If you would like to participate by skype (audio only), please contact John Baker at john.baker@ucd.ie by Sunday April 26th, to arrange this.
The meeting will have two parts.
Part 1. Discussion of some issues of political strategy, based on a recent paper by a leading writer on basic income, Jurgen De Wispelaere, “The Struggle for Strategy: On the Politics of the Basic Income Proposal” (forthcoming in the journal Politics).
In this article, De Wispeleare considers two problems that affect the coalition-building efforts of BI advocates. “The problem of cheap political support” is that the support for BI from some political parties and other organizations may be of little cost to them but of little value to us, or even counter-productive. Should we be more cautious about such support? “The problem of persistent political division” is that superficial agreement amongst committed BI advocates may mask persistent disagreement on what model of BI to adopt. Should we be take a clearer stance on these disagreements?
John Baker will introduce the discussion with a brief summary of the paper's argument. A copy of the full paper is available at http://preview.tinyurl.com/of5bjpb. You might also like to look at the video mentioned below, which contrasts the approaches taken in the US by liberal and conservative proponents of basic income.
Part 2. Review of recent and up-coming actions and events; update and discussion of the Annual Summer Forum in June; update and discussion on future strategy.