The U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network (The USBIG Network) is an informal network promoting discussion of the basic income guarantee in the United States.
USBIG was founded in December 1999 by Fred Block of University of California-Davis, Charles M. A. Clark of St. John's University, Pamela Donovan of the City University of New York, Michael Lewis of the State University of New York-Stony Brook, and Karl Widerquist, then of the Levy Economics Institute. It is currently managed by the USBIG Coordinating Committee (see below).
The USBIG Network is an informal discussion group with no formal structure or bylaws. The goal of USBIG is to increase discussion of BIG in the United States. Its activities include annual conferences, a bimonthly newsletter, and a discussion paper series. Membership is free and open to anyone who shares its goals.
http://www.usbig.net/about.php
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Seems like LBO might imagine a BIG a little.
Barry
A basic income guarantee would give everyone an income, and that secure unearned income, independent of other kinds of income, would limit poverty. Why would anyone oppose a BIG? It is the wrong way to limit poverty?
A BIG is often opposed because of the false assumption that it would increase our already unsustainable rates of resource consumption and pollution. For many people it seems that giving people money could only increase consumption.
Without a BIG we must choose between unsustainable economic growth or unemployment. Austerity is one response our need to end growth, one that will bring needless suffering. A basic income would allow an end to consumption stimulation, a beginning of conservation, and allow the economy to do only whatever work is needed to provide what we need without any need for waste or busy-work.
With a BIG we could match the workforce to the work, instead of continuing to do it backwards.
A BIG is the key to stopping hyper-consumption and a not just a cure for poverty. It in necessary cut consumption without austerity. The idea that a BIG must increase consumption denies that going to work must consume more that staying in bed.
Those who could make a BIG happen are not so worried about poverty as they are about running the system in a non-destructive way to keep their power. The old 90% tax on the rich was supported by many of the rich, because they understood it was necessary to make the system they own work for their own selfish reasons.
Nature is a gift, capitalism has unearned income, and we have a labor surplus, so why must we obsess over income for work being the only respectable way of life? The last resort in economic imagination is unearned income, except for those who would imagine and do anything to keep it all for themselves. If the rich were only as smart today as they were when they accepted those very high tax rates...
Support for the BIG idea seems logical if one considers how a robot economy would have no wages and if a few people owned everything their tax rate would have to be 99%+. Entitlements of various kind would have to provide most income.
Entitlement might be seen in all ownership. Holding a title to assets that yield an unearned income stream is hardly different than getting welfare or a basic income. Entitlements are not bad except when most people are entitled to nothing more than being wage slaves in a world that doesn't need them, having an equal opportunity to suffer, and the freedom to sleep under the glaring night sky.
Barry Brooks http://home.earthlink.net/~durable/