[P2P-F] Fwd: Basic Income in Mongolia ?

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante.monson at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 7:35 PM
Subject: Basic Income in Mongolia ?
To: econowmix at googlegroups.com


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

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Basic Income in Mongolia
Friday, 22 January 2010 17:54 Karl Widerquist
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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



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