Universal Basic Income - Alaska style!
First broadcast: BBC Radio 4, 8pm, Tuesday 24th March 2020
Suddenly the idea of a 'Universal Basic Income' is being talked about at the highest levels of many countries, as they struggle to deal with the prospect of milliions of citizens thrown out of work by the coronavirus pandemic. 'UBI' is the idea of giving every member of society a ‘basic income’, as a way of tackling extreme poverty and the loss of jobs caused by economic collapse, automation etc. There have been pilot projects across the world, from India to Finland, from Namibia to Canada: and there is talk of a possible one in the city of Hull here in the UK. So much attention is being paid to ‘the Alaska model’, because the Arctic American state has been paying out an annual dividend to every one of its permanent residents, man, woman and child, for almost 40 years. They don’t have to do anything to get the money, and they can do whatever they like with it.
The money comes from the state’s Permanent Fund, which invests a substantial share of the profits of oil production for the benefit of all its citizens. As a result of this ‘dividend’, arguably a form of Basic Income, its supporters say Alaska is the least unequal state in the whole USA. But in the last three years Alaskan politics has been dominated by an unresolved crisis over the Dividend. The State government has been trying to use money earmarked for the Dividend for other purposes, and many claim that this is illegal. Mark Whitaker reports from Alaska on a unique scheme, explaining its history and asking why it has become so controversial.
The BBC programme page is here
First repeat: BBC Radio 4, 5pm, Sunday 29th March 2020
Presenter and producer: Mark Whitaker
Exec producer and engineer: Mike Hally
Photo via Good Free Photos - aurora borealis over Alaska
The Documentary on BBC World Service, tx from 8 January 2019 - listen here, after first tx
Pictures by Cathy Howieson
Ordinary Cubans reveal what their lives have really been like under Castro’s socialism and, more recently, it’s transformation into a more capitalistic economy. For some, the Cuban Revolution was the last bastion of the communist dream; for others, a repressive, authoritarian regime. Largely missing from those debates were the voices of ordinary Cubans.
Almost 60 years on from the Revolution, Professor Elizabeth Dore discovers how people from different walks of life and generations have experienced life, work, housing, racism, sexism and corruption on the island.
"Cuban Voices " is based on the first large oral history project permitted by their government in more than thirty years. Professor Dore and her team of researchers got unprecedented access to ordinary people for over 15 years, and she has now returned for the BBC, visiting small villages and rural enclaves as well as the bustling metropolis of Havana, to hear how those same people's ideas have changed about the achievements and failures of socialism in Cuba. What she discovers frequently defies the official narrative of the Revolution.
While many welcomed the State’s provision of basic food, health care and housing, now they increasingly bemoan the widening gap between rich and poor. You will hear the Communist party member whose State salary barely allows him to survive in the damp one-room flat he shares with his sister, while others make a fortune earning hard currency from hiring out rooms to tourists or, in the case of one petty entrepreneur, by running a small computer business using software smuggled in from the US. While once ‘egalitarianism’ was seen as central to socialist society, that has been replaced by ‘equal rights and opportunities’, so has the Revolution, as some would say, abandoned its ideals?
Presented by Professor Elizabeth Dore
Produced by Mike Hally (executive producer Kati Whitaker)
A Kati Whitaker production for BBC World Service
Cuban Voices (a Kati Whitaker production)
'The Documentary' on BBC World Service, tx from 8 January 2019 - listen here, after first tx
Ordinary Cubans reveal what their lives have really been like under Castro’s socialism and, more recently, it’s transformation into a more capitalistic economy. For some, the Cuban Revolution was the last bastion of the communist dream; for others, a repressive, authoritarian regime. Largely missing from those debates were the voices of ordinary Cubans. Almost 60 years on from the Revolution, Professor Elizabeth Dore discovers how people from different walks of life and generations have experienced life, work, housing, racism, sexism and corruption on the island.
"Cuban Voices " is based on the first large oral history project permitted by their government in more than thirty years. Professor Dore and her team of researchers got unprecedented access to ordinary people for over 15 years, and she has now returned for the BBC, visiting small villages and rural enclaves as well as the bustling metropolis of Havana, to hear how those same people's ideas have changed about the achievements and failures of socialism in Cuba. What she discovers frequently defies the official narrative of the Revolution.
Presented by Professor Elizabeth Dore
Produced by Mike Hally (executive producer Kati Whitaker)
A Kati Whitaker production for BBC World Service
* for more details and pictures click here
We did not produce any programmes for broadcast during 2015, though we had repeats of earlier programmes, and our series of podcasts for the NI Community Relations Council remained available (see 2014)