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B - Basic income - Examples of implementation
The U.S. State of Alaska has a system which provides each citizen with a share of the state's oil revenues.The USA also have the Earned income tax credit for low-income taxpayers. In 2006 a bill, written by members of the advocacy organization USBIG, to transform the credit into a partial basic income, was introduced in the US congress, but did not get passed. In 2008, a pilot project with a basic income grant was started in the Namibian village of Otjivero. The city of Dauphin, Manitoba, Canada had an experimental basic income program ("Mincome") in the 1970s.
Advocates
Many countries have political parties that advocate a basic income, such as the Green Party of Canada, Green Party of England and Wales, Vivant (Belgium), De Groenen (The Netherlands), the Scottish Green Party, and the New Zealand Democratic Party.
Worldwide, supporters of a basic income have united in the Basic Income Earth Network. BIEN recognizes numerous national advocacy groups.
The world's most noted advocate of a basic income system may be the Belgian economist Philippe van Parijs. Other advocates include Gunnar Adler-Karlsson (Sweden), Dieter Althaus (Germany), Saar Boerlage (Netherlands), Herwig Büchele (Austria), Andre Gorz (France), Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Charles Murray (USA), Keith Rankin (New Zealand), Daniel Raventós (Spain), Osmo Soininvaara (Finland)), Eduardo Suplicy (Brazil), Walter van Trier (Belgium) and Götz W. Werner (Germany).
In 1968, James Tobin, Paul Samuelson, John Kenneth Galbraith and another 1,200 economists signed a document calling for the US Congress to introduce in that year a system of income guarantees and supplements. In the 1972 presidential campaign, Senator George McGovern called for a 'demogrant' that was very similar to a basic income. Mike Gravel, a former candidate for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President of the United States and a candidate for the 2008 Libertarian nomination for the President of the United States, advocates for a tax rebate paid in a monthly check from the government to all citizens.
Winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics that fully support a basic income include Herbert Simon, Friedrich Hayek, James Meade, Robert Solow, and Milton Friedman.
In his final book Full employment regained? James Meade states that a return to full employment can only be achieved if, among other things, workers offer their services at a low enough price, that the required wage for unskilled labour would be too low to generate a socially desirable distribution of income, and that therefore a citizen's income would be necessary.
In his Robotic Nation essays, Marshall Brain argues that the growing amount of automation in the workplace will eventually displace a large percentage of workers, and that in order to be able to maintain the economy, an annual stipend will be needed. A similar argument was made by Jeremy Rifkin, in his book The End of Work.
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