![]() ![]() In Scotland, most parties contesting the forthcoming election have come out in support of a guaranteed income for all, while in South Korea a basic income trial is being mooted for Gyeonggi province. With furlough schemes making the idea of a guaranteed, state-backed salary seem less radical, the concept of a universal basic income has moved from the realm of utopian thinkers into mainstream discourse. I was able to give him money so he wouldn’t be hungry when he was at his track meet (athletics training). ![]() “My son wanted to go to a football camp – I was able to pay for that,” she said. Mekie* (main picture, above), a mother of six, who works in a warehouse in Sacramento, was among the participants. It claimed that some participants were actually spending the money in restaurants and on other non-essentials, unwittingly bolstering one of the main arguments for basic incomes: that they stimulate the economy. The California Globe, however, suggested that spending figures had been misreported. Less than 1 per cent of the income, they added, was spent on cigarettes and alcohol. So, where did Stocktonians spend the money? According to analysts, mostly on necessities such as food (37 per cent), home goods and clothes (22 per cent), utilities (11 per cent) and car costs (10 per cent). This echoed the findings of a similar trial in Finland, which was found to have significantly boosted wellbeing among participants.īefore Seed came along, I was paying a lot of bills and didn’t know how I was going to eat Participants also reported significant improvements in mental health, fatigue levels and overall wellbeing compared to the control group. The control group saw just a five per cent increase. At the beginning of the trial, just 28 per cent of recipients had full-time jobs a year later that had risen to 40 per cent. It suggests that, far from disincentivising work as naysayers said it would, people on the guaranteed income found full-time work at more than twice the rate of non-recipients. And after all, state provision of facilities such as roads and bridges, used by rich and poor alike, shows that the principle is already there.Seed concluded in February and analysis of the first year has now been published. Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang in the US argues for it in the UK and elsewhere, the Covid lockdown effectively showed that governments could do this, or something like it, in the form of furlough payments. Universal Basic Income is an idea whose time has, arguably, come. The lucky lottery winners of Kogutu are delighted, of course, and no one in this film appears to be frittering the money away on booze or drugs, many are using it for home improvements and to help their families. It sounds like the premise of a quirky British comedy like Local Hero or Whisky Galore!, only with money instead of whisky. East Africa is the main focus, and this documentary tracks the group’s association with the Kenyan village of Kogutu, making monthly cash transfers beginning in 2017 to properly constituted adult residents there over a projected period of 12 years. The group donates free money directly as universal basic income to villages and needy communities all over the world, without the costly admin of means testing. This is the experiment in radical giving being carried out by the US non-profit organisation GiveDirectly and its perma-smiley co-founder Michael Faye. F rom each, nothing according to ability to each, a pretty decent amount regardless of need. ![]()
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