openDemocracy: Why ‘Universal Basic Services’ is no alternative to Basic Income

On the premise that ‘essential services should be free at the point of need’, paralleling the National Health Service and state education, proponents have identified universal free ‘basic’ housing, free food, free local transport, free TV licence and a free ‘basic’ communications package including mobile phone and broadband internet. All of this, they claim, would cost £42 billion or about 2.3% of GDP. [...]

For a start, what is being proposed is not ‘universal’ in any accepted use of the word. For instance, the provision of ‘free food’ under the UBS banner is deceptive. According to the UBS scheme, the state would provide "one-third of the meals for the 2.2 million households deemed to experience food insecurity each year". That is not universal. It is targeted. Identifying those suffering from food insecurity would necessarily imply means-testing or some complex test of ‘food insecurity’. As with all targeted schemes, many of those eligible would not be reached, while those receiving the free food would, as a result, face an even greater poverty trap and accompanying precarity trap than exist in the British welfare state today. The Department for Work and Pensions itself estimates that going from means-tested benefits into the sort of low-paid job claimants could obtain results in only a 20% increase in net income – a poverty trap of 80%. If they also lost ‘free food’, the net gain would be even less. [...]

Providing ‘the poor’ with free food would extend the charity state and institutionalise the obnoxious system of ‘food banks’, which have mushroomed in the austerity era. The mass provision of free food would also risk more waste of food. However well-intentioned the charity state might be, people receiving free goods tend to value them less and treat them with less care than if they pay for them.[...]

Interestingly, under the German social care scheme, admired both by the House of Commons committees and by UBS supporters, three-quarters of beneficiaries opt for cash payments, even though they are lower than the value of the free in-kind services offered, because cash payments give them the flexibility to be cared for at home by family members or other informal carers.

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Foreign Affairs: The Fall of Abdelaziz Bouteflika

A coterie of generals brought Bouteflika to power in 1999 in order to turn the page on a decade of bloody conflict. That “dark decade,” as it is known in Algeria, began in January 1992, when the army, which had been the real center of power since independence in 1962, canceled the country’s first multiparty legislative elections to prevent an Islamist victory. The coup sparked a violent Islamist insurgency, which in turn spiraled into a brutal civil war. Bouteflika came with a platform of “national reconciliation” and although his 1999 election was recognized as a sham, he initially achieved some real popularity. He had been a charismatic foreign minister in the 1970s, and many Algerians still identified him with that happier era of state building and national pride. In his first two terms (1999­–2009), Bouteflika not only tamped down on violence but put the country back on the map. [...]

Algerians were not afraid to dissent. Bouteflika’s presidency faced constant, low-level, local protests almost from the outset and one major regional protest movement in the Berber-speaking, mountainous Kabylia region in 2001. What these protests had in common was an underlying demand for more accountable, responsible government. In 2011, such protests were endemic and persistent, but unlike in Tunisia or Egypt, in Algeria they did not coalesce into a national movement. They were a means for a disenfranchised population to engage constructively with a state that had the money to address immediate, sectional demands. What the state lacked was a farsighted plan for addressing the deeper problem, let alone for managing the inevitable transition from Bouteflika to a successor. The announcement in February that the president, who was receiving medical treatment in Geneva, would run again served to bring all of Algeria’s local dissatisfactions together around a single point: “No fifth mandate!” But this was only the immediate demand: underlying it was already a maximal one, getting to the heart of the matter: “Time’s up for them all!” and “System get out!”

This year’s demonstrations, abundantly photographed and streamed on mobile phones via social media, have been a carnival of popular songs, football chants, and inventive, witty placards. Pithy slogans in Arabic, Berber, French, and English have festooned the signs of marchers and the banners draped from balconies, along with the ubiquitous national flag. Whole families have taken part: the crowds of demonstrators include not only young people but their parents and grandparents. The hirak, for these millions of Algerians, has been a conscious, deliberate reappropriation of public space and national symbols. Portraits of the martyrs of the revolutionary war of independence, fought against French colonial rule from 1954 to 1962, have been prominent in demonstrations. The physical occupation of the street—and the organized act of cleaning it up, in groups, after demonstrations are over—has enacted one of the movement’s central demands: for the Algerian people to take their country back.

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Politico: Spain’s Sánchez waiting game

On Thursday, Sánchez was tasked by King Felipe VI with forming a government, a formality that recognizes him as official candidate for prime minister. But when the Socialist leader later addressed reporters at La Moncloa, the Spanish government headquarters, he didn’t add much to what has been obvious to any informed observer since the April 28 ballot. [...]

José Manuel García-Margallo, an MEP for the conservative Popular Party (PP) and a former foreign minister, said Sánchez had “a clear horizon ahead,” adding that the seat distribution in parliament gave him several options: setting up a minority government; wooing the liberal Ciudadanos for a coalition; or forming a multi-party alliance with the leftist Podemos, the Basque Nationalist Party and other minor regional parties. [...]

Sánchez invited the three main political parties beside his Socialists — the PP, Ciudadanos and Podemos — to a series of meetings next week, suggesting that he sees the support of these four parties as crucial to his reelection. That means he is likely seeking not just the support of Podemos, but also some form of cooperation with Ciudadanos or the PP, such as an agreement that one or both of the two parties would abstain in the investiture vote. [...]

As well as the general election in April, Spain held local, regional and European ballots in May and is awaiting the election of mayors of over 8,000 towns and cities and the presidents of 12 regions. Sánchez’s Socialists won the election by a wide margin, but which party rules in many regions and cities will depend on coalition negotiations.

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Politico: Germany passes controversial migration law

The new law's aim, according to its draft version, is to "significantly increase" the proportion of successful deportations. Approximately half of the planned 188,000 deportations from Germany since 2015 failed or were not carried out, according to interior ministry data.

Yet the policy package also included measures to improve access to Germany's labor market for skilled migrants. For instance, migrants without asylum status who arrived before last summer will be able to stay for the time being if they have a job and speak German. In addition, it scrapped previous rules that required German employers to prove that they found no German or other EU citizen to take the job in order to employ a skilled non-EU migrant. [...]

Ahead of Friday's Bundestag debate, the Greens and the far-left Die Linke party had unsuccessfully tried to remove the vote on the legislative package, which they said infringed on asylum seekers' rights and had been rushed through parliament, from the agenda.

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CNN: A veteran died in police custody. His body was returned to his family with some organs missing

An initial autopsy by the York County Coroner's Office stated Palmer died after an incident "following an excited state" during which he "began hitting his head against the inside of his cell door" and was restrained. The report says Palmer became agitated as a result of "methamphetamine toxicity." A probable "sickling red cell disorder" as listed as a contributing factor. [...]

The York County Coroner's Office updated its autopsy results on July 28, 2018, to include a manner of death, which it listed as "undetermined." The autopsy report says details of the autopsy may be corrected as more information becomes available.[...]

"It's not unusual to take organs out of a body during an autopsy, especially if you believe they were subject to trauma. The highly unusual part is to misplace them," Merritt said. [...]

When asked how long an investigation into a case like this typically takes, King said, "Every investigation is unique." He did not answer when asked why, more than one year after Palmer's death, there is still no official determination about his cause of death.

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Reuters: G20 agrees to push ahead with rules on corporate tax targeting tech giants

The new rules mean higher tax burdens for large multi-national firms, but will also make it more difficult for countries like Ireland to attract foreign direct investment with the promise of ultra-low corporate tax rates. [...]

Big internet companies say they follow tax rules but have paid little tax in Europe, typically by channeling sales via countries such as Ireland and Luxembourg, which have light-touch tax regimes.[...]

If companies are still able to find a way to book profits in low tax or offshore havens, countries could then apply a global minimum tax rate to be agreed under the second pillar. [...]

Britain and France have been the most vocal about the need for a so-called “digital tax,” arguing that corporate tax codes are no longer fair in the age of the large-scale provision of services and the sale of consumer data over the Internet.

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