Vol. 3 BASIC INCOME
How would you like to receive a monthly salary from the government for free? For many people, this is an idea too good to be true. For others, it sounds immoral: surely, if people were paid for doing nothing, they would refuse to work, and the economy would collapse. Yet this idea, known as “basic income”, is being seriously considered in many countries around the world. Currently, one of the candidates for the presidency of France believes in it strongly.
Under a “basic income” system, most social welfare payments and pensions, as well as tax allowances, would disappear. Instead, everyone in society, both young and old, would receive a fixed amount of money every month. This money would be just enough to live on, but not enough to discourage people from working. You would receive it as a right, and it could not be taken away, whether you had a job or not. The supporters of “basic income” say it will be necessary in the future, as jobs become increasingly scarce, and we become more and more dependent on automated systems and robots.
The idea of a basic income is a very old one. 200 years ago, Thomas Paine thought everyone deserved it as a right, because so much land was owned by big landowners that many people had no land on which to grow food. Today, it might enable people to do work they really enjoyed, rather than work they were forced to do in order to survive. In some European countries, as well as India, Canada and Brazil, it has already been tested on a small scale, with some success. Who knows? Perhaps it is an idea whose time has come!
QUESTIONS
1. Why do you think the income is called “basic”?
2. Why do some people object to the idea?
3. Would people doing highly-paid jobs also receive a basic income?
4. What is one reason why basic income may become necessary in the future?
5. Have the experiments with basic income had good results?
COMPOSITION TOPICS
1.
What do you think of the idea of “basic income”? Are you in favor or against? If the system were introduced, what benefits, or disadvantages, can you imagine?
2.
How do you think robots can help us in our lives? What kind of work would you like robots to do for you in the future?
