Basic Income

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Basic Income New Zealand / Te Utu Tika Hei Oranga i Aotearoa October 2023.

In this newsletter:

We sadly have to report the passing of one of our committee members.

There are links to two new pages on our website: 1): the 2023 Elections and 2): Basic Income and the United Nations.

A reminder to support our petition to Parliament.

Articles by Shaun Cavanagh and Sue Bradford

 

Obituary

Shaun Cavanagh died 8 September 2023

Shaun Cavanagh a valued committee member of Te Utu Tika Hei I Oranga Aotearoa- Basic Income New Zealand has sadly passed away 8 September 2023. Shaun was very committed to the hope of the introduction of a Basic Income in New Zealand. Shaun’s knowledge of Basic Income literature was encyclopaedic. During committee meeting discussions Shaun had at his finger tips a reference that was always applicable to our discussion. Though suffering a debilitating brain disease Shaun attended our 2023 AGM in Dunedin and was present at our Zoom committee meetings until the very end. Shaun was a supporter of The Opportunities Party and was a regular and well-known contributor to the TOP Members Lounge Facebook page.as one of the TOP policies is the introduction of a Basic Income. We will remember Shaun for his tenacity in refusing to allow his health to disrupt his interest in Basic Income.

Below is an article written by Shaun and published in the Summer 2020 edition of the Australasian Parks and Leisure publication.

Two more pages of interest have been added to our webpage- New Zealand Election 2023 and Basic Income and the United Nations:

 

New Zealand Election 2023

New Zealand will hold a general election on Saturday 14 October 2023. Voting started on Monday 2 October.

This page looks at the election and the policies of the main political parties from a human rights and Basic Income perspective. The page considers such things as the universality of payments and the equitable distribution of wealth with particular emphasis on Basic Income payments, universal services, and equitable taxation changes.

https://www.basicincomenz.net/election-2023

 

Basic Income and the United Nations

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) require governments to maintain basic but adequate living standards for all their citizens.

In recent years, the United Nations Secretary-General and other United Nations senior officials, and various United Nations organisations, have publicly supported Basic Income.

https://www.basicincomenz.net/united-nations
 

Please support our PETITION

To: Members of the House of Representatives-Introduce a Basic Income in Aotearoa New Zealand

E nga mana, e nga reo, e nga karangatanga maha, tena koutou.

Urge the Government to introduce a weekly Basic Income payment to everyone living in Aotearoa New Zealand, paid in cash, not means-tested, and independent of other income, assets, and relationship status.

We believe recent disasters have heaped misery on people, many of whom live in permanent crisis. In our view, previous actions have been unsuccessful in preventing persistent poverty; poverty has been exacerbated by recent disasters; and the current system is not fit for purpose. A Basic Income can be a foundation upon which an equitable system can be built. We feel we urgently need a system that is both unbureaucratic and reliable, to lift people out of poverty and provide help when needed.

https://our.actionstation.org.nz/petitions/introduce-a-basic-income-in-aotearoa-new-zealand?fbclid=IwAR3Tfl392EJsZX2_Ll0qq0iRopTrApTn7ZJ43cuBF4RJJmKwKeda10C36Cc

PROGRESSIVE BASIC INCOME IN AOTEAROA 2023

Overview & Reflection by Sue Bradford

This article by Sue Bradford is a comprehensive history of Basic Income advocacy in New Zealand from a Left and community-based perspective. Sue presented this paper at the 2022 BIEN Conference in Brisbane Australia. This paper can be found in Foreign Control Watchdog 163 August 2023:

http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/63/10.html

Leisure and the Unconditional Basic Income

Shaun Cavanagh

Allow me to preface this article with a description of the image of the New Zealand postage stamp depicting sheep drafting. This resembles our capacity for attention and memory. In this metaphor, the sheep represent external stimuli (ie. media) that need sorting. The gate represents attention that determines how sorting occurs and the manner in which our beliefs are formed. The use of this image attempts to describe the plurality of content on Basic Income and approaches to leisure, and to acknowledge this image as a form of regulation that selects and directs content.

Basic Income is being discussed more frequently, especially in the Covid-19 era. It is often described as UBI, with the U standing for Universal and/or Unconditional. Some prefer the term Basic Income. The relationship of leisure to Basic Income is worth exploring on the premise that implementation of Basic Income in New Zealand is likely to give New Zealanders greater access to leisure, which is an important goal of recreation therapy as a profession.

 

The context for this article is that 14-20 September 2020 is Basic Income Weekl, with various international events happening under the tagline Freedom to Choose. September 17 saw the announcement of New Zealand being officially in recession, with a 12.2 percent drop in GDP (June quarter) following our lockdown from March 26 this year, and a forecast of 280,000 unemployed New Zealanders by 2022 2

Also worth noting is that the 2020 Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) Congress was to be held in Brisbane from 28-30 September, but was cancelled due to Covid-19 3 At the time of writing, I had just participated in a World Leisure Organisation (WLO) webinar on the topic of Human Rights and Leisure: the WLO Charter for Leisure, to inform participants about important updates and changes to the Charter in line with emerging social and global issues4 .

Several books on Basic Income have been produced in recent years, including The Precariat Charters, Utopia for Realists6, Basic Income: And How We can Make it Happen 7 Give People Money8, The War on Normal People9 and Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy. Basic Income has also been addressed by New Zealand authors: The Big Kahuna ll Pennies from Heaven 12 , and The New Zealand Projecti3 . It is a challenge to do justice to all with a single article, although valuable patterns and similarities can be observed among their writings.

The main focus of this article is to investigate how authors treat leisure as a concept. Both leisure and Basic Income can be regarded as amorphous concepts, and require workable definitions. It is observed that leisure is frequently referred to in terms of time use, although some authors (Standing, Bregman, Van Parijs and Vanderborght) discuss leisure in-depth, either through the historical figures who've contributed to discussion, or providing examples of how leisure and recreation have gained through government intervention. The impact of automation and artificial intelligence on the future of work is a focus for Andrew Yang 9 . The WLO webinar covered French sociologist Joffre Dumazadier's (1974) approach to leisure, revised to include personal development and self-realisation in the manner of Aristotelian thought.

Basic Income is defined as "a modest amount of money paid unconditionally to individuals on a regular basis. "7 Paid as a dividend to citizens of a given area, it is distinct from the associated term of a Guaranteed Minimum Income (GMI). Descriptors of Basic Income include "venture capital for the people' "foundation" or "floor", "dividend" and "the power to say no". One perspective on leisure, paraphrasing Cicero (106-43 BC) is: "Leisure consists in all those virtuous activities by which one grows morally, intellectually, and spiritually. It is that which makes a life worth living. "14 Each concept has variations in how they are defined, though for the purpose of this article these definitions are useful.

A starting point is to realise that the passage and use of time is a central element of leisure, and this entails a lot of reflection. This is an activity closely associated with a prominent author (Josef Pieper, 1952) and his book Leisure the Basis of Culture15, 16, 17 Leisure is a necessary component of producing an article like this through reflection on different forms of content. Readers will be aware of the expression, "Work is fascinating. I can sit and look at it for hours" — which many students will identify with. Our Recreation Therapy degree taught us that leisure is generally classified in three ways: 1. Specific recreation activities; 2. Unobligated or discretionary time; and 3. A state of mind. 18 Pieper defined leisure as "a state of being necessary for a true vision of reality"15. 16 which aligns closely with leisure as a state of mind (an example of the third definition Maria Popova has summarised Pieper' thought well in a Brain Pickings article17

In 2018, just a few weeks after receiving a post-graduate Diploma in Public Health, I attended the Wellbeing and Public Policy conference in Wellington. The theme anticipated the Government's first Wellbeing Budget, and the words of Amartya Sen's capabilities theory were a common feature: "People leading lives they value and have reason to value. "19 The message taken from this phrase is that the enjoyment must be an inherent part of our regular activities.

There is a contemporary expression that rolls easily off the tongue about "work-life balance", although it implies work and life carry the same value to our wellbeing when it is possible the expression is an example of false equivalence. Of course, people should gain fulfilment from work. What I'm interested in is how we tend to think of leisure as free-time only without acknowledging its classical meaning.

Rutger Bregman6 conveys a similar thought when discussing prosperity and a capacity of people to "spend time on things that genuinely matter to us" rather than remaining idle and doing nothing. The bold statement in Mäori korero, "Tihei Mauri Ora!", is spoken with belief and conviction. The translation 20 of this statement indicates that the value of life will always transcend that of work. The popular contemporary expression work-life balance says something about commodification of time and leisure for commercial ends, with leisure defined as free time in relationship to work.

This article briefly compares two related concepts that are defined and supported in varying ways. I am conscious of various contributions on both topics, but these are outside the scope of this article. The main focus is to make an initial attempt to account for how proponents of Basic Income conceptualise and value leisure. It is anticipated this will be an important area of study as the world adapts to the socio-economic effects of Covid-19 and climate change, and a growth in automation and artificial intelligence.

 

REFERENCES

  1. Income Movement. Portland, Oregon. basicincomeweek.org

  2. Tim Watkin (17 September). rnz.co.nz/programmes/caucus/ story/2018764442/gulliver-s-election-and-is-labour-angling-to-govern-alone

  3. Basic Income Earth Network. London. basicincome.org

  4. World Leisure Organisation. worldleisure.org/charter

  5. Standing, G. (2014) A Precariat Charter: Denizens to Citizens. London: Bloomsbury Plc.

  6. Bregman, R. (2017) Utopia for Realists. London: Bloomsbury Plc.

  7. Standing, G. (2017) Basic Income: And How We can Make it Happen. London: Penguin.

  8. Lowrey, A. (2018) Give People Money. London: penguin.

  9. Yang, A. (2019) The War on Normal People. New York: Hachette.

  10. . Van Parijs, P, Vanderborght, Y. (2017) Basic Income:A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

11 . Morgan, G, Guthrie, S. (2011) The Big Kahuna:Turning Tax and Welfare in New Zealand on its head. Auckland: Public Interest Publishing Company Ltd.

12. Berentson-Shaw, J, Morgan, G. (2017) Pennies from Heaven. Wellington: Public Interest Publishing.

13 . Harris, M. (2017) The New Zealand Project. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books Ltd.

14 . quotefancy.com/quote/1037462/Marcus-Tullius-Cicero-Leisure-consists-in-all-those-virtuous- activities-by-which-a-man

15. Pieper, J. (1952) Leisure, the basis of culture. New York: Pantheon Books Inc

16. Lambert, C. (2010) Josef Pieper: Sisyphus and the Defence of Leisure. vimeo.com/16982563

17 . Popova, M. Brain Pickings. brainpickings.org/2015/08/10/1eisure-the-basis-of-culture-josef-pieper

18 . Datillo, J, and Murphy, W. (1991) Leisure Education Program Planning. State College,PA: Venture Publishing.

19 Dalziel, P. and Saunders, C. (2015) WellbeingEconomics: Future Directions for New Zealand Williams Books Ltd.Wellington: Bridget.co.nz

20 . Tihei Mauri Ora. Maoridictionary
 

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