Everything you think you know about poverty is wrong.
The left often says: oh we should pity the poor and help them to make better decisions.
Then the right says: Poverty, that's just a lack of character.
I think it's really important to acknowledge that the real experts on the poor's lives,
are the poor themselves.
We should get rid of that whole industry of paternalistic bureaucrats,
when we can simply hand over their salaries to the poor they're supposed to help people.
People worry; oh they'll spend it all on drugs or on alcohol blah blah blah.
I look at the scientific research it's just not true, actually if you eradicate poverty,
the amount of money people spend on drugs or alcohol goes down so it's completely the other way round.
There was this period in British history you had all the great bands;
The Beatles, The Rolling Stones you name it, what was going on there?
If you look at those bands they have one thing in common, at least in the beginning.
They were all on welfare, they were all on the dole.
Back then it was possible for young musicians to mess around, to tinker, to create etc.
When we lift people out of poverty what you get is an explosion of energy, ambition and creativity.
This is what the science finds time and time again.
The people who do the most valuable work: Teachers, cleaners and nurses, we pay them the least.
Those who don't do very valuable work, or actually even destructive work,
like lawyers, consultants or the bankers we pay them a lot.
What happens if different professions go on strike?
Garbage collectors in New York 1968 they go on strike it and it's a disaster.
After 6 days the city pretty much breaks down we can't do without them.
Then compared to another strike, the only strike of bankers that I know of.
This was in Ireland 1970 and that strike lasted for 6 months!
After 6 months the bankers came back and said: all right, all right we'll get back to work.
So no one noticed.
I think that a Universal Basic Income will be a game-changer.
The whole idea of completely eradicating poverty with a monthly, completely unconditional, cash grant,
People can always fall back on it, it will give you much more bargaining power.
it gives you the ability to say no to a job you don't want to do.
This means that we'll move towards an economy in which the wages,
will much better reflect the social value of the jobs that we do.
An economy in which the cleaners may earn more than the bankers,
and to be honest, I'd like to live in that economy.
The day a robot takes your job should be the best day of your life.
Jobs are for robots, life is for people. It's meant to be this way,
it's the whole purpose of progress and of capitalism.
Now the question is; how do we make sure everyone benefits?
Nowadays it seems as if the owners of the robots, the capitalists,
they're the only ones that are benefiting.
We need to remember that technology is not destiny.
In the end what really matters, are the ideas and the social political institutions,
that make sure that we all benefit.
I'm a bit tired of all those Silicon Valley trend watchers and prophets who say:
technology will solve all our problems.
Well actually in the 1960s they also predicted we'd be having a 20-15 hour work week by now.
But what I see happening is there are millions of people wasting their time In completely useless jobs.
So we should never underestimate Capitalism's ability to come up with new bullshit jobs.
The trick here is to change our thinking,
the obstacle is not in economics it's not technological but its ideological
A lot of people these days believe we live in a time of incredible innovation and progress,
but as a historian I like to zoom out and actually, it's a bit disappointing to be honest.
If you read the science fiction from the 70s they predicted we would be on Mars already.
We should have these flying cars, where are they?
I think a big reason is that so many smart people are wasting their time.
We've got brilliant mathematicians working in Silicon Valley,
Trying to find out how we can click on as many ads as possible.
We've got brilliant engineers who move to Wall Street,
coming up with new, destructive financial products.
So there's an incredible waste of human talent going.
We should first remember that most of the really big breakthrough innovations,
didn't start with the market but with government.
I know that's a dirty word but let's look at one of our favourite innovations: The iPhone.
Every single piece of fundamental technology in this thing: Voice recognition technology,
the battery, the internet, everything that makes it a smart phone instead of a stupid phone.
Was invented by researches on the government payroll.
Apple made a great product out of that but Apple did not make it possible.
In the end this is because of huge, large scale innovation, financed by governments.
So let's remember that paying taxes and that stuff that's really how we create civilisation and progress.
Real change never starts in the centre.
It never starts with mainstream journalists or mainstream politicians.
It always starts at the fringes, with the people who are first dismissed as crazy and ridiculous,
unreasonable and irresponsible.
What I'm really excited about is that we see an awakening of young people.
I'm really excited about the rise of Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn in the UK.
Let's zoom in on the Corcbyn phenomenon.
For years and years all the mainstream journalists and pundits have been saying:
Labour should not become too radical because otherwise it's not electable,
we can't win elections anymore.
Then this Corbyn guy came along and every said oh he's crazy,
that's an old communist from the 70s that'll never work out...
...oh and wait he did better than any other Labour leader since 1946.
All this time the problem wasn't that Labour was too radical,
it was not radical enough.
So here again we need this imagination we need these new ideas.
Every milestone of civilisation was once a utopian fantasy:
the end of slavery, democracy, equal rights for men and women.
So we can do this again, we just need to come up with these new utopian, crazy, radical visions,
and then fight for them.