Translator: Spencer Ng Reviewer: Michele Gianella
The question is as follows:
We're in a country with 700 billion euros in public benefits.
Some say 15 percent of the global GDP.
And yet, report after report, poverty keeps growing
and every day we see more and more people
in the streets, in the subways,
with a sign that says, "I'm hungry."
So my question is very simple: Where did all that money go?
Here you have the exponential curve of social service expenditure,
and next to it someone with the great idea of not annoying us with his accordion
but who needs money to survive.
So, where did the money go?
It went into the cogs
of an extremely complex bureaucratic machine,
made with a lot of good intentions,
decade after decade,
that superimposes different allocation plans.
And as always with complex machines,
you have "insiders"
who know the machine very well and make a large profit from it.
And "outsiders", on the other hand, who are completely left aside.
To give you an idea,
today, to manage the 90-billion basic benefits,
there are 18,000 legal regulations.
That's what France's scheme of minimum social benefits is like.
And still, it's the tip of the iceberg.
So the more fundamental question, in a sense the more philosophic, is:
why did they make the system this way?
It was made that way
because this aid system is based on the identity of the people:
they have to define who they are,
what their needs are,
what their plans are,
what is their marital status.
And that which says identity says verification,
and that which says verification, says control,
and that which says control says injustice.
Today, to collect welfare, the least of the least,
which is around, for base welfare 500 euros,
you need to undergo interviews at the CAF.
CAF is the bank of family allowance.
What's the connection?
It tells you everything about the extent of paternalism
our social system is inspired to.
Today, when you ask for welfare,
you have to fill out a ten-page form,
that between one and two thirds of the potential beneficiaries
don't ask for.
You have to pass interviews
that can be particularly embarrassing, and discriminating.
You are labeled as poor.
And then, you can be given too much, then there are trials for undue payments.
As for the different amounts,
if you have a family, if the welfare is family based,
you can be asked to return some of it,
you can even be inspected to verify that you're living together.
There are still grounds for trials for undue welfare payments,
where they verify
whether or not there are two toothbrushes in the same glass,
which suggests that the people aren't just roommates,
but a genuine couple.
In short, it's an intrusive system.
And what we all experience as victims of bureaucracy every day,
those in need experience more, and worse.
And so, as always when there's a societal problem,
the poets of the era capture it.
Recently, Virginie Despentes and Ken Loach, to be precise.
In her last novel, Vernon Subutex, volume one,
Vriginie Despentes describes the long descent into hell
of the perfect victim of our time:
Record dealer Vernon Subutex,
ruined by the advent of digital technology,
not having the right to a number of services
because he was a freelancer, an entrepreneur,
who finally found himself on welfare
and who one day lost that welfare
because in a random conversation with his welfare advisor,
he disclosed that yes,
he went to see a concert with the money,
and therefore no,
he was not necessarily looking for a job.
Today, to collect welfare,
there are a certain number of conditions.
If you don't fulfill them, you can be excluded,
as was the case for Vernon.
I will add that if you go back to work
and if you're an Uber driver for two months,
you lose the welfare benefits and would have to beg for them back.
The other is Ken Loach.
His movie, "I, Daniel Blake" just came out on French screens,
which in another context, and in another country,
describes more or less the same thing.
Last year it got a Palme d'Or at the Cannes festival
and here is a clip from it.
"There isn't anything I can do,
so what I'm gonna have to do..." "You're going to sanction me?"
"I have to follow the rules,
and if you're gonna be aggressive, I'm gonna have to ask you to leave."
"It's not about me being aggressive,
I'm trying to explain to you, and you don't care!"
"Security!
Security!"
"I don't want to read your language
'cause it's all the same thing."
"You're gonna have to leave."
"I'm gonna speak to the manager.
I don't want to speak to you.
Sorry?"
"I just explained what's happening here."
"Come and talk to me then if you've got something to say."
"I tried to explain I've never been to Newcastle before.
We just moved up here from London
I don't know where I'm going.
I was on the wrong bus,
got off the bus run so I wasn't more late.
She doesn't want to know.
And now she's telling me she's gonna refer me for a sanction."
"What I want you to do is listen to me, okay?
The lady's told you what's right.
There's rules, rules we must stick to.
It isn't against you."
Other than they have a Newcastle accent,
it's a revealing film
that shows to what extent people are treated like children.
So, the proposed solution to fix these phenomena,
is a universal income.
To put it simply,
it's about giving every adult,
from 18 until his death,
a sum of money that is high enough to live on.
No terms, no inspections,
and no compensation.
The amount would be determined
by the amount needed to live in dignity in a given society,
and is allocated towards every member of the society.
You might ask,
on what philosophical grounds can you defend such an outlandish idea.
There are a lot.
Here are two,
because these are two guys from the same era,
that both took part in the French Revolution.
On the left the disheveled Gracchus Babeuf, the egalitarian,
who wanted not just a minimum income, but a maximum income too,
that were preferably the same.
It's the version that still exists today,
the collectivist version, the socialist version of basic income.
And on the right Thomas Paine,
you can see that he seems noticeably kinder.
Thomas Paine was, let's say, a liberal, but he had an interesting story:
He was British,
interested in the Declaration of the Rights of Man in France,
who talked back to Burke, who criticized it.
He emigrated to the US to support the American Revolution,
of which he is sometimes considered a founding father,
and then he was a refugee in France
where he participated in the French Revolution,
and became the first naturalized foreigner in France,
elected in 1792 to the national assembly.
Thomas Paine conceptualized, in "Agrarian Justice",
the features of a universal income, like the one talked about today.
What's interesting,
is that his double culture, Anglo-Saxon and French,
made him work to reconcile Rousseau and Locke.
Rousseau holds the idea
that in the natural state, at the beginning,
a certain equality reigned amongst men --
I mean, equality on natural resources --
and that we all share this heritage.
And that the inequalities, from that perspective,
are a form of injustice, compared to this primordial equality.
But Locke holds the idea that the increase in wealth,
the transformation of nature into value,
the valuation of products,
the possibility to create, to attach goods to property,
is quite commendable and permits the civilization to progress.
And so he proposes his universal income to reconcile the two,
in saying, "We're going to compensate you for the loss of your natural heritage."
And since this heritage is the same for all,
the sum of money will be the same for all.
He has a phrase that I find summarizes his philosophy well,
"I don't care that some become very rich
as long as no one becomes poor as a consequence."
So that this income is finally no longer considered as charity,
but as a right that, he says,
is poised to complete
the Declaration of the Rights of the Man and of the Citizen.
And so, you have the right to say, today, it's a little utopian.
First I would like to clarify that I hate utopias.
I recommend you read the first of the genre,
"Utopia" by Thomas Moore,
that is a real hell
where the length of streets is determined by the state
and where everyone's activities are controlled hour by hour.
A utopia is always someone's fantasy
imposed on the rest of society.
Universal income is not a utopia, first because it doesn't solve,
it doesn't propose comprehensive plans, doesn't propose societal outlooks,
it doesn't propose common values.
It's really the opposite:
It gives everyone a chance, by giving them a level of autonomy
to make their own life choices,
to determine their own definition of a good life.
In a sense, society with a universal income
attains such a complex level
that it gives the possibility to its members to leave it;
and secondly, this isn't a utopia
because France today is very realistic.
And I'm going to backtrack a little to the details of the numbers.
It is very realistic
because we accumulated so many services,
we really have a redistribution system,
that changing to a universal income, would change the pipes
but wouldn't change the bulk of financial transfers.
It wouldn't provoke in the country any economic disruption,
it would only marginally change the money that the people receive,
or that they pay in the form of taxes.
It's well explained by Lionel Stoléru,
an advocate since the '70s for universal income,
that he had brought from the US where Friedman had updated it.
And if you speak to Stoléru,
he'll tell you that the long series of sweeping social reforms --
welfare, small business, tax credits, premiums --
move in the direction of universal income,
that is the logical outcome of this series.
So the conditions are there.
What would they look like?
We worked with economists who modelled all of this,
and so I'm going to quickly overlook the details
to give you the conclusion:
the conclusion is that you could have, at the very same cost,
a universal income that is a kind of super welfare.
Once again, it's not asking for the moon, it doesn't solve all the problems.
But if you give 500 euros as a universal income,
the equivalent of welfare today, setting housing aside,
and so a universal income that covers everyday consumption needs,
goods, food, housing, energy, phone, transportation,
is estimated at 500 euros.
You have to fund it with a tax
that replaces the 25 percent income tax, it's not all the same.
You have an outline where, these 500 euros,
given to each individual, every month,
take the form of a tax credit.
And then to compensate,
to fund this system, to make it fair,
you have this 25 percent income tax.
At the end of the month everyone makes the difference
between the 25 percent tax
and the tax credit that they're due, the 500 euros;
so that if you make nothing,
you have the 500 euros in cash;
and you're free to use it any way you want
without keeping count and without having to ask,
knowing that it's a right that everyone benefits from.
If you owe a million in taxes, you won't pay more than 999,500.
And everything in between is possible,
so if you make, for example, 1,000 euros,
then you have to pay 250 in taxes,
and you'll have your 500 euro tax credit,
and so you have 250 extra in the end.
So it's a system where, as always,
there are those who pay, there are those who receive,
but is simply made on a much fairer basis.
The following is a legitimate issue:
Why should Mrs. Bettencourt receive the universal income?
First thing I'll say, it's what will let her survive
when her daughter takes everything from her.
(Laughter)
But joking aside,
you can see that the universal income,
being something that you see each month
on your income worksheet, or even elsewhere on your taxes,
even if you don't benefit from it directly
because the amount of taxes
is much higher than the amount of the tax credits,
it's something that stays with you all your life long.
For the anguish disappears of the great poverty.
And often, when I display this system,
I get reactions from people on welfare that say to me:
"For me, your system wouldn't change a lot,
economically speaking,
but it would change my life
because I would stop being a professional beggar,
I would have a stability and a transparency on my money
and I could do something more interesting than going to the welfare office."
And so it's an extremely virtuous system
because, first, it eliminates the absolute poverty
in a radical, and automatic way:
never again will you see someone, a legal resident in the area
with an "I'm hungry" sign.
Impossible.
Secondly, it simplifies in a transparent, extremely egalitarian and simple way,
the allowance system on one side, and the taxes on the other.
Thirdly, it makes sure that work always pays,
for in such a system, as soon as you earn more,
your allowances decrease by 75 percent per euro earned.
Finally, it allows everyone to pay the tax, albeit virtually:
everyone contributes, but everyone receives.
I will add that it's particularly well adapted for a post-salary world,
where the people can practice a variety of different activities
and whose incomes are irregular from month to month.
It's a safety net that adapts itself dynamicallly, in real time,
to the disparity of individual incomes.
You'll notice that there are things that I didn't mention.
I didn't mention the end of work,
robotization, creative commons, etc.
Some technophiles ground their case for universal income
on the idea that we'll take a rent from robots.
All of that is nice,
but we don't need that thought to move to universal income
because universal income
can be here and now, in France, in 2017.
Thank you.
[We're considering a universal income. Can you give us some years to reflect?]
(Applause)