RE: POV-RED: Report on BIG

["peter clare" <zachsdad7@hotmail.com>]

Dear All,

I am new to this lovely list and am in search on some book recommendations.  
I am particularly interested in books on developing country's debt 
burden--specifically Africa and Latin America.

Any help is appreciated.





>From: Ravi Naidoo <Ravi@naledi.org.za>
>Reply-To: povertyreduction@cog.kent.edu
>To: "'povertyreduction@cog.kent.edu'" <povertyreduction@cog.kent.edu>
>Subject: RE: POV-RED: Report on BIG
>Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2003 16:39:37 +0200
>
>Dear All,
>
>Jeff is quite right. The basic income grant (BIG)is a major debate in SA,
>and a similar income scheme for women with children is being implemented in
>50 cities controlled by the Workers' Party in Brazil. My Institute is in
>fact doing the research for the SA BIG coalition. The point I was making re
>the "more developed countries" was that both SA and Brazil are relatively
>industrialised, and are faced with a problem that is more about 
>distribution
>than development -- like the OECD, they have more possibility for
>(re)distributing income from this advanced state of wealth/ capital
>accumulation. It may be possible for much poorer countries (like a Togo) to
>something like this, but it is likely that asset and capability poverty
>measures would have greater success (but we can debate this).
>
>re the landowners 'yielding', the point is that power is needed to make 
>them
>yield. This does not equate to blood being split. The point is that I have
>yet to see vested interests/ capital yielding through genuine altrusim/ in
>the absence of powerful forces making them yield.
>
>cheers!
>Ravi
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Jeffery J SMITH [mailto:geonomist@juno.com]
>Sent: 05 March 2003 08:00
>To: povertyreduction@cog.kent.edu
>Subject: POV-RED: Report on BIG
>
>
>Hi, all,
>Jeff S here;
>
>Ravi Naidoo "points to the need to bring distribution mechanisms and
>redistribution back onto the policy agendas... We have not had much
>discussion on ways to address income poverty, which is a subject of
>growing debate in the more developed countries (for example, the issue of
>basic income)." Actually, it's debated in South Africa and Brazil. See my
>report on the Basic Income Group track in the annual conference of the
>Eastern Economic Assoc.
>
>Ravi: "I'd like to again suggest that all of these strategies we talk of
>will not be implemented in a power vacuum. Certainly land-owners will not
>easily agree to part with land, if history is any guide." Yet four times
>in history they did yield their surplus, bloodlessly, once the land tax
>was applied. (I got a brief paper on that, for anyone interested).
>
>And back when Denmark was undeveloped (early 1800s), the first step was
>taken by idealists, not government, known as the Folk School Movement -
>who gave works by Henry George on reforming taxes and landholding to
>adult graduates (first time literates).
>
>*******************
>
>A Citizens' Dividend, economists contemplate
>
>By Jeffery J. Smith
>
>       Long known for its favelas, Brazil may soon introduce to the world
>the
>Basic Income, an extra dividend paid to all citizens, with no more
>strings attached than has your next breath of air.
>       In the Worker's Party primary last year, Brazilian Senator Eduardo
>Suplicy opposed new President Lula da Silva (who included land reform in
>a speech at the World Social Forum before a crowd only "slightly larger"
>than those there who heard Jeff Smith present geonomics [riiight]).
>Suplicy keynoted the Basic Income track at the 29th Annual Conference of
>the Eastern Economic Association (which has Nobel laureates among its
>membership) in New York, February 22. In his SRO speech, Suplicy reported
>that the Brazilian Senate became the world's first national legislative
>body to adopt a Basic Income Grant.
>       Alaska, which pays its residents a dividend from oil rents starting
>decades ago, was the first state body. (Millennia ago, Athens was the
>first jurisdiction, paying citizens shares from the proceeds of the
>Laurion silver mines.) In South Africa, a white paper commissioned by the
>administration recommends paying everyone some amount rather than
>targeting poor individuals with grants, but the South African president
>has yet to submit the proposed universal income supplement to the
>national legislature.
>       In Brazil, the measure must pass the House of Deputies then be
>signed by
>President Lula, who already has indicated he would. The Brazilian
>government would begin paying the extra income in 2005 at a small amount,
>to be increased later.
>       The presenter who spoke before Suplicy, Jeffery J. Smith of the
>Geonomy
>Society (who had a letter printed in The New York Times on Dec 22),
>suggested funding this social salary from society's rents - the values of
>locations, natural resources, and government granted privileges - rather
>than tax and transfer the earnings of individuals. Manhattan, famed for
>its tiny studios with a wall bed, a TV hanging from the ceiling, and a
>coffee table the size of a chessboard - 300 square feet going for $1,200
>a month (I visited a friend renting one) - exemplifies not just
>skyscrapers but also sky-high site values. Smith showed that the total
>value of rents in the US could top several trillion dollars each year,
>and that collecting rents, unlike taxing wages and profits, would not
>diminish the tax base; indeed, recovering rents while de-taxing efforts
>would curb speculation, direct investment into producing real goods, and
>thus temper the business cycle. Suplicy replied that both rents and high
>incomes would be taxed to pay the universal grant in Brazil.
>       This fundamental reform of welfare policy was last considered in the
>US
>in the early 1970s by both the Republican White House and the Democratic
>Senate.
>       Thanks to a modicum of support from the Robert Schalkenbach Fdn, the
>geoist reform of sharing rents in lieu of taxes cum subsidies made
>advances in other ways, as well:
>*      The professional economists in attendance (academics and
>researchers)
>picked up a couple hundred copies of The Geonomist (reprinted by the
>Henry George School of New York) from the unattended literature table.
>*      A couple of the publishers with display tables, after chatting a bit
>about geonomics with Jeff, asked him to submit a book proposal.
>*      His talk was attended by a couple dozen, which actually was a large
>turnout, given the dozens of concurrent sessions; some poor professional
>economists had only two people in attendance.
>*      During the Q&A after Jeff's talk, both the lovely Almaz Zelleke, a
>professor at the New School, who'd spent the previous night reading his
>materials, and Dr. Michael Samson, a researcher for the South African
>government, stoutly defended the notion of tapping rents while forgoing
>earnings.
>*      To hear Jeff, a retired businessman who's in Who's Who, Jim Mann,
>drove
>in from Connecticut and afterwards discussed co-presenting geonomics at
>the annual conference of the World Futurists with whom Jim is active.
>*      Conference organizers invited Jeff to organize a panel on nothing
>but
>recovery of rents for next year's conference in Washington, DC. Given
>financial backing, Jeff plans to comply and involve the many DC think
>tanks who also advocate aspects of geonomics - shifting taxes, shifting
>subsidies, collecting rents, or sharing rents.
>*      Both the office of The New York Times' Paul Krugman and the editor
>of
>The New Leader asked to be sent copies of his report above. Jeff left a
>truncated verbal version on the voice mail of The New Yorker business
>writer John Cassidy.
>*      Since returning, I've already heard from one researcher who heard me
>speak, South Africa's Dr. James Thurlow, who was inspired to dig deeper
>and e-mailed to let me know of his discovery of Andelson's world survey.
>
>*       *       *
>
>SMITH, Jeffery J.
>President, Geonomy Society, www.progress.org/geonomy
>Share Earth's worth to prosper and conserve.
>
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