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Extreme poverty and human rights on universal basic income 2017, para. 73
- Paragraph text
- Fifth, proponents of a basic income need to ensure that particular schemes to implement the concept are not narrowly linked to citizenship at the expense of all others who are part of the community.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2017
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Taxation and human rightss 2014, para. 39
- Paragraph text
- Moreover, when revenue is used to finance public services, it creates conditions propitious to growth and employment in formal sectors of the economy, guaranteeing both equality of access and equality of opportunities. Public services also mitigate the impact of skewed income distribution and directly contribute to reducing inequality.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Person(s) affected
- All
- N.A.
- Year
- 2014
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Extreme poverty and human rights on universal basic income 2017, para. 66f
- Paragraph text
- [One of the biggest challenges in relation to basic income is to move beyond its chameleon-like character. There are many versions of it, and each is supported by a diverse array of actors, precisely because they see different attractions in the concept. To assess the utility and acceptability of basic income from a human rights perspective, it is helpful to identify the main categories of motivation.] Fairness and social justice.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2017
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Extreme poverty and human rights on universal basic income 2017, para. 32
- Paragraph text
- Negative income taxes, inspired by the work of Milton Friedman, ensure that individuals who earn below a certain threshold receive payments from the government, rather than having to pay taxes. It is similar to basic income in that every citizen is automatically and unconditionally eligible, but it differs from the full basic income in that benefits phase out as incomes rise. Amounts may also be adjusted for households.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2017
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Extreme poverty and human rights on universal basic income 2017, para. 18
- Paragraph text
- In the United Kingdom, basic income proposals were prominent in the period after both world wars. In 1918, Bertrand Russell called for an income for all, sufficient to pay for “necessaries” in post-First World War Britain. And when the Beveridge plan was being debated in 1943, Juliet Rhys-Williams proposed a basic income approach instead of Beveridge’s contributory welfare state plan.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2017
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Extreme poverty and human rights on universal basic income 2017, para. 8a
- Paragraph text
- [The present report is premised on the view that the human rights movement needs to address and respond to the fundamental changes that are taking place in economic and social structures at the national and global levels. These include, among others:] The increasingly precarious nature of employment in the age of Uber, Airbnb, outsourcing, subcontracting, zero-hours contracts and the like;
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2017
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Taxation and human rightss 2014, para. 63
- Paragraph text
- In many countries, business enterprises are taxed at a very low rate, even if they make large profits, owing in large part to the infrastructure, healthy educated workforce and other resources that public funds enable. In addition, many large transnational corporations are able to effectively avoid tax in many jurisdictions, including in countries where they make large profits.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2014
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Extreme poverty and human rights on universal basic income 2017, para. 66a
- Paragraph text
- [One of the biggest challenges in relation to basic income is to move beyond its chameleon-like character. There are many versions of it, and each is supported by a diverse array of actors, precisely because they see different attractions in the concept. To assess the utility and acceptability of basic income from a human rights perspective, it is helpful to identify the main categories of motivation.] Discouraging laziness and incentivizing work;
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2017
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Extreme poverty and human rights on universal basic income 2017, para. 64
- Paragraph text
- It does not follow from the gap between theory and practice that labour rights should be compromised, let alone abandoned, but it does highlight the fact that traditional approaches might not have much traction in the face of the systematic weakening of labour market institutions, the dramatic increase in more flexible working conditions, and the greatly increased insecurity, including the loss of non-wage benefits, for those who remain employed.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2017
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Extreme poverty and human rights on universal basic income 2017, para. 59
- Paragraph text
- The most committed proponents of basic income proclaim their approach to be utopian, not in the sense of being unrealistic or unachievable, but as providing a highly ambitious, sweeping, and progressive vision. Critics or sceptics who raise objections based on unaffordability, the unacceptability of unconditionality or the unrealistic change in mentality required will often be dismissed as unimaginative defenders of an obviously unsatisfactory status quo.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2017
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Extreme poverty and human rights on universal basic income 2017, para. 27
- Paragraph text
- Broader political support is suggested by former United States Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, who suggests that basic income could possibly be financed out of the profits coming from labour-replacing innovations, or perhaps even from a revenue stream generated by the underlying intellectual property. And a book by the former President of the Service Employees International Union, Andy Stern, also calls for a universal basic income to address a new economy characterized by high unemployment, stagnant wages, declining trade union power, and decreasing job security.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2017
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Extreme poverty and human rights on universal basic income 2017, para. 8d
- Paragraph text
- [The present report is premised on the view that the human rights movement needs to address and respond to the fundamental changes that are taking place in economic and social structures at the national and global levels. These include, among others:] The rapid and seemingly unstoppable growth in inequality across the globe, captured by Oxfam’s statistic that the richest 1 per cent of humanity already controls as much wealth as the remaining 99 per cent, and by the detailed national-level economic analyses of Thomas Piketty and others;
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2017
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Extreme poverty and human rights on universal basic income 2017, para. 66e
- Paragraph text
- [One of the biggest challenges in relation to basic income is to move beyond its chameleon-like character. There are many versions of it, and each is supported by a diverse array of actors, precisely because they see different attractions in the concept. To assess the utility and acceptability of basic income from a human rights perspective, it is helpful to identify the main categories of motivation.] Freedom, in the sense of the ability to make career and related choices, or the ability to exercise political rights because of a degree of economic security;
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2017
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Extreme poverty and human rights on universal basic income 2017, para. 63
- Paragraph text
- Similarly, an ILO report entitled Decent Work in Global Supply Chains responded to the “negative implications for working conditions” of “the dynamics of production and employment relations within the global economy” by proposing a series of steps such as promoting international labour standards, closing governance gaps and promoting inclusive and effective social dialogue. Unsurprisingly, after lengthy debate on the report, the 2016 International Labour Conference expressed its “concern that current ILO standards may not be fit for purpose to achieve decent work in global supply chains”.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2017
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Extreme poverty and human rights on universal basic income 2017, para. 60
- Paragraph text
- But these contrasting views accurately reflect the conclusion that emerges from a comprehensive survey of the many different utopias the world has known, which is that “utopias are essential but potentially dangerous”. In this case, the danger is that the single-minded pursuit of basic income as a magic bullet, capable of resolving many deeply troubling challenges, will distract attention from the deeper underlying complexities and values. But the utopian vision may also provide the much-needed impetus to rethink the optimal shape of social protection explicitly designed to achieve universal realization of the human right to an adequate standard of living in the twenty-first century. At a comparable watershed moment, Lord Beveridge introduced his 1943 report that laid the groundwork for the British welfare state by insisting that a “revolutionary moment in the world’s history is a time for revolutions, not for patching”.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2017
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Extreme poverty and human rights on universal basic income 2017, para. 52
- Paragraph text
- Basic income proponents have devoted relatively little attention to the biggest question of all, which concerns affordability.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2017
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Extreme poverty and human rights on universal basic income 2017, para. 35
- Paragraph text
- In comparing basic income schemes with the welfare state, it is important to note that some of the proposed forms of basic income are intended to replace the welfare state, while others complement it or only partly replace it. Charles Murray proposes a radical form of basic income designed to replace the welfare state, and to eliminate “programmes that are unambiguously transfers — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare programmes, social service programmes, agricultural subsidies, and corporate welfare”, but that would keep in place State-funded education. But others have argued that “a basic income should not be understood as being, by definition, a full substitute for all existing transfers, much less a substitute for the public funding of quality education, quality health care, and other services”. This approach is supported by commentators for whom basic income schemes “would not necessarily replace contributory benefits”. A Canadian study proposes that a new basic income should come on top of 33 existing income support programmes.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2017
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Extreme poverty and human rights on universal basic income 2017, para. 33
- Paragraph text
- The concept of a basic income on a global scale has attracted little scholarly attention, but at least two organizations, the Global Basic Income Foundation and World Basic Income, are promoting it. According to the latter, a global basic income would be a “global scheme that gathers and redistributes money, in amounts ranging from a few dollars to over $2,000 per month, depending on circumstances”. The long-term goal is redistribution of wealth and natural resources through “collective shareholdings in global companies, international taxes such as a carbon tax or financial transaction tax, royalties on goods like intellectual property or the extraction of natural resources, or fees for the use of shared goods, such as charging airlines a fee for using our shared airspace”. The present report does not seek to examine the feasibility or otherwise of such an approach.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2017
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Extreme poverty and human rights on universal basic income 2017, para. 30
- Paragraph text
- Strong support has also come from technology entrepreneurs. According to media reports, the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, the web guru Tim O’Reilly, and “a cadre of other Silicon Valley denizens have expressed support for” basic income, calling it the “social vaccine of the twenty-first century”. Sam Altman, the president of Y Combinator, the largest start-up “accelerator” in Silicon Valley, is funding a basic income pilot scheme in Oakland, California. He believes that “people should be as free as possible to get ‘as rich as they … want’, so long as the people at the very bottom still have all their basic needs met”. GiveDirectly, funded in part by Google, also seeks to finance basic income experiments in East Africa. Comments made by many of these entrepreneurs suggest that basic income is seen as a way to sustain and legitimize a world in which employment opportunities will be drastically reduced and to reinforce consumer demand which would be greatly weakened without a broad-based minimum redistribution of income.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2017
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Extreme inequality and human rights 2015, para. 16
- Paragraph text
- The differences in intergenerational economic mobility between countries are not random. Studies have shown a clear negative relationship between economic inequalities in a country and intergenerational earnings mobility. Alan Krueger has called this the "Great Gatsby curve". Joseph Stiglitz has written that the ideal of equal opportunity is increasingly a myth in many countries and that the decline in opportunity has gone hand in hand with growing inequality.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2015
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Extreme inequality and human rights 2015, para. 14
- Paragraph text
- From the perspective of equality of opportunity, it is problematic if extreme economic inequalities begin at birth. Mr. Piketty has shown that for those born in France between 1910 and 1960, "the top centile of the income hierarchy consisted largely of people whose primary source of income was work". For those born in France in the 1970s, and even more for those born later, things are different, however. Mr. Piketty has written that the "top centile of the social hierarchy in France today are likely to derive their income about equally from inherited wealth and their own labor". Even more problematic is Mr. Piketty's finding that nearly one-sixth of those born in France today "will receive an inheritance larger than the amount the bottom half of the population earns through labor in a lifetime. (And this group largely coincides with the half of the population that inherits next to nothing)."
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2015
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Extreme inequality and human rights 2015, para. 8
- Paragraph text
- Current income-inequality figures are quite dramatic. According to a 2008 study by the International Labour Organization (ILO), over the past two decades the income gap between the top and bottom 10 per cent of wage earners increased in 70 per cent of the countries for which data was available. According to a recent Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) study, the gap between rich and poor in OECD countries is at its highest level in 30 years. In 2007, the average executive manager in the 15 largest firms in the United States of America earned more than 500 times what the average employee in the United States earned, compared with over 300 times in 2003, and similar patterns can be observed in many other countries.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2015
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
The World Bank and human rights 2015, para. 53
- Paragraph text
- There are many reasons why a new approach is needed. The following six seem especially compelling.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2015
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Human rights based approach to recovery from the global economic and financial crises, with a focus on those living in poverty 2011, para. 45
- Paragraph text
- A significant percentage of post-crises austerity budgets have included proposals to limit the public wage bill by reducing the public sector workforce and cutting or freezing wages of public sector employees. Often these cuts are not progressively implemented, and therefore have a disproportionate impact on the lowest wage brackets. UNICEF has expressed concern that wage cuts or caps might translate into the reduction or erosion of the real value of salaries, as costs of living continue to rise, and may take the form of hiring freezes or employment retrenchment. The serious implications of such developments would be exacerbated by the fact that declines in real wages were already widespread owing to the effect of the global economic and financial crises on the labour market.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2011
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Taxation and human rightss 2014, para. 53
- Paragraph text
- Income distribution and its management through taxation also have a crucial relationship with democracy. Growing income disparities can serve to polarize and fragment societies, which can ultimately lead to alienation and social unrest.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2014
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
25 shown of 25 entities