Name: Do we need basic income in the future? | VPRO Documentary
Uploaded: 2019-09-14T12:52:07.000Z
Duration: 43 min 32 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Isn't it intolerable that there will be an entire class...

...who get 100K when they buy their first home.

And in the business district they know a lot of tax tricks...

...to maximise the amount parents can transfer to their children tax-free.

If you have a liberal fibre in your body...

...that should make you sick, right? People have to work for their money.

For decades, it was a forgotten idea: the basic income.

A fixed amount of government money that people can spend freely, unconditionally.

...and historian Rutger Bregman wrote a book about it.

Things have to change, but we don't know how.

We live in the land of plenty. What kind of utopia would we still want to fight for?

Four years ago, we spoke at length with Bregman about this revolutionary idea.

From Finland to India, from Canada to Kenya, experiments have been started.

Are we on the eve of a definitive breakthrough of the basic income?

Together with Backlight, Bregman selected TV clips...

...to show the current state of this groundbreaking idea.

And those 'toothbrush counters', let's get rid of them.

This is Backlight. Welcome to the world of the citizen's dividend.

First, I made an episode with VPRO Backlight, in February 2014.

...we'll have to ditch the idea that you have to work for money.

That sounds as absurd as saying in the 1950s that all women should work.

First of all, you should think about a basic income.

In 2014, I titled my book 'Free Money for Everyone'.

In English, it's titled 'Utopia for Realists', a much better title.

'Free Money for Everyone' is stupid, because they'll say:

'You lefties are handing out money again, but who'll pay for it?'

'Yes, the men and women who are doing the real work.'

People say: 'The basic income will never happen, it costs a fortune, it's a utopia.'

I think it's the other way round. In the long term...

...it'll cost a fortune to not have a basic income.

Because when we look at this type of investment...

We think of the amount, and that we can't afford it.

But a lot of studies show the huge benefits of a basic income:

Lower healthcare costs, children perform better at school, better mental health.

If you delve into the history of the idea, it's actually very liberal, or even conservative.

Because we would get a state that might be larger in terms of redistribution...

...that gives everyone an equal chance at success...

...but that's smaller in terms of patronising.

In terms of paternalism. People will be free to choose.

That's classic liberalism, almost right-wing.

So it's venture capital for the common man.

Now only a few people can take risks, but with a basic income, everyone can.

A number of experiments, including one conducted in North Carolina...

...among the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians...

...have shown that the benefits outweigh the costs.

So it's literally free money, an investment that repays itself.

Imagine getting paid, simply for being yourself, every six months.

That's exactly what the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians did 20 years ago.

Twice a year, all tribe members get a cheque, simply for being Cherokee.

Data from the past 20 years even show the opposite.

12,000 dollars for all 15,000 tribe members

...and the profits of the casino are distributed...

...among the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

So all these people are lifted out of poverty...

...and the researchers realise it's a gold mine, a sociologist's dream.

A huge number of scientific papers were written about the fascinating results.

Which were spectacular: Healthcare costs went down, people invested in their lives...

...and the behaviour of parents and children improved.

There were so many hugely positive side effects...

...that the benefits outweighed the costs.

...that since the 1960s, there have been large-scale trials of this crazy idea.

Few people know that in the late 1960s, nearly all experts were convinced...

...that the basic income would soon be implemented in the US.

...signed by a thousand economists who supported it.

There were huge experiments in the 1970s, under Nixon.

He liked the idea, which is hard to imagine.

Nixon thought: 'Oh well, then I'll be the president who writes history.'

Not that he had studied it so well, that he was such a visionary.

And he got pretty far, until the democrats torpedoed his plan...

...because they wanted a higher basic income, how ironic can you get?

To Nixon, this was one of the key parts of his entire political programme.

It meant that more than ten million Americans...

...the working poor, as they are called, who live in poverty while having a job...

...would have got a guaranteed basic income, a revolutionary plan.

I only know Nixon from Watergate, as a scary, power-hungry wiretapper.

So what about the connection between the basic income and socialism?

That's a fallacy, because this idea transcends left and right.

Nixon is right: The current welfare state often makes people stay at the bottom.

If you're on welfare, but you want to work three or four days a week...

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Do we need basic income in the future? | VPRO Documentary

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