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  • Look at things like the impact of inequality.

  • There's a fantastic book called "The spirit level"

  • by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, which I'd recommend anyone reads,

  • which tells you about just how damaging inequality is.

  • It does things like driving up murder rates, assault rates,

  • it increases early deaths from things like heart attacks

  • and other chronic health conditions.

  • If we coud move away from that inequality, we'd live in a better society.

  • And that's the prize here: let's deal with inequality,

  • let's give everybody a basic level of income and a basic level of dignity.

  • That's universal, that that doesn't require them

  • to jump through hoops, to turn up to appointments, to do things

  • that they aren't necessarily able to do.

  • And then you get the prize of a society that is healthier and happier.

  • And if you can do that through taxing,

  • and I would argue that you should tax ourselves,

  • because you tax extraction and we have extractive industries.

  • I think that's a really good place to go and raise taxes,

  • because those things are an one-off,

  • you can't dig things under the ground more than once and use them.

  • That's a really good place to get these resources as well,

  • and of course in the UK we've seen over the past 50 years

  • how we've largely wasted the resources we got from North Sea oil and gas.

  • That's an interesting point that you're making,

  • but to go back on the opening statement about taxing wealth and unearned one,

  • it's highly politically loaded, right?

  • When on the back of that you're pushing basic income,

  • do you shoot yourself in the foot

  • by putting it into one specific political camp more so than another?

  • And then I'll go to you, Almaz,

  • because that must be completely unpalatable in the US at the moment.

  • Yeah, I think it is unpalatable in the US at the moment,

  • but let's remember that there was a time when income taxes

  • were completely unpalatable in the United States,

  • and were the subject of quite strong disagreements between different parties,

  • and we eventually got income taxes in the US moving away from tariffs,

  • because we had increasing income,

  • particularly in the northeastern part of the country, from industrial.

  • So that is taxation who needs to go to where the money is.

  • When money is in the society,

  • is mostly to have contributions from people online to the states,

  • funding the governments.

  • We can move to an industrial economy

  • with taxes from income funding the government.

  • And when you move to a post-industrial, something like we have

  • with the tremendous amounts of income inequality

  • and lots of wealth accumulation on top five or ten percent of society,

  • then that's where you go for the money that you need to fund your government.

  • I think that one of the problems in the basic income conversation

  • is that we often start with "How would it pay for it?

  • There's not enough money, so we can't do it".

  • I think instead we should think about the new society that we want

  • and then think about how we pay for it.

  • And that's what we would do as a family, think about what kind of life you want,

  • what kind of job, and then you set out to try to make those things happen.

  • I think we should start with the vision of the society that we want

  • and I very much agree with the one that Peter described.

  • You know a lot of the conversation in the United States is about

  • the robots are coming to take away all the manufacturing jobs

  • and the low-skilled service jobs and even some higher skilled service jobs.

  • We don't have to wait for that future, we already have that that future now.

  • We've seen in the United States that increases in economic growth overall

  • have not been shared with all workers deeply,

  • they've won disproportionately to the top income and wealth holders.

  • We're not taxing wealth or high incomes because we hate the rich

  • or we're jealous or envious of them, that's just where the money is.

  • Let's stick to that idea of getting the society we want

  • because it's also important to recognize that the narrative of basic income

  • is hitting a psychological wall

  • which it's been extremely entrenched over the past 200 years.

  • Industrial Revolution created an industrial model of Education,

  • the narrative is about:

  • "Go to school, get a job and contribute with something",

  • and your worth will be measured not against the amount of money you have,

  • but how meaningful your job is for the society.

  • Does the ideas stand a chance

  • if we don't challenge those fundamental principles as well, Peter?

  • That's a really good point.

  • and I just want to pick up on one thing from the last section.

  • In 1945 we decided in the UK

  • that we wanted a free National Health Service,

  • and it's the most cherished institution in the country.

  • Do a poll and ask people what they like, NHS finishes top in almost every poll.

  • At that time, Britain was absolutely saddled with war debt,

  • it had a smashed society,

  • and yet it was able to do what people really wanted to do,

  • which was to create a National Health Service.

  • That shows that you can do what you want to do

  • when you need to do it, if you've got the will.

  • And then it becomes possible.

  • Everything in history is impossible until it happens,

  • and once it's happened, it becomes inevitable.

  • And that's a really important thing to hang on to.

  • And to go back on the fundamentals of what we get taught,

  • what we get raised with in terms of narrative,

  • is there a way for basic income and the idea to integrate that?

  • Can it be bolted on the system without challenging those preconceptions?

  • Does it stand a chance if we don't go to the philosophical debate,

  • and how do we go to the philosophical debate

  • without shutting everybody off and actually making it engaging?

  • I think that those are really important points,

  • and I think there's a thing here about what it is that we love doing,

  • what is it that humans love doing.

  • And a lot of critics of universal basic income say people will be lazy.

  • I did a media interview once,

  • where a tabloid journalist described as a layabouts charter.

  • Quite a colorful way of describing why many people's fears are here.

  • But when you look at what people do, what they do in in their own time,

  • is things that are creative, so they do craft, they create things.

  • They make normally beautiful items or they spend their time learning music

  • or learning foreign languages or how to do something that they can't do,

  • or consuming art and other things.

  • And those are the things that actually make us more human,

  • they relate very much to what our humanity is.

  • And what we've been forced into doing is productivist jobs,

  • that are about creating things to be consumed,

  • when that consumption is not necessarily what it is that makes us human.

  • And I think that this is one of the ways that we can throw off the shackles,

  • and I think we live in a world that's absolutely full of alienation.

  • Everybody feels incredibly alienated,

  • they hate the jobs, they hate work, they hate the system that they're working,

  • and that's why we have people voting for things like Brexit, for Donald Trump.

  • We need to find a way to get away from that,

  • and I think a universal basic income isn't all of that,

  • but that's one of the key planks to this.

  • It's one of the ways in which we can really get people

  • to focus on what it is that makes them happy

  • and that makes those around them happy.

  • And when we have happy people we have a better world.

  • So, could we simplify to the extreme and say

  • we're coming to the certain end of the industrial society?

  • Of course it still has a lot of a profit to extract

  • and it still can go quite a long way,

  • but we could say that most of it has been built,

  • what we need we have, in terms of material comfort.

  • Isn't it time now

  • to let the machines take over the boring and degrading work

  • and move to a society which is more about innovation, creativity

  • and basically trying to do good, rather than do less bad?

  • There's also an analogy with the material world here.

  • Do you think that it's something that would be palatable, Almaz?

  • Yes, I think it's instructive to think about the different kinds of values

  • that underpin different sorts of societies.

  • We think back to the feudal societies that we said goodbye

  • due to the intensity of industrial capitalism.

  • They were based on authority and loyalty.

  • You had a duty to your king, to your landlord, to your church.

  • Those were fundamental values in society,

  • and in industrial society we moved to one where the value of competition

  • and individual incentive was really prioritized.

  • Now, in this service economy

  • and in the post-industrial economy that we find ourselves in

  • and the creativity economy that we should be moving into,

  • value should really be on cooperation and collaboration.

  • So we need an economic structure that supports that.

  • Maybe one way to move beyond some of the polarization that you find

  • when you talk about basic income to non-experts

  • is to think about the ways in which our economy has already built on

  • cooperation and collaboration, and think about not completely eliminating

  • competition and incentives to individual game,

  • but to think about shifting the balance more in the direction of cooperation.

  • When you look at this income from gender and this perspective,

  • you've seen as Peter's been alluding to you from the beginning,

  • one of the very important works in society is caring work,

  • and that's not paid for at all in the markets.

  • We all already belong to families, communities and societies

  • with unconditional, individualized

  • universal care provided to each other,

  • and that's what allows us to participate in the more competitive market economy.

  • We still remain a team as we move forward into the new economy of the future,

  • but it's it seems like weI'll be better off if we move

Look at things like the impact of inequality.

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