BASIC INCOME NEW ZEALAND
 

Newsletter August 2016

 

 

"Turning WINZ into BINZ"

basicincomenz.net

 

 

 

 

Message from President Lowell Manning

Tēnā koutou,

Welcome to our Mid-Olympics Newsletter.

Thank you all for your patience. It has been five months since our March 2016 AGM. We sincerely regret the lack of communication since then. It has been a consequence of  technical difficulties and some errors made on our part as we have been through something of a learning curve. I thank Jennifer Matthys, Karl Matthys and Rory Sarten for assisting us in resolving those issues. We will send out newsletters on a more regular basis from now on.


A previous committee member transferred the BINZ site to us a few months ago. However, transferring the old domain was problematic. This is why we have changed our web address from basicincomenz.org to basicincomenz.net (the .org has changed to .net). I also encourage people to look up our Facebook page: BINZ Basic Income New Zealand. 


AGM: BINZ held its first annual meeting in Napier on 26th March. There were several changes to the committee. We want to become broadly based as our organisation expands and to help with this the committee has been expanded from 7 to 9, leaving two new places for areas outside of Rotorua, Hawkes Bay, Wellington, and Kapiti. The committee may also co-opt further members on an interim basis.

My warmest thanks go to the previous committee members for their invaluable help in getting BINZ up and running and for their ongoing contributions to BINZ.

 

Contact: We are looking to improve our contact list for communication and for better awareness of where our members live. We would appreciate subscribers and members sending a phone contact and/or address by emailing or calling us. 

Our email contact is binzcontact@gmail.com or feel free to call Michael or me directly: (04) 475 6118 (Michael), and (04) 298 6890 (Lowell).


This is a long newsletter, so, for navigational purposes, information on BINZ's recent activity is towards the top and other articles of interest are further down.

Ngā mihi nui,

 

Lowell Manning

President

Last Committee Meeting

 

The committee's last meeting was in Wellington on Saturday 18th June. 

 

Among the main topics we discussed was a road show being planned. The road show will begin in late August and end during International Basic Income week, 19th-25th of September. It will start in Rotorua and finish in Auckland.

The Committee approved a UBI handbook written by Lowell. It will be put up on to the website soon. We encourage people to use it for background research and to send us feedback.
 

Our Subcommittee working on a new pamphlet presented their progress. After taking comments from the wider Committee the Subcommittee was directed to complete the pamphlet before the road show. - The pamphlet is at the printers now!

 

Upcoming Events for the National Roadshow

Rotorua

Wednesday, 24 August 2016

Novotel Hotel at 5.30pm
For more details click button below.

Rotorua Chamber of Commerce

Rotorua
Friday, 26 August 2016
Waiariki Institute of Technology, Room L204 at 12pm
For more details click button below.


We will update you with a schedule of further stops in the coming weeks.

Waiariki Polytechnic

BINZ at 2016 BIEN Congress: Seoul, July 7-9

 

Tamara D'Auvergne represented BINZ at the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) Congress in Seoul, South Korea in July.

 

She presented a research paper relating to how the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement could affect the decommodification of labour  and hence the implementation of basic income in New Zealand. The paper will be published in the congress proceedings. The topic sounds a little "out there" but the papers had to fit within the research guidelines set down for each Congress.

 

Tamara wrote an email to us recounting what happened at the Congress, she will soon produce a report. Here is a part of her email:

'BINZ is now an affiliate of BIEN ~ a unanimous vote with a very strong glowing recommendation for BINZ from Guy Standing...

Another theme that was clear was that raising the public profile of BI as a concept with all the attendant emancipatory effects was more important than working out the precise logistics/implementation to gain popular support. The presentation on the Swiss referendum said that they chose this strategy and post-referendum there is even more support because the conversation has been kicked off. The majority of people I saw presenting and had conversations with felt that BI is a movement from below and political parties will eventually follow popular support for BI ~ it is not a top-down, or political party generated process so far.'

NZ: A Universal Basic Income is not punitive!

A Universal Basic Income is not dependent on behaviour!

Offenders can lose benefits under bill

Parliament has passed the first reading of a bill that allows benefits to be stopped when offenders don't comply with community sentences.

Read More

Switzerland Votes in Universal Basic Income Referendum

The Swiss referendum on basic income  received 23% support overall, varying from 38% in some ot the French parts of the country down to about 15% in other parts.

 

There has been a lot written about it already, but there is a fairly broad consensus that the basic income figure of 2500 Francs per person per month mentioned during the campaign (though it was not part of the referendum itself) was too high and scared some voters away from supporting it.  

 

To put the number into perspective, 1 franc is roughly 1.5 $NZ, so similar to NZ$1000/week for each adult, less for children. That's a BIG basic income even when taking account that Switzerland has one of the world's highest costs of living.

 

BINZ does not promote any particular level of basic income because we believe the level at which basic income is paid should be set by the public at large and the government of the day prior to implimentation.  

 

However, the lowest practical level for a "full" basic income is what we call a neutral basic income. The net household income of each household (whether non-working, low, medium or high income) would remain the same as it is today. Everyone would get  all the benefits of basic income but there is no income redistribution.  

 

Because each household would have the same net income as it has now there would be no "cost" at all: opposition to basic income on the basis of "cost" is a monumental myth. 

 

A basic income above the neutral level would probably involve some income redistribution but the amount of redistribution needed to eliminate poverty is very small indeed, just a few percent of our economic output. Since the public and the government would get to decide the level of income redistributionany, any basic income would, by definition, always be affordable.

Universal Basic Income: Why it is Not Crazy and Not Going Away

The Dutch city of Utrecht is developing a pilot project for a universal basic income that will launch in January 2017. The Finnish government is designing a trial to see whether giving low-income people a guaranteed basic income destroys their motivation to do any work at all, as critics allege.

Read More

Huge Support for Basic Income in Europe

 

A recent large survey about support for basic income in Europe shows majority support for it in many countries including the larger ones like Spain, Germany, UK, France and The Netherlands. The survey of 10,000 people was conducted across 28 countries.

 

The underlying message is:  AWARENESS = SUPPORT

EU Survey: 64% of Europeans in Favour of Basic Income

The first EU-wide opinion survey on basic income finds a great majority of Europeans know about basic income and are supportive of the idea. While it is no surprise that basic income has gained a lot of popularity over the past few months, it is difficult to grasp exactly how mainstream basic income has begun.

Read More
Gaylene Middleton
binzcontact@gmail.com

Check out the BINZ website!  
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