The current issue of Yes! magazine features an interview with Ostrom, conducted by editor Fran Korten, who states in the introduction that they are old friends. Here’s the link.

I first learned about Ostrom’s work in the ’90s, when I read her book Governing the Commons. That was when I was first developing my ideas about the basic income guarantee, and I wrote about her work in my first book on Citizen Dividends.

When everyone has a basic income for food and shelter, guaranteed, it will be easier for everyone to participate as citizens in making good decisions to protect common properties. This is just one of many ways that Citizen Dividends will, at the same time, liberate and empower individuals, and protect and enrich our environment. Individual liberty and free markets, serving social and environmental goals. A synthesis of left and right.

So I was delighted to hear about Ostrom winning the Nobel.

Steven Shafarman

Over the past few months I’ve realized that the campaign for income security for all is unlikely to gain any traction for a few more years. That might be different, probably would be very different, if I had millions of dollars to put into the campaign. Or if I had a TV network backing me, the way Fox News promotes the Tea Party movement. If you know anyone who has millions of dollars, or even thousands, or a few hundred, or five or ten, or has a TV network, please respond promptly and let’s get to work.

It’s February 26, 2010. Congress is polarized and paralyzed, yesterday was the big health care summit between President Obama and leading members of Congress, the Tea Party movement is brewing up increasing anger at Obama and everything he’s doing, and economic conditions continue to be extremely precarious for most Americans. Even so, I’m predicting that Obama will be reelected in 2012 by a comfortable margin. I base that on the fact that neither the Tea Party movement nor the Republican Party is presenting any concrete, specific policies that can bring about the fundamental changes people desire.

After the 2012 election is when I expect there to be a real opening for these ideas. Over the next few years,  I will continue to post occasionally, perhaps often, though in a different voice than before. As you might already notice, this post is very different than previous pieces. My plan is to make this blog somewhat more personal. Until now, I’ve avoided the word “I,” choosing to stay in the background while maintaining a focus on the issue of income security. My goal and practice, which was quite valuable to me and some other people, was to present ideas that anyone might take up and make his or her own.

Now I intend to be more public. I hope you’ll keep reading. Perhaps the new style, as it evolves, will attract more readers, and more donations, and that’s certainly one way to encourage me to post more. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the strategy for 2014 and 2016, and look forward to sharing those ideas with you.

Steven Shafarman

More information is at www.usbig.net and at http://bigmontreal.wordpress.com/

2. BIEN, the Basic Income Earth Network, will be holding its next Congress in Sao Paulo Brazil July 1-2. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will address the Congress, which is likely to attract a great deal of attention from people around the world.

The theme is Basic Income as an Instrument for Justice and Peace. Perhaps we’ll meet there, as well.

More information is at http://www.bien2010brasil.com/

Most Americans do not know of Dr. King’s strong endorsement of guaranteed income, and on this day when we commemorate his birth most of the invocations of his life ignore that aspect of his legacy. An internet search on”Martin Luther King” and “guaranteed income” yields a few blog posts and a couple of stories in fairly small publications.

There were several more prominent articles that talked about his campaign to end poverty, though none of them said anything specific about guaranteed income. Here are a two examples by writers who mention his book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? and must therefore know about the guaranteed income, though they don’t mention it.

A piece by Dedrick Muhammad in CommonDreams.org.

A piece by Sam Fulwood in the online magazine The Root.

Here’s a piece that has a nice title, “Martin Luther King’s other dream: Economic justice for all.” It’s by John Gehring and is on the Washington Post website, but nothing specific about King’s book or guaranteed income.

Perhaps next year this aspect of King’s legacy will receive more attention.

Steven Shafarman

Here’s a piece by Peter Barnes that a friend sent me: http://www.grist.org/article/why-cantwell-collins-is-best-and-how-it-just-might-win

At the bottom of that one are links to several other articles.

As I’ve written several times, any dividend from oil caps or fees or taxes or royalties can be a real step toward a basic income. It will be interesting to follow this debate as it moves forward.

Steven Shafarman

Over the past week we’ve seen some possible breakthrough steps toward a basic income. Did you miss that news? Not surprising, because it’s been buried in news reports about the Copenhagen Climate talks.

Sen. Maria Cantwell from Washington is introducing a bill calling for “cap and dividend” — a cap on emissions, with permits being auctioned off and the revenue distributed to American citizens. Here’s a quote from a McLatchy News story:

Under her bill, the federal government would auction off carbon shares to the nation’s 2,000 or so fuel producers like coal and oil companies. Every two years, the shares would expire and, over the years, the U.S. government would offer fewer and fewer shares for sale as a way to reduce carbon consumption.

Seventy-five percent of the money raised would be rebated directly to U.S. citizens. Cantwell’s office estimated that an average family of four would receive a total of about $1,100 a year in the form of tax-free monthly checks.

An important point is that the proposal seems to have some bipartisan support in the Senate, and even support from oil companies. The complete story, with the title “New Proposal Would Pay Americans a Percent of Carbon Permits” is here.

An even stronger version of this idea was in the New York Times a few days earlier. James Hansen, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, had a an op-ed denouncing the Democratic party’ “cap and trade” plan, and calling instead for “fee and dividend.” It’s an idea Hansen has advocated for some time, and that I’ve written about before.

Here’s an excerpt from Hansen’s op-ed:

Under this approach, a gradually rising carbon fee would be collected at the mine or port of entry for each fossil fuel (coal, oil and gas). The fee would be uniform, a certain number of dollars per ton of carbon dioxide in the fuel. The public would not directly pay any fee, but the price of goods would rise in proportion to how much carbon-emitting fuel is used in their production.All of the collected fees would then be distributed to the public. Prudent people would use their dividend wisely, adjusting their lifestyle, choice of vehicle and so on. Those who do better than average in choosing less-polluting goods would receive more in the dividend than they pay in added costs.

For example, when the fee reached $115 per ton of carbon dioxide it would add $1 per gallon to the price of gasoline and 5 to 6 cents per kilowatt-hour to the price of electricity. Given the amount of oil, gas and coal used in the United States in 2007, that carbon fee would yield about $600 billion per year. The resulting dividend for each adult American would be as much as $3,000 per year.

The complete piece, with the title “Cap and Fade” is here.

Fee and dividend, cap and dividend, tax and dividend — whatever you call it, and whatever the size of the dividends — this is the most direct and politically-feasible way to move toward a basic income in the United States.

The idea is so simple and powerful.  Tax fossil fuel consumption and redistribute the revenues on a per capita basis. The net effects would reduce consumption and pollution and climate change overall, while promoting social justice and a stronger democracy.  I discuss this in more detail in my book, Peaceful, Positive Revolution: Economic Security for Every American.

Steven Shafarman

It’s good to pause at times and think about what it means when people talk about “the pursuit of happiness,” particularly when we assert that it’s an “inalienable right.”

Income security may, in fact, be a prerequisite for happiness. That’s one conclusion I draw from a short article by Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard:

Psychologists and economists now know that although the very rich are no happier than the merely rich, for the other 99 percent of us, happiness is greatly enhanced by a few quaint assets, like shelter, sustenance and security. Those who think the material is immaterial have probably never stood in a breadline.

That’s from an op-ed in today’s New York Times, here. (At the end of the piece is a link to video of a 21-minute talk by Gilbert about his research into how people synthesize happiness. Though not directly related to the topic of income security, it’s worth watching, important ideas, nicely presented.)

Security is vital for happiness, Gilbert asserts, with evidence from psychological research, while insecurity and uncertainty thwart happiness.

That’s because people feel worse when something bad might occur than when something bad will occur. Most of us aren’t losing sleep and sucking down Marlboros because the Dow is going to fall another thousand points, but because we don’t know whether it will fall or not – and human beings find uncertainty more painful than the things they’re uncertain about.

That last sentence is compelling. We “find uncertainty more painful.” Even a basic level of income security would reduce or relieve much of the pain of the current economic recession.

Here’s the final paragraph in Gilbert’s piece:

Our national gloom is real enough, but it isn’t a matter of insufficient funds. It’s a matter of insufficient certainty. Americans have been perfectly happy with far less wealth than most of us have now, and we could quickly become those Americans again – if only we knew we had to.

It must be income security for all. That’s clear if we really believe that the pursuit of happiness is truly an inalienable right.

Citizen Dividends, a basic income for every adult citizen, would greatly enhance our individual and national happiness. Even if the income amount is fairly small, say $800 or $1,000 a month, the certainty will be real.

Thomas Jefferson called for income security even more concretely and specifically than in the Declaration of Independence. In early 1776, while serving as a delegate to the Virginia legislature, he proposed giving 50 acres of public land to any propertyless individual willing to farm it. That was the first homestead program, subsequently copied by other states. Homesteads became national policy in 1862, under Abraham Lincoln.

More history about income security is here. Millions of Americans supported the idea of guaranteed income security in the 1890s and 1930s, and in 1970 a plan to provide a guaranteed income passed in the House of Representatives by two-to-one, but was blocked in the Senate.

The complete plan to update these ideas, the benefits, and how we can make it happen, is in Peaceful, Positive Revolution,.

Additional information is on the home page and elsewhere on this web site, IncomeSecurityForAll.org.

I hope you’ll also comment on this blog. And please help spread the word about these ideas. It will happen if enough of us demand it.

Steven Shafarman

But first:

Are you tired of news about “the economy”? When you listen to the people on TV and radio – the reporters, commentators, and authors; the bankers, CEOs, and economists; and the politicians, too – do you sometimes wonder if they even know what they’re talking about?

If you were to ask them a simple direct question, “What is ‘the economy’?”, do you think they could answer it? Most couldn’t, because it’s an abstraction.

Economists and some of the smarter politicians, President Obama, say, would likely define the phrase in terms of the GDP. That’s the total production of goods and services, all the stuff, but GDP is still rather abstract. And it includes lots of stuff that’s never used or shouldn’t be produced, such as weapons, crime, waste, and pollution.

A proposal: Turn off the talkers or tell them to shut up. Don’t be distracted or hypnotized or brainwashed by “the economy.” Let’s focus, instead, more concretely and specifically on our own economies. That’s important because there’s “the economy” of finance and Wall Street and economic analysts, and it’s very different than “the economy” of Main Street and ordinary people.

How is your economy? Do you have enough money? Could you get by if you or your spouse lost your job? What if you, your spouse, your child or a parent became seriously ill?

The way to fix “the economy” is to start with real people and our immediate needs and concerns. The most simple and direct strategy is to enact an idea that more than 1,200 economists endorsed in the 1960s – including economists from the left and the right who later won Nobel Prizes – and that is guaranteed income.

Instead of bailing out banks and subsidizing big corporations, we can and should give the money to ordinary people. Every adult citizen ought to get a basic income of, say, $1,000 a month tax free. Give the same amount to everyone, rich or poor, employed or unemployed, so we can distribute it with minimal bureaucracy and a real increase in equality.

“Citizen Dividends” would promote the general welfare, and we can pay for it by cutting the current programs that serve and subsidize only the special welfare of select individuals, groups, businesses, or industries. The general welfare, not the special interests. Bailout the people, not the banks.

This is a serious policy proposal. A guaranteed income plan passed the House of Representatives in 1970 by two-to-one, but was blocked in the Senate. Martin Luther King called for guaranteed income in his last book, describing it as necessary for real progress on homelessness, racism, and education. “There is nothing except shortsightedness to prevent us from guaranteeing an annual minimum – and livable – income for every American family. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.”

Before that, millions of Americans joined mass movements for income security in the 1930s, and their demands were key to enacting Social Security and other innovations. Similar ideas inspired the political reforms of the 1890s. Earlier proponents included Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and Abraham Lincoln.

Why don’t we have it? Because we’re not demanding it. We will have it if each of us tells our friends and neighbors about these ideas, and if we then start working together as citizens, as members of the We the People.

To learn more about these ideas, visit the home page and other material on this web site, www.IncomeSecurityForAll.org.

You can read the complete plan, the idea and how we can implement it, in Peaceful, Positive Revolution,which is available from Tendril Press.

I hope you’ll also comment on this blog. And please help spread the word.

Steven Shafarman

Are you concerned about hunger? Do you want to end homelessness?

We can end hunger in America, rapidly, completely, by enacting Citizen Dividends. The same approach, modified, can end hunger around the world. More about how we’ll achieve that in a moment.

An organization dedicated to ending childhood hunger is Share Our Strength, and they appear to be doing great work. From their web site, here are some facts about hunger:

36.2 million Americans – including 12.4 million children – don’t have access to enough healthy food to thrive. They are food insecure and at risk of hunger.

• 11.1% of all U.S. households,
• 30.2% of all single-mom households,
• 37.7% of all households at or below the poverty line,

Food insecure families (13.0 million households):

• 50.0 % of all food-insecure households are white
• 47.6% – 6.2 million – have kids under 18; 53.4% of these are single-parent households
• 39.2 % of food insecure households live in the South
• 33.8% live in major cities
• 33.3% live at or below the poverty line
• 23.1 % – nearly one-quarter – of food insecure households have kids under 6

Source:”Household Food Security in the United States, 2007; U.S.D.A. Economic Research Service, November 2008; http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err66/.

I have great respect and affection for Share Our Strength, the Hunger Project, Results, FLOW, and other groups I know of that are working to end hunger and homelessness. When I talk to people in these and other groups, and to unaffiliated activists, I’m almost always impressed with their passion, dedication, and commitment. If such people had more political and economic power, this would be a much different and better world.

Here are some more general facts about poverty, also from the Share Our Strength web site:

• $21,203 annual income is the poverty threshold for a family of four, or $407.75 per week (2007).
• 37.3 million Americans live in poverty; 13.1 million of them are children (2007).
• 500,000 more children live in poverty now than a year ago; 300,000 of them are under 6 years of age.
• 18% of American children live in poverty, a higher percentage than any other age group.

Source: “Income, Poverty and Health Coverage in the United States:2007; U.S. Dept. of Commerce U.S. Census Bureau, August 2008; http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/p60-235.pdf.

Now for Citizen Dividends:

Suppose every adult citizen gets a basic income independent of his or her job, say, $1,000 a month. That would be $24,000 a year for a couple, which is more than the poverty threshold for a family of four. (Though many economists and analysts say the conventional poverty threshold is long out of date and absurdly low.) That $24,000 a year would nearly eliminate hunger and debilitating poverty.

We can pay for the basic income by cutting or eliminating programs that would become superfluous, starting with individual welfare and corporate welfare.

Guaranteed income was a mainstream idea in the 1960s, and a plan to provide it passed the House of Representatives by two-to-one, but was blocked in the Senate. Proponents including leading economists from the left and the right, and Martin Luther King called for it in his last book. Millions of Americans joined mass movements for income security in the 1930s, and similar ideas inspired the political reforms of the 1890s. Earlier proponents included Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and Abraham Lincoln. More detailed history is on the home page of this home page of this web site, www.IncomeSecurityForAll.org.

You can read the complete plan, the idea and how we can implement it, in Peaceful, Positive Revolution, which is available from Tendril Press.

We can end hunger in the United States. We can help other countries enact their own versions of this plan. You can make a real contribution. Please comment on this blog and help spread the word.

Steven Shafarman