Louis Dore in The Independent
The Dutch city of Utrecht will start an experiment which hopes to determine whether society works effectively with universal, unconditional income introduced.
The city has paired up with the local university to establish whether the concept of 'basic income' can work in real life, and plans to begin the experiment at the end of the summer holidays.
Basic income is a universal, unconditional form of payment to individuals, which covers their living costs. The concept is to allow people to choose to work more flexible hours in a less regimented society, allowing more time for care, volunteering and study.
The Netherlands as a country is no stranger to less traditional work environments - it has the highest proportion of part time workers in the EU, 46.1 per cent. However, Utrecht's experiment with welfare is expected to be the first of its kind in the country.
Alderman for Work and Income Victor Everhardt told DeStad Utrecht: "One group will have compensation and consideration for an allowance, another group with a basic income without rules and of course a control group which adhere to the current rules."
"Our data shows that less than 1.5 percent abuse the welfare, but, before we get into all kinds of principled debate about whether we should or should not enter, we need to first examine if basic income even really works.
"What happens if someone gets a monthly amount without rules and controls? Will someone sitting passively at home or do people develop themselves and provide a meaningful contribution to our society?"
The city is also planning to talk to other municipalities about setting up similar experiments, including Nijmegen, Wageningen, Tilburg and Groningen, awaiting permission from The Hague in order to do so.
Showing posts with label Netherlands. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Netherlands. Show all posts
Friday 26 June 2015
Thursday 5 June 2014
Where is the cheapest place to buy citizenship?
By Kim Gittleson
It is a cliche used from Bond to Bourne: the classic spy image of a suitcase filled with cash and multiple passports for a quick getaway. But increasingly it is not spies that are looking for a second passport, but a growing number of "economic citizens".
Henley and Partners citizenship expert Christian Kalin, who helps to advise clients on the best place to spend their money, estimates that every year, several thousand people spend a collective $2bn (£1.2bn; 1.5bn euros) to add a second, or even third, passport to their collection.
"Just like you diversify an investment portfolio, you want to diversify your passport portfolio," he says. The option has proven popular with Chinese and Russian citizens, as well as those from the Middle East.
Cash-strapped countries have taken notice. In the past year alone, new programmes have been introduced in Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, Malta, the Netherlands and Spain that either allow direct citizenship by investment or offer routes to citizenship for wealthy investors.
However, concerns have been raised about transparency and accountability.
In January, Viviane Reding, vice-president of the European Commission, said in a speech: "Citizenship must not be up for sale."
But for now, at least, it seems that those with money to spare are in luck, with half a dozen countries offering a direct citizenship-by-investment route with no residency requirements.
Essentially, citizenship that is very much for sale.
Dominica
By far the cheapest deal for citizenship is on the tiny Caribbean island of Dominica.
For an investment of $100,000 plus various fees, as well as an in-person interview on the island, citizenship can be bought.
However, experts caution that because the interview committee meets only once a month, actually getting a Dominican passport can take anywhere from five to 14 months.
Since Dominica is a Commonwealth nation, citizens get special privileges in the UK, and citizens can also travel to 50 countries, including Switzerland, without a visa.
St Kitts and Nevis
The Caribbean islands of St Kitts and Nevis have the longest running citizenship-by-investment programme (CIP) in the world, which was founded in 1984.
There are two methods to obtain citizenship, with the cheapest option being a $250,000 non-refundable donation to the St Kitts and Nevis Sugar Industry Diversification Foundation, a public charity. A second option involves a minimum $400,000 investment in real estate in the country.
The programme has recently been singled out by the US Treasury, which cautioned that Iranian nationals could be obtaining passports and then use them to travel to the US or make investments, which could violate US sanctions. (St Kitts closed its programme to Iranians in December 2011.)
However, Mr Kalin of Henley and Partners, which helped to set up the programme, says that while the programme has its issues, "St Kitts is relatively well run - it's in a way a model."
He adds that Caribbean locations are good for interim passports for "global citizens" who are looking to eventually establish themselves via investments in other "economic citizenship" programmes like those in Portugal or Singapore.
Antigua and Barbuda
Antigua and Barbuda introduced its CIP in late 2013, with similar parameters to the St Kitts model: a $400,000 real estate investment or a $200,000 donation to a charity.
In a speech announcing the programme, Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer cited a common reason that countries have increasingly introduced CIPs: an economic slowdown and "the virtual disappearance of traditional funding sources".
He cited both the St Kitts example as well as the United States, which allows foreigners to obtain a green card under the EB-5 visa if they invest $500,000 in a "targeted employment area" and create 10 jobs. (Since 1990, foreigners have invested more than $6.8bn and the US has given out 29,000 visas through the EB-5 programme, although there is a yearly cap of 10,000.)
However, Mr Spencer also said: "The Antigua and Barbuda Citizenship by Investment Programme is not an open-sesame for all and sundry."
Malta
"Citizenship-by-investment programmes are certainly on the rise, especially in Europe," says University of Toronto law professor Ayelet Shachar.
The tiny nation of Malta recently came under fire when it announced plans to allow wealthy foreigners to obtain a passport for a 650,000 euro investment with no residency requirement, which would have made it the cheapest European Union (EU) nation in which to purchase citizenship.
Prime Minister Joseph Muscat estimated about 45 people would apply in the first year, resulting in 30m euros (£24m; $41m) in revenues.
After pressure from EU officials, officials changed the rule to require potential passport holders to reside in Malta for a year and raised the investment to 1.15m euros.
The uproar exposed rising tensions over the definition of citizenship, according to Prof Shacher.
"At stake is the most important and sensitive decision that any political community faces: how to define who belongs, or ought to belong, within its circle of members," she says.
"The heft of the applicant's wallet is the new answer, according to citizenship by investment programmes. This is in breach of our standard naturalisation and citizenship requirements that focus on establishing a genuine link between the individual and the new home country."
Cyprus
Cyprus is the other EU nation to offer a direct citizenship-by-investment route.
The cost of the programme was slashed to 2m euros in March, partially in an effort to placate mostly Russian investors who lost money when Cyprus was forced to accept a strict European Union bailout.
(The 2m euro figure applies when one invests as part of a larger group whose collective investments total more than 12.5m euros; an investment of 5m euros in real estate or banks is still required for an individual.)
But Mr Kalin cautions against a Cypriot investment, noting that the programme initially cost 28m euros, then 10m euros, then 5m euros.
"It's a good example of how not to do it - you bring a product to market and totally misprice it and it gets cheaper every six months. It is ridiculous," he says.
Wednesday 6 March 2013
If bankers leave the country, it would be no loss
Ignore their howls of protest.
They took home unheard of sums. Only in Britain do ministers dance to their tune. But public fury cannot be defied for ever
Illustration by Belle Mellor
The peasants are revolting across Europe. They want bankers' blood and mean to get it. Until now, public response to the credit crunch has been one of general bafflement and wrist-slapping. The banks persuaded the world it was all an act of fate. As it was, they were too big to fail and their leaders too saintly to atone for it. For four years, British banks were showered with nearly half a trillion pounds of public and printed money. They duly recovered and stayed rich, while everyone else went poor.
The worm has turned. The banks and government alike have failed to deliver recovery. The people want revenge, and have found it – of all places – in the European parliament. It has declared that EU bankers cannot get bonuses bigger than their salaries, or twice as big if shareholders approve. This applies wherever EU bankers work, and to any overseas banker working in the EU.
Meanwhile, a Swiss referendum now requires top executives to seek explicit shareholder approval for their pay, with a ban on golden hellos and goodbyes. The Netherlands is talking of a tighter 20% cap on bonuses. Even laissez-faire Britain has seen the National Association of Pension Funds demand that boards keep executive pay rises down to inflation.
Europe's once omnipotent banking lobby has been all but neutered by the scale of scandal. The German government caved in to the EU parliament under pressure from the opposition Social Democrats. This was after the Libor scandal revealed Deutsche Bank cutting one trader's bonus by £34m, thus implying a staggering original sum. The Swiss campaign was kicked into life by the drugs firm Novartis giving its departing chairman a $76m gift. Some 68% of Swiss voted for the new curb.
Only in Britain do ministers still dance to the bankers' tune. Last month RBS executives brushed aside their state shareholder and paid themselves £600m in bonuses after posting a £5bn loss. Loss-making Lloyds dipped into its till and gave senior staff an extra £365m. Money-laundering HSBC announced 78 of its London executives would take home more than £1m each. They all say bonuses were unrelated to fines or losses, but they always say that. George Osborne was humiliated in Brussels on Tuesday by having to plead their fruitless cause.
Last year the City of London's much-heralded "shareholder spring" got nowhere. Revolts against executive pay at WPP, Barclays, Trinity Mirror and elsewhere had little noticeable impact. While overall pay stagnated, that of top executives rose 12%. Opinion polls showed the public overwhelmingly hostile to top pay. Only the government and the London mayor stand between the very rich and a furious public. The peasants' revolt means that even British ministers cannot defy opinion for ever.
The reality is that the banking community has allowed this thirst for revenge to build up for over four years, and it just did not care. Ever since the 1980s and financial deregulation, the profession took home sums of money unheard of in any other line of work.
This had nothing to do with free markets, except within a tight group of high-rolling traders. Modern bankers derive "economic rent" from exploiting oligopolistic cartels in financial services, with shareholders kept at one remove. The astronomical traders' bonuses are asymmetric returns on cash that properly belongs to depositors and shareholders whose money bears the risk. In any other business such bonuses would be regarded as theft from the firm.
For four years the British government – Labour and the coalition – huffed and puffed but was too terrified of the banks to act. Regulators were suborned by lobbyists and ministers, their offices packed with seconded bankers, and did as they were told. They gave huge sums to the banks in the belief that this was benefiting the demand economy. In Britain, some £400bn of cash was "pumped into the economy" via the banks. They merely traded or hoarded it, to their ever greater enrichment. The money vanished. A thousand pounds handed to every British citizen would have had more impact on the economy.
Last year, as if learning nothing, the Treasury gave the banks another £80bn to boost business and mortgage lending. This week it was predictably revealed that lending to small businesses actually fell as result. It was like giving money to a drunk and telling him to support his children. Never in the history of money can policy have been so glaringly inept. The banks laughed.
No trade unions are fiercer in defending their interests than the rich professions. As we saw this week with lawyers, cut their largesse and they threaten to take it out on the poor, the economy, the government, everyone. The banks howl that the bonus cap means their greed will go "offshore". This seems exaggerated. But the EU curbs could possibly see the start of the high-rollers moving out of over-regulated Europe towards the Americas and Asia.
This would not be wholly good news for Britain: finance has been the boom industry of the past quarter-century. But more likely is that the more toxic activities will go, and that is no loss. Either way, the banks have themselves to blame. They flew their golden wings too near the sun, and rage has melted them. They have only one plea on their side. The culture of greed in the City was nothing to the culture of ineptitude at the Bank of England and the Treasury. They pumped out the money. Never in British economic history can so much have been so wasted on so fruitless a cause. And still no hint of remorse.
Tuesday 24 April 2012
Billions wiped off Europe's biggest companies as political rebellion rocks eurozone
More than £122.3bn was wiped off the value of Europe's biggest companies on Monday amid fears that the eurozone's commitment to austerity was being swept away by political rebellion - just as its debts hit record levels.
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Stockmarkets plunged as traders panicked that Angela Merkel could lose her key allies in France and the Netherlands Photo: AP
10:20PM BST 23 Apr 2012
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Stockmarkets plunged as traders panicked that Angela Merkel could lose her key
allies in France and the Netherlands and that the debt crisis rescue plans
could unravel.
The Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte, who is one of the eurozone's "hardliners"
on fiscal discipline, dramatically quit in the wake of his coalition's
refusal to accept Europe's debt pact. Snap elections could be called as
early as June.
Traders were also rattled by Francois Hollande's victory over Nicolas Sarkozy in the first round of the French presidential election. The socialist Mr Hollande has vowed to renegotiate the fiscal pact that including a 3pc of GDP deficit limit.
The political concerns were compounded by data that showed eurozone debt has hit 87.2pc of GDP - the highest level since the launch of the single currency in 1999. Eurostat said that the 17 eurozone members had reduced their deficits from 6.2pc of GDP in 2010 to 4.1pc in 2011 - but overall debt levels had risen by 1.9pc.
Spain, meanwhile, officially sank back into recession as the economy shrank 0.4pc in the first quarter of the year, and German manufacturing shrank at its fastest rate for three years in March. The French composite PMI also fell, according to Markit.
By the end of the day, the Stoxx Europe 600 index has sunk 2.3pc to its lowest level for three months. The German Dax dropped 3.4pc, while France's CAC and Spain's Ibex were down 2.8pc each. In London, the FTSE 100 closed down 1.9pc. In the US, the Dow closed down 0.8pc, the S&P 500 lost 0.8pc and the Nasdaq shed 1pc.
Borrowing costs for the core "sinner states" of Spain and Italy rose back towards "unsustainable" levels. French borrowing costs also rose, widening the spread between oats and German bunds to a record 146.9 basis points. The euro fell almost 1pc against the dollar.
The ECB's bond-buying programme went unused for the sixth week in a row last week, the central bank said. But Brussels moved to reassure markets that the fiscal pact, which Ms Merkel said would "last forever", was still intact.
The European Commission said the pact was signed by states, not governments. "Governments change but commitments on behalf of states cannot be changed without discussion with European partners," said the Commission.
The Dutch finance minister, Jans Kees de Jager, insisted his country would stand by its austerity plans. "The Netherlands will retain its solid fiscal policy and will also show the market it will lower its deficit and also have a path of sustainable government finances," he said.
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