The Event

TAXATION AND BASIC INCOME POLICY:
GRASPING THE INSTITUTIONAL CHALLENGES

What Changes to the Taxation System ought DiEM25 be proposing for the United Kingdom?

Continuing our series of ‘People’s Gatherings’ deep-dives into the policy-futures discussions taking place across the United Kingdom membership, we take taxation system reforms as the point of departure for nourishing this exchange of perspectives. UK DiEMers’ recognition of the imperative to refine and develop our responses to compounding political bottlenecks to progressive advancement, include recurring questions of immediate urgency, including:

* Re-thinking the scale, democratic conduct and significance of the City of London in the lives of peoples of the UK

* How best to secure the public interest in commercial banking

* 21^st century approaches to debt at the scale of residential mortgages and private & small-to-medium-sized enterprise loans

* The institution of the Universal Basic Dividend

* The significance of observable outcomes of the Bank of England’s Quantitative Easing programme in the framing of DiEM25 policy positions

In this meeting, we are joined by specialists and practitioners to pick up critical threads of this conversation, bringing to bear the mounting experience and findings of a series of seven UBI pilots, surveyed and analysed by Guy Standing, contextualised and tested on the terrain of fiscal responsibility and macroeconomic policy orthodoxy, and projected onto the progressive horizon.

Guy will be joined by Simon Duffy to broaden this specific approach to tax and benefit policy into the class ramifications for Right and Left Westminster policy distortions and injustices in a circular pursuit of folly and fixations embodied in how the ‘medianocracy’ is interpreted and politicised in SW1 and the public sphere.

Matt Wood brings his research and practical experience with the politics of urban air pollution governance with Sheffield Air to present us with the vista of institutional implications, framework changes, and insights into the challenges to be negotiated by DiEMers in forging a new now – fit for the many.

We warmly invite all-comers to join us in this discussion on Zoom:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/5142777288?pwd=QzFlK3FBOWdHRTVqZ2krSGVjcnV5dz09

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Guy Standing is a Professorial Research Associate at SOAS University of London and a founding member and honorary co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), a non-governmental organisation that promotes a basic income for all. Guy’s prolific inquiry has earnt resounding respect as an advocate for justice and a pre-eminent source on the emerging precariat class, the need to move towards unconditional basic income and deliberative democracy, and the commons.

Simon Duffy is the President of the Citizen Network Coop, the founder and Director of the Centre for Welfare Reform and the international co-ordinator of Citizen Network. Simon is best known for inventing personal budgets and for designing systems of self-directed support, works as a consultant and researcher with local social innovators and national governments, and is a regular media contributor on the welfare state and social policy.

Matthew Wood is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Sheffield, whose research is driven by a concern for how political and economic elites can critically reflect on and address legitimacy deficits by changing how they interact with the public. Matt is interested in how state institutions seek legitimacy, and how this is disrupted by different forms of political distrust. His first book, Hyper-active Governance (Cambridge University Press), explores how political economy can help explain different approaches governments use to integrate expertise into policy-making, advocating an inclusive approach upon a foundation of democratic governance.

Nigel Slack holds forward the ‘Active Citizen’ as one who is active in civic life, challenging the way decisions are made and influenced. In his city of Sheffield and beyond, Nigel works to create a better understanding of local politics, decision making & influence, without party affiliation, and with the emphasis on transparency and accountability in decision-making. As an Active Citizen, Nigel works with Sheffield for Democracy, and with Opus Independents on Sheffield’s annual Festival of Debate, regularly contributing to its Now Then Magazine.