Basic Income Guarantee:
On the 16th September 2009 the first international symposium about the topic “Basic Income” took place in Kyiv in Ukrainian and Russian. This event was enabled by a donation from Germany within the international “Week of Basic Income”, which took place from 14. – 20. September 2009.
Among the guests were: Manfred Fuellsack (University of Vienna), Nazip Khamitov (National Academy of Science in Ukraine) and Joerg Drescher (Project Jovialism), as well as Olesya Storozhuk and Yulia Samus, who bridged the different languages and contributed to the discussion themselves.
Process
At 18:15 Olesya started with the introduction of the podium, introduced the program of the event and gave a short overview about the topic. Nazip asked some rhetorical questions to the audience, which are connected with Basic Income. After that Joerg spoke about the history and how the idea of Basic Income developed thoughout the centuries. Manfred reported about the Alaska Permanent Fund, which is a prime example about the implementation of Basic Income. Last but not least, Yulia made an overview of the situation in Africa and spoke about results, which a pilot project in Namibia shows.
After that, the first discussion began and the “usual key-questions” were asked:
- Who is going to work, when a Basic Income is paid?
- How can a Basic Income be funded?
- Is it fair, that rich people will get a Basic Income, too?
At 19:30 there was a “Coffeebreak” and a lively discussion went on in the restaurant of the hotel. You could hear at all tables talks about the topic.
At 20:00 the symposium went on with single speeches and each was followed by some questions from the audience. The fact, that serious and intelligent questions were asked, showed, that the visitors were interested in the topic. Additionally more than half of the visitors stayed after the break.
The closing discussion, if a Basic Income is consistent with the mentality in Ukraine, ended because of time reasons, that this must be discussed further (in fact, the question arose in different forms throughout the event). A wider debate is aspired with the aim to found a Ukrainian network, which should be represented by a delegation at the next BIEN Congress in Brazil to get a regional affiliate of BIEN.
All texts of the speeches, which were held at the symposium, can be found at this web-site in four languages (English, German, Ukrainian and Russian).
