Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Juliet Schor is Professor of Sociology at Boston College, a member of the MacArthur Foundation Connected Learning Research Network, and co-founder of the Center for a New American Dream. She addresses the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?”
As a long-time proponent of basic income, and as someone who has been involved in pilots in four continents, the past year has been a roller coaster, perhaps summarised as two steps forward, one step back, with marks for progress as six out of 10. It will take acts of courage to move forward decisively in 2019, but more doors are opening.
To combat climate change, we must shift how we produce, distribute, consume, and dispose of food. To adapt to climate change, we must build agricultural systems that are resilient to disruption. The timeliness of this move was evident recently as a national coalition of farmers and ranchers endorsed the Green New Deal.
A lot of Australia’s welfare programmes primarily target First Nations people. Australia is a settler colonial society. Sovereignty was never ceded and has never been given back. This is an ongoing struggle, and welfare is now being used as a weapon in neo-assimilationist attempts by the settler state.
What is a sane economy? An economy that is sane is an economy that doesn’t make people sick, and doesn’t make our planet sick. Basic income is a way of making the economy more sane.
Modern economic systems have sanctified the payment of debt but this is not some natural or God-given rule, rather a situation designed by financial elites. The wisdom of Rumpelstiltskin needs to be revisited and adapted for modern times.
The U.S. Congress will be considering renewing the Farm Bill before the current authorization expires on September 30, 2018. As Feasta members commemorate 20 years of innovative policy ideas, sustainable food policy will continue to be a top priority.
For those who see worker cooperatives and other forms of economic democracy as the alternative to capitalist enterprises and the seeds of an alternative, egalitarian society, there are at least three paths one might envision to that egalitarian society.
Though human rights are not unproblematic, examining basic income through the lens of human rights moves us into discussions about the type of society and economy we want to have, instead of hiding these real questions behind broad economic approaches and traditional cultural values.
It seems that 2017 has been a watershed year for the global basic income movement, as multiple governments and private research groups have independently conceived and launched experimental trials of basic income (and closely related policies). Several new experiments in North America and Europe represent the first such experiments in the developed world since the 1970s (when a negative income tax was tested in several cities in the United States and Canada), and the largest basic income trial ever designed is about to take place in Kenya.
Basic income is generally discussed as though it’s something hypothetical that has never existed in the real world, apart for a few recent trials here and there. However, if we define it as unearned income that enables a person to meet their basic needs, we can see that basic income of one kind or other has in fact existed for a fair few people throughout history.
So, we also need to reverse the parasitic, rentier effects of enclosure and marry basic income to her true partner – land value tax. Land tax combined with a citizen’s dividend provides the simplest, most elegant regenerative tool for social justice.
