Eichler (DE), Cristovam Buarque 
(BR), Michael Lewis (US), Clive Lord (UK), Jean Morier-Genoud (FR), Eri 
Noguchi (US), Michael Samson (ZA), Ingrid van Niekerk (ZA), Karl Widerquist 
(US), Al Sheahen (US), Christopher Balfour (UK), Jurgen De Wispelaere (UK), 
Wolf-Dieter Just (DE), Zsuzsa Ferge (HU), Paul Friesen (CA), Nicolas 
Bourgeon (FR), Marja A. Pijl (NL), Matthias Spielkamp (DE), Frédéric 
Jourdin (FR), Daniel Raventós (ES), Andrés Hernández (CO), Guido Erreygers 
(BE), Stephen C. Clark (US), Wolfgang Mundstein (AT), Evert Voogd (NL), 
Frank Thompson (US), Lieselotte Wohlgenannt (AT), Jose Luis Rey Pérez (ES), 
Jose Antonio Noguera (ES), Esther Brunner (CH), Irv Garfinkel (US), Claude 
Macquet (BE), Bernard Guibert (FR), Margit Appel (AT), Simo Aho (FI), 
Francisco Ramos Martin (ES), Brigid Reynolds (IE), Sean Healy (IE), Maire 
Mullarney (IE), Patrick Lovesse (CH), Jean-Paul Zoyem (FR), GianCarlo Moiso 
(IT), Martino Rossi (CH), Pierre Herold (CH), Steven Shafarman (US), 
Leonardo Fernando Cruz Basso (BR), Wolfgang Strenmann-Kuhn (DE), Anne 
Glenda Miller (UK), Lowell Manning (NZ), Dimitris Ballas (GR), Gilberte 
Ferrière (BE), Louise Haagh (DK), Michael Howard (US), Simon Wigley (TR), 
Erik Christensen (DK), David Casassas (ES), Paul Nollen (BE), Vriend(inn)en 
Basisinkomen (NL), Christophe Guené (BE), Alain Massot (CA), Marcel 
Bertrand Paradis (CA), NN (Geneve, CH), Marc Vandenberghe (BE), Gianluca 
Busilacchi (IT), Robert F. Clark (US), Theresa Funiciello (US), Al Boag & 
Sue Williams (AU), Josef Meyer (BE), Alain Boyer (CH), Jos Janssen (NL), 
Collectif Charles Fourier (+), Bruce Ackerman (US), Victor Lau (CA), 
Konstantinos Geormas (GR), Pierre Feray (FR), Christian Brütsch (CH), Phil 
Harvey (US), Toru Yamamori (JP), René Keersemaker (NL), Manuel Franzmann 
(DE), Ovidio Carlos de Brito (BR), Bernard De Crum (NL), Katja Kipping 
(DE), Jan Beaufort (DE), Christopher Mueller (DE), Bradley Nelson (US), 
Marc de Basquiat (FR), James Robertson (UK), Infoxoa Rivista (IT), Eric 
Patry (CH), Vianney Angles (FR), Isabel Ortiz (US), Bert Penninckx (BE), 
Martine Waltho (UK), Christoph Meier (DO), Robert van der Veen (NL), Pablo 
Yanes (MX) [167].

BIEN's NewsFlash is mailed electronically every two months to over 1000 
subscribers throughout the world.
Requests for free subscription are to be sent to bien at basicincome.org
Items for inclusion or review in future NewsFlashes are to be sent to 
Yannick Vanderborght, newsletter editor, UCL, Chaire Hoover, 3 Place 
Montesquieu, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, vanderborght at fusl.ac.be
The items included in BIEN NewsFlashes are not protected by any copyright. 
They can be reproduced and translated at will. But if you use them, please 
mention the existence and address of the Basic Income Earth Network 
(including its web site www.basisincome.org) and the exact references of 
the events or publications concerned. Thank you.


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