---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Dante-Gabryell Monson <[email protected]> Date: Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 7:35 PM Subject: Basic Income in Mongolia ? To: [email protected] Alaska, Mongolia, Namibia and Norway, seem to be potential places to enable basic income in the form of local currencies. http://smi2le.org/en/artikel/51-grundeinkommen-in-der-mongolei http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund //// Basic Income in Mongolia Friday, 22 January 2010 17:54 Karl Widerquist <http://smi2le.org/en/component/mailto/?tmpl=component&link=aHR0cDovL3NtaTJsZS5vcmcvZW4vYXJ0aWtlbC81MS1ncnVuZGVpbmtvbW1lbi1pbi1kZXItbW9uZ29sZWk%3D>[image: Bookmark and Share] <http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&pub=bodinua>[image: Print]<http://smi2le.org/en/artikel/51-grundeinkommen-in-der-mongolei?tmpl=component&print=1&layout=default&page=>[image: PDF]<http://smi2le.org/en/artikel/51-grundeinkommen-in-der-mongolei?format=pdf> The Mongolian government has taken the initial steps to create a basic income in the form of an Alaskan-style resource dividend. That would make it only the second regular basic income in the world and the first on a national level. This action has received very little attention in the international media, probably because Mongolia is a small and isolated country. However, the resource dividend has the potential to become extremely significant for Mongolians. Bloomberg News reports that the Mongolian government has pledged to set up a “sovereign wealth fund” using mining royalties from new gold and copper mines, which are expected to begin generating large tax revenues within the next three to five years. The fund is expected to distribute part of its revenue as an annual income to every Mongolian. In an interview with Bloomberg News, Mongolian Finance Minister Sangajav Bayartsogt, said that the government studied examples like the Alaska Permanent Fund when drafting the proposal. Although the government has not yet published estimates of how large the annual income might turn out to be, this program could eventually make a large impact on Mongolians, because Mongolia is a small, poor country with a large amount of newly discovered resource wealth. During the elections this year, both parties discussed distributing as much as $1000US to each citizen. Although the government might not follow through with such a large grant, the size of the new mines brings this size of a dividend into the realm of possibility. A $1000 dividend might not seem terribly significant in comparison to the Alaska dividend, which will be $1305 this year and reached a high of $3269 last year. But the potential impact of the dividend has to be looked at in relation to how wealthy the citizens already are. According to Bloomberg, per capita income in Mongolia is only $1,680US. According to the Bureau of Business & Economic Research, per capita income in Alaska is $44,039US. That means, the average Alaskan is twenty-six times wealthier (at current exchange rates) than the average Mongolian. A dividend of only $50 per year would have the same relative impact on the average Mongolian’s budget as Alaska’s $1300 dividend has on the average Alaskan’s budget. The impact of a dividend of $500 or $1000 could be astounding, but we should be cautious about expecting anything like this in the short run. Even if the size of the dividend is uncertain, Eugene Tang of Bloomberg argues that there will be some dividend. The fund has been created, and the government has talked so much about distributing a dividend out of the fund that they can no longer afford the political cost of going back on their pledge to introduce it at some level. Whatever happens, basic income supporters will probably want to keep an eye on developments in Mongolia. For more information, see “Mongolia Fund to Manage $30 Billion Mining Jackpot, <http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=aWm8u8kb0R5E>” by Bloomberg News -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens