#basicincomeguarantee

[yegarts]

Basic Income Guarantee for Artists

The Edmonton Arts Council has joined the leaders of Canada’s largest municipal arts councils to call on the Federal Government to institute a Basic Income Guarantee for artists. The opinion piece was published in The Globe and Mail, on March 20, 2021. A PDF of the article is available here.

The letter is signed by Claire Hopkinson, Director & CEO of the Toronto Arts Council; Nathalie Maillé, Executive Director of the Conseil des Arts de Montréal; Carol Phillips, Executive Director of the Winnipeg Arts Council; Patti Pon, President & CEO of Calgary Arts Development; and Sanjay Shahani, Executive Director of the Edmonton Arts Council.  

Statistics illustrate the devastating economic impact of the pandemic on the arts sector in 2020:

The GDP of Canada’s arts sector has dropped by 62% in the last year.

The number of hours of worked in arts, entertainment and recreation dropped by 36.6%.

The performing arts was most negatively affected with a 60% reduction in activity.

Despite the devastating financial impact on the arts sector this past year, artists have responded to the needs of Canadians across the country. They have taken their creative skills, imaginations and talents to digital platforms, and presented performances outdoors in strict observance of public health restrictions. Their artistic works have reminded us that better times will come again, and that joy can be found in unexpected places.

The letter from the nation’s largest municipal arts councils underscores that the time for a federal Basic Income Guarantee is now. The Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) and Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB) have demonstrated that it is possible to provide meaningful financial support to individuals facing income precarity. Both programs have generated widespread public support for a permanent solution to address income security.  

“The City of Edmonton’s Connections & Exchanges plan contains a foundational principle to achieve “Economic Security for the Arts,” a key value embedded in EAC’s mandate. We wanted to ensure that Edmonton artists and arts professionals were included in the national dialogue to build income security for workers in Canada’s creative economy,” says Sanjay Shahani.

Photo: Ryan Parker Photography.

[thenehemiahproject]

“#Blockchain, #Tokens and Universal #Mining as way to create Basic Income Guarantees in the Information Age” I’m gonna cut to the chase without giving you a basic understanding of what Blockchain is... Using Blockchain as a local or global economic platform would allow any and everyone to actively participate in research and development, decision-making and product/service testing in a trackable way that earns them tokens (convertible to coin) or use their tokens (earned by resume, proof of work, education and reputation) to be chosen in specific data or computational work (creating Intellectual Property) which becomes Smart Assets (token) tradable within the system to build coin value. So in the new economy, the mere participation in the Blockchain, makes you a part of both the supply, demand and thus the value chain and creates a #BasicIncomeGuarantee (hereinafter “BIG”) within the system, to then be exchanged for goods and services. Another way of looking at it is Universal Shares in Distributed Autonomous Organizations (#DAO’s in Blockchain parlance). These shares having very little initial value, gain their value from increases in participation, trade and exchange or simply general economic growth! They key to this system working is the elimination of middlemen that create economic friction by introducing administrative or regulatory costs, interest or knowledge disparity, all of which costs combined has more than enough value that can be redistributed across the Universal Shares or “BIG” to all participants in the system. This elimination of #EconomicFriction is accomplished mostly through the system itself. Blockchain is #TrustFree which means ledgers, value and identity is open and validated by everyone...which means no need for regulators and their many agencies. Blockchain is digital, which means paperless. This frees up resources and cuts processing time down by orders of magnitude. Blockchain is Distributed, which means there’s no centralized authority or repository of resources or value. This means you could potentially eliminate banking costs (interest and fees), as well as authentication costs. All these cost savings EASILY create a value (at AND Direct LLC)

[piamogollonartist]

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I asked @phatheffa the question, "In 15 seconds or less, what would you do if you were given a monthly grant of $2000 for the next 10 years" #igerstucson #whpscreentest #whatwouldyoudo #basicincomegrant #basicincomeguarantee

[matthew-sinclair]

I think we’re going to be hearing a lot more about “basic income” over the coming years. 

And here’s some more links on the topic. Well worth a perusal: Going Past Capital.

Additionally: “Inflation!!” (with 2 exclamation marks) is a natural response to calls for basic income policy. Here’s a very well reasoned refutation: Wouldn’t Unconditional Basic Income Just Cause Massive Inflation?

[basicincome]

"You may say, 'I don't care about politics, I don't care about anybody spying on me..." but

74:31 we all have the ability to contribute. and you know,

74:35 and the open source movement is a great example of this. 74:38 but, it's not limited to programming. 74:41 it's politics. it's the way we live, it's the way we talk to our friends 74:44 it's the way we talk to our enemies. we have the ability to build 74:48 a better, more equal, more fair, and more just society for 74:51 everybody. And advance of technology is very dangerous and destabilizing thing, 74:55 when we don't think about the way this has been before. when we think about the increase in roboticization of the workforce 75:02 the fact we have young people who have tremendous 75:06 student debt that they're never going to be able to get rid of that's not dischargeable through bankruptcy proceedings (thanks, government, for that one) um, 75:16 we have new class that are indentured servants; in a very new and modern way that's very corrosive to the sort of egalitarian ideals that we as Americans aspire to uphold. 75:31 and if we don't take chances, if we don't take risks to push back and say, look 75:37 we have a place in this society, we have a place in this world, and if 75:41 you guys, you government, are not gonna represent the public's interest 75:45 if you're gonna represent your own interests, if you are gonna represent elite interests 75:49 if you are gonna represent class interests exclusively, to the detriment 75:55 of the electorate that put you in that seat 75:59 we are going to rebuild a new society around you 76:03 and thanks to the same technology that screwed us 76:06 in many ways, we are now empowered in new ways 76:10 you know when we when we talk about all of these things, when we talk about mass 76:14 surveillance, when we talk about the fact that you know, we've got these famous 76:18 inquisitors in history that said "give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, and I'll find something within them to hang him with" 76:25 you know, we're not talking about inquisitions from medieval times were talking about Keith Alexander 76:31 you know, and its up to us to change that because we can revoke 76:35 that permission from them. we can try democratically, but if they say no, 76:40 if they say, we're gonna exclude you from that debate, 76:43 if we're going to exclude you from those discussions, if we're gonna 76:47 play games like they're doing the UK when the passed 76:50 an extraordinary expansion of surveillance powers, just last week 76:54 under the guise of an emergency law, when they've been ignoring the emergency for the last year; um, we have not just 77:03 the capability, but we have an obligation to push back against that 77:10 and to create the society that we want.

[thoughtfulcynic-blog]

"In 1996, the Cherokee of North Carolina opened a casino, and voted to share some of the profits equally among tribe members. Poor native Americans thus started receiving several thousand dollars a year, while other local poor people didn't. The result? The cash injections have slashed poverty, psychiatric problems and child behavioural issues. And the benefits persist: after a few years, an economic analysis concluded, the sums end up paying for themselves, because Cherokee kids are less of a burden on the public purse. Another natural experiment: in Uganda in 2008, some young adults received roughly a year's annual wage. Four years later, they were earning 41% more than those who hadn't. Some people will always object to this kind of approach on moral grounds – even if it "works", they argue, it's still wrong. It can certainly be much more expensive, to start with, than nudges. But it's hard not to wonder whether there isn't another reason these simple solutions get overlooked. Frankly, they seem too obvious. Surely there has to be a catch? Isn't the one indisputable lesson of modern psychology that we're often irrational. As George Orwell observed, in a different context: "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." Sometimes, the surprising truth about the truth is that it isn't surprising at all." http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/feb/08/obvious-answer-oliver-burkeman