Storm

BASIC INCOME. Good, now that I caught your attention with these controversial words, I can explain why it’s important to know about it. Because today is not about climate change, biodiversity or carbon emissions. Today is about cash.

Basic income has always been a very controversial idea. Arguments against the idea aren’t difficult to come up with. Giving free money away will make people lazy, fuel alcohol and tobacco addiction and it’s too expensive. Interestingly enough, these arguments have been disproven by a myriad of scientific experiments.

Take the example of London homeless people. Thirteen notorious homeless people were given 3000 unconditional pounds. While some people feared they would spend this on more drugs and alcohol, many of them got off drugs and followed cooking classes and other courses. Instead of the 400 thousand yearly pounds spent on caring for these people (justice, police, healthcare), this system, including monitoring and advisors, cost them 50 thousand pound a year.

There are too many examples supporting this cause to name them all here. While the majority of Stormers might not be primarily concerned with economic issues like this in our future jobs, a Stormer is also a critical citizen. And it is a critical citizen’s duty to have a discussion about the basic income.

This blog was mainly inspired by (UU-educated historian) Rutger Bregman’s ideas in ‘Gratis geld voor iedereen’. While it is much more valuable to read his book than to read a blog about it, I hope to create some curiosity about this subject that would otherwise not have been there. So naturally my suggestion is to read this book, or the English version ‘Utopia for Realists’.