openDemocracy

You are here: Diigo Home > Groups > openDemocracy

Join Group

Group type:	Public
Started on:	2007-02-11
Interests:	affairs democracy globalisation international
Category:	Government & Politics
Bookmarks:	208
Members:	76
Visits:	1015
Last active:	on 2009-06-28

Description

The community of people reading and commenting on openDemocracy

Owner

tony curzon price

Group Forum

Group forum has not been enabled by the group manager yet.

Group Bookmarks View All Bookmarks»

1 - 5 of 208 More»

rob g

Expand
A Basic Income for All | Philippe Van Parijs (2000)

If you really care about freedom, give people an unconditional income at a level sufficient for subsistence. Productivity, wealth, and national incomes have advanced sufficiently far to support an adequate UBI. And if enacted, a basic income would serve as a powerful instrument of social justice: it would promote real freedom for all by providing the material resources that people need to pursue their aims. At the same time, it would help to solve the policy dilemmas of poverty and unemployment, and serve ideals associated with both the feminist and green movements.

Tags: basic.income freedom economics HumanRights on 2009-06-28 -Cached -About Shared by:rob g

Preview

productivity, wealth, and national incomes have
advanced sufficiently far to support an adequate UBI. And if enacted,
a basic income would serve as a powerful instrument of social justice:
it would promote real freedom for all by providing the material resources
that people need to pursue their aims. At the same time, it would help
to solve the policy dilemmas of poverty and unemployment, and serve
ideals associated with both the feminist and green movements.
posted by rob g on 2009-06-28
in 1999, the Alaska Permanent Fund paid each
person of whatever age who had been living in Alaska for at least one
year an annual UBI of $1,680.
posted by rob g on 2009-06-28
By universal basic
income I mean an income paid by a government, at a uniform level
and at regular intervals, to each adult member of society. The grant
is paid, and its level is fixed, irrespective of whether the person
is rich or poor, lives alone or with others, is willing to work or not.
In most versions–certainly in mine–it is granted not only
to citizens, but to all permanent residents.
posted by rob g on 2009-06-28
The idea of the UBI is at least
150 years old. Its two earliest known formulations were inspired by
Charles Fourier, the prolific French utopian socialist. In 1848, while
Karl Marx was finishing off the Communist Manifesto around the corner,
the Brussels-based Fourierist author Joseph Charlier published Solution
of the Social Problem, in which he argued for a "territorial
dividend" owed to each citizen by virtue of our equal ownership
of the nation’s territory. The following year, John Stuart Mill
published a new edition of his Principles of Political Economy,
which contains a sympathetic presentation of Fourierism ("the most
skillfully combined, and with the greatest foresight of objections,
of all the forms of Socialism") rephrased so as to yield an unambiguous
UBI proposal: "In the distribution, a certain minimum is first
assigned for the subsistence of every member of the community, whether
capable or not of labour. The remainder of the produce is shared in
certain proportions, to be determined beforehand, among the three elements,
Labour, Capital, and Talent."
posted by rob g on 2009-06-28
It was seriously discussed by left-wing academics
such as G. D. H. Cole and James Meade in England between the World Wars
and, via Abba Lerner, it seems to have inspired Milton Friedman’s
proposal for a "negative income tax."⁶
But only since the late-1970s has the idea gained real political currency
in a number of European countries, starting with the Netherlands and
Denmark.
posted by rob g on 2009-06-28

Alex Schlotzer

Expand
The Podcast Network

Tags: podcast podcasting directory podcasts audio mp3 australia entertainment on 2009-04-19 -Cached -About Shared by:Alex Schlotzer

Preview

Arabica Robusta

Expand
Democracy and democracy-support: a new era | open Democracy News Analys...

Tags: democratization fukuyama david held on 2009-03-29 -Cached -About Shared by:Arabica Robusta

Preview

This article is good in that it advocates examination of the many models of democratization/democracy. However, it does not adequately question the terms of the debate, in particularly looking more deeply at how the movement is driven and what the role of corporations and other key exploiters (members of the "capital class"?) is.
posted by Arabica Robusta on 2009-03-29

The "end of the end of history" has many architects. Today, several states (an increasingly assertive Russia and China in particular) embody alternative political models that have come to challenge any notion of liberal-democratic hegemony; others (such as Venezuela and Iran) experiment with forms of rule that too take them further away from its orbit. These models and forms face many problems of their own, but they may not be quite as unattractive - either to the people of these countries or to many observers around the world - as lingering triumphalists in the west might assume.
posted by Arabica Robusta on 2009-03-29
There has been a tendency to focus the work of democracy-support in very practical ways: toolkits, implementation, strategy and policy. This was and remains essential; but there is also a need to reflect on the underpinnings of these practices in how democracy itself is understood in this new, testing global environment.
posted by Arabica Robusta on 2009-03-29
The dominance of a liberal-democratic conception with an American accent is reflected in the overwhelming predominance of United States institutions, academics, journals - and ideas - in the democracy-support "industry". Again, this is not in itself a problem: all discourses of democracy are grounded in specific social-political contexts and power-relations. But the current circumstances of the kind described above - authoritarian challenges, stalled democratic transitions, discontent with democracy, deep and growing economic problems - suggest that an expanded understanding of democracy might be a route towards a healthy redefinition of democracy-support.
posted by Arabica Robusta on 2009-03-29
This is not to advocate a simplistic "mix and match" approach, but to suggest that a creative inclusion of new elements from different sources could contribute to democracy's rethinking from within.
posted by Arabica Robusta on 2009-03-29
For most people, at the heart of democracy is toleration of difference combined with an openness to listen to a plurality of voices and opinions. This makes it more than a little strange that there is so little debate over what democracy can and should mean in relation to democracy-support. The logic here is that democracy-support itself needs to be "democratised" - in part by engaging in continuing dialogue, interaction and learning between communities moving to democracy and those seeking to support these processes.
posted by Arabica Robusta on 2009-03-29

Tracy Viselli

Expand
The White House - Blog Post - Latest version of SCHIP legislation publi...

Tags: no_tag on 2009-02-02 -Cached -About Shared by:Tracy Viselli

Preview

rob g

Expand
An Answer to the Question: "What is Enlightenment?" | Immanuel Kant (17...

This remains one of the best texts of the permanent struggle for Enlightenment -- values that assert universal human freedom, dignity and equality. Values that include internationalism, participatory and representative democracy based. These values inform our struggleto end of political and social domination of persons and societies globally. - Zackie Achmat

Tags: Kant enlightenment ***** HumanRights democracy global international politics on 2009-01-03 -Cached -About Shared by:rob g

Preview

1 - 5 of 208 More»

openDemocracy

Description

Owner

Group Forum

Group Bookmarks View All Bookmarks»

Expand
A Basic Income for All | Philippe Van Parijs (2000)

Expand
The Podcast Network

Expand
Democracy and democracy-support: a new era | open Democracy News Analys...

Expand
The White House - Blog Post - Latest version of SCHIP legislation publi...

Expand
An Answer to the Question: "What is Enlightenment?" | Immanuel Kant (17...

openDemocracy

MoreMost Active Members

Diigo - Highlight and Share the Web!

openDemocracy

Description

Owner

Group Forum

Group Bookmarks View All Bookmarks»

Expand A Basic Income for All | Philippe Van Parijs (2000)

Expand The Podcast Network

Expand Democracy and democracy-support: a new era | open Democracy News Analys...

Expand The White House - Blog Post - Latest version of SCHIP legislation publi...

Expand An Answer to the Question: "What is Enlightenment?" | Immanuel Kant (17...

openDemocracy

MoreMost Active Members

Diigo - Highlight and Share the Web!

Expand
A Basic Income for All | Philippe Van Parijs (2000)

Expand
The Podcast Network

Expand
Democracy and democracy-support: a new era | open Democracy News Analys...

Expand
The White House - Blog Post - Latest version of SCHIP legislation publi...

Expand
An Answer to the Question: "What is Enlightenment?" | Immanuel Kant (17...