Money for free - The basic income - VPRO documentary - 2014
157Suppose we give everyone in the Netherlands a basic income, without conditions. Is the basic income (money for free) too good to be true?
VPRO Backlight explores the possibilities of the basic income, also called universal basic income. Suppose we give everyone in the Netherlands a basic income, without conditions. Free money sounds too good to be true?
Now we know that some of the existing jobs will disappear due to robotisation and algorithms, and that the current system of benefits and surcharges is too complex and accusatory and fraud sensitive, isn't the basic income at least worth investigating?
According to Erik Brynjolfsson of the MIT Center for Digital Business, our western society is on the threshold of a new era. It is no longer just the physical activities that are increasingly being done by machines; robots and algorithms are also going to do more and more middle class work. Accountants and office staff, but also lawyers and stockbrokers and engineers, will increasingly have to deal with other work.
But because our societies have become richer in the last thirty years, this is perhaps a perfect moment to start thinking about another social system that is better equipped for the present time. Could a basic income be the cornerstone of a new social structure? A social model in which payments and surcharges are not endlessly circulated (80% of Dutch households currently receive some form of supplement)? And in which we no longer force people to search for jobs that no longer exist?
In the Canadian village of Dauphin, a thousand people (one-third of the population) received an additional allowance between 1974 and 1978, if necessary, without a counter-obligation. And what turned out? The participants continued to work for the most part or went on to study more, and it turns out they got less often sick or depressed. VPRO Backlight director Shuchen Tan went to Canada and spoke with project leader Ron Hikel, researcher Evelyn Forget and families who participated in the social experiment.
What would happen if we passed on the findings of this Mincome project to the Netherlands in 2014? Together with economist Marcel Canoy, former advisor of Barroso, VPRO Backlight calculates what implementation would cost: is it feasible and affordable? And we take a look at the Basic income foundation, where two generations find each other in the first seeds of what our social future could become.
Originally broadcasted by VPRO in 2014.
© VPRO Backlight September 2014
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Credits:
Director: Shuchen Tan
Research: William de Bruijn
Production: Marie Schutgens, Jessica van Beek
Editors: Henneke Hagen, Frank Wiering
Animations: Rogier Klomp
English, French and Spanish subtitles: Ericsson.
French and Spanish subtitles are co-funded by European Union.