Boston Basic Income #122: Moral Framing

To what extent is it useful to frame basic income as a moral issue? Righteous-sounding rhetoric can be a powerful persuasive device, but does it help for basic income experts to think about the issue in moral terms?

This week's session brings in five featured guests to discuss these questions.

Bethany Burum is a social psychologist and lecturer and Harvard University. She and her colleagues study cultural evolution and use game theory to explain human social behavior.

Michael Lewis is a professor of social work at Hunter College. He has published widely on the topic of basic income and he was a co-founder the US Basic Income Guarantee Network (USBIG) in 1999.

Kate McFarland is the associate director of the Center for Ethics and Human Values at The Ohio State University and the former editor of Basic Income News.

Karl Widerquist is a philosophy professor at Georgetown Qatar. He is a former co-chair of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), as well as a co-founder of both the USBIG and Basic Income News.

Derek Van Gorder is a filmmaker, YouTuber, and frequent Boston Basic Income participant. His work explores Consumer Monetary Theory and the philosophy and economics of basic income.

For optional reading, we have a 2018 blog post by Alex Howlett entitled, "Justice Is Overrated."

https://www.greshm.org/blog/justice-is-overrated/

Previous related Boston Basic Income topics have included:

https://youtu.be/hgD2CGlZuC0 — BBI #5: Moral Concerns
https://youtu.be/n-V3Ps9Hd2A — BBI #22: Meritocracy and Entitlement
https://youtu.be/IFMycDcQDKQ — BBI #73: Moral Foundations

You can access the Zoom meeting here:
https://zoom.us/j/402968564

By default, everyone will remain muted in Zoom.

Most of the discussion will take place among the featured guests, but we will take some comments from other guests as well.

If you would like to speak, click the "raise hand" button on the "Participants" tab. Alex will unmute you when it's your turn.

Send Alex a message via Zoom chat to let him know if you'd like to follow up on something specific.

Starting at 7pm, we will make introductions and establish parameters for the discussion. The YouTube live stream will begin at 7:10pm.

The discussion will be streamed live at this URL:
https://www.youtube.com/bostonbasicincome/live

It will also be available in podcast form the following day:
https://anchor.fm/bostonbasicincome

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