The Sixth Congress of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network

February 23-25, 2007

Crowne Plaza Times Square Manhattan Hotel, New York City

Featured speakers:

Dalton Conley, Stanley Aronowitz, and William DiFazio

The U.S. Basic Income Guarantee (USBIG) Network will hold its Sixth Annual
Congress in conjunction with the Eastern Economics Association Annual
Meeting, February 23-25, 2007 at the Crowne Plaza Times Square Manhattan
Hotel in New York City. USBIG attendees are welcome to attend any of the
hundreds of sessions at the EEA Conference. The Congress is co-sponsored by
USBIG and the Citizen Policies Institute.

The USBIG network is a discussion group on the Basic Income Guarantee (BIG)
in the United States--a policy that would unconditionally guarantee at
least a subsistence-level income for everyone. The 2007 conference will
include presentations on all aspects of BIG.

Featured speakers include Dalton Conley, Stanley Aronowitz, and Eduardo
Suplicy. Dalton Conley is the director of the Center for Advanced Social
Science Research and professor of sociology and public policy at New York
University, and he is the author of Honky, Being Black--Living in the Red,
and the Starting Gate. Stanley Aronowitz is a Distinguished Professor of
Sociology at the City University of New York and author or editor of twenty
three books including, Just Around Corner, How Class Works, The Last Good
Job in America, and The Jobless Future. William DiFazio is Professor of
Sociology at St. John's University. He is the author of Longshoremen:
Community and Resistance on the Brooklyn Waterfront and co-author of The
Jobless Future. His most recent book, Ordinary Poverty, presents the results
of welfare reform--from ending entitlements to diminished welfare
benefits--through the eyes and voices of those who were most directly
affected by it.

Scholars, activists, and others are invited to attend, to propose papers &
presentations, and to organize panel discussions. Proposals are welcome on
topics relating to the Basic Income Guarantee or to the current state of
poverty and inequality. Suggested topics include but are not limited to the
financing of BIG; the history of BIG; gender, family, and labor market
issues of BIG; rights and responsibilities relating to BIG; strategies from
implementing BIG; and empirical issues of BIG, and of poverty including cost
estimates. The purpose of the conference is discussion, and all points of
view are welcome. The USBIG Congress is entirely autonomous in content and
submissions are welcome in any academic discipline and from non-academics.

Previous USBIG Congresses have been attended by a wide range of academics
and activists from the United States and many other countries. They have
proven to be a good venue for dialogue between academics and activists.
Papers from USBIG Congresses have been published in a symposium in the
Review of Social Economy (January 2005), in a special issue in the Journal
of Socio-Economics (January 2005), and in a book entitled the Economics and
Ethics of the Basic Income Guarantee (Lewis, Pressman, and Widerquist eds.
2005). Many more papers from USBIG Congresses have been published in
academic journals and popular magazines.

Deadline for Submissions: Oct 27, 2006.

Proposals for presentations should include the following information:

1. Name
2. Affiliation (if applicable), including job title and employer
3. Address including City, State, Zip Code (Postal Code), and Country
4. Telephone number
5. Email Address
6. Title of the presentation
7. Abstract (summary of 50 to 150 words)

Proposals for panel discussions should include a title, topic, and
description of the panel and the information above for each participant. If
the participants are not presenting formal papers, the title of the paper
and abstract may be omitted. Panels with formal paper presentations should
be limited to four presentations, although discussions without formal papers
can include more. Please send submission to the conference organizer, Karl
Widerquist ([log in to unmask]).

Presentations at this year's conference will be organized into two groups:
Academic panels (including researchers in all disciplines) and nonacademic
panels (including activists, practitioners, and laypersons). Please indicate
in your submission, which kind of panel you would prefer to join. If you are
not sure which area your presentation best fits: You are not required to
have any credentials to present in either area. Academic sessions can expect
to have an audience made up mostly of people who have or are working on
Ph.D.s while nonacademic presentations can expect to have a more mixed
audience made up of fewer professors and more activists and lay persons. If
you're still not sure, ask the organizers.

EVERYONE WHO ATTENDS MUST REGISTER WITH THE EEA. 

Instructions for registration will be on the USBIG website by November 2006.
Indicate on your registration form that you will be attending the USBIG
conference and you can register at the members' price ($45 in advance and
$60 on site) without paying the EEA membership fee (saving more than half of
the total cost of regular EEA registration). For more information see the
USBIG website (http://www.usbig.net) or contact Karl Widerquist
([log in to unmask]).

KARL WIDERQUIST
Faculty Fellow, the Murphy Institute
108 Tilton Hall, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118
EMAIL: [log in to unmask]
PERSONAL WEBSITE: http://www.widerquist.com/
USBIG WEBSITE: http://www.usbig.net/