The Eleventh North American Basic Income Guarantee (NA-BIG) Congress took place at the University of Toronto on May 3-5, 2012. I had the privilege of attending this conference. It provided an unusual opportunity for me to go to a NA-BIG Congress purely as a participant, because I had almost nothing to do with the organization of it this year.
Alaska’s basic income is cursed with interesting times. The Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) is a small, variable basic income given yearly to every Alaskan who meets the state’s residency requirement. The size of the dividend is determined by several different factors, all of which are facing increased uncertainty and possibly moving in different directions.
I write a lot about the Basic Income Guarantee (BIG)—about its labor-market effects, its use as cushion against instability, and so. In this essay I want to explain in simple terms why I believe it is so worth talking about.
Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend is closer to a Basic Income than almost any other policy in the world today. The lessons of how it was created and how it became so popular and successful are extremely important to the Basic […]
Review of Just Distribution: Rawlsian Liberalism and the Politics of Basic Income by Simon Birnbaum. Stockholm Studies in Politics 122, Stockholm University 2008: ISBN: 978-91-7155-570-0 Review by Karl Widerquist, originally published in the Citizens Income Newsletter, 12th February 2009 Simon […]
Review of The Ethics of Stakeholding, edited by Keith Dowding, Jurgen De Wispelaere, and Stuart White, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003 Review by Karl Widerquist, Citizens Income Newsletter, issue 1 of 2007, revised 2008 In the interest of full disclosure, […]
Book review of “Libertarianism without inequality,” by Michael Otsuka14th February 2005, Oxford University Press, 2003, 158 pages Review by Karl Widerquist, originally published in the Citizens Income Newsletter, 14th February 2005 According to the dust jacket, “Michael Otsuka sets out […]
This essay was originally published in the USBIG NewsFlash in October 2003. A few years ago on April 1, a New York public radio station did an interview with a woman who wrote books entirely by downloading bits and […]