Translator: Michele Gianella Reviewer: Ellen Maloney
All of us should have dreams.
And I want to begin by saying something that is very famous,
that it's from the impossible, the dreamers of the impossible,
rather than the slaves of the possible,
that social evolution draws its creative force.
My dream is that every one of us, in every community,
should have a basic income as a right.
An individual basic income given as a right,
without conditions, and paid individually.
For a long time such an idea would have been regarded as a dream.
An impossible dream.
But in the last couple of years a remarkable number of people,
including Nobel Prize winners and people like yourselves,
have come to realize
that it is not only possible, but feasible, desirable, affordable.
So a remarkable change.
And we have established a network called BIEN,
Basic Income Earth Network,
and I just hope at least one of you listening
will join us in the struggle.
Because it is going to be a struggle,
and it will only come about if we collectively demand it.
And that is possible and desirable.
Now, what is the context?
The context is that we are undergoing a global transformation,
in which a global market system is developing,
but the insecurities and the inequalities are multiplying all over the world.
And in that process, a new class structure is taking shape.
And the biggest mass class is the precariat:
people who are being forced to accept a life of unstable labor
without an occupational identity,
relying on low stagnant money wages,
without rights.
They're supplicants, having to ask for favors.
Beggars, really.
It's a process that's affecting millions of people,
and many of them, since my books were published,
have been writing to me telling me their stories.
But there's a danger in this.
The danger is that the winners are getting scared,
because people like us are getting angry.
And so they're beginning to listen to debates about a basic income.
Now what is the justification for a basic income?
First, and really, very importantly,
a basic income is a matter of social justice.
Justice means that we should recognize
- all of us, individually -
that the wealth and income of anybody
is far more to do with the efforts of our ancestors
than anything you or I do for ourselves.
But why should we have private inheritance of wealth,
and not social inheritance?
So you can see a basic income as a sort of social dividend
on the collective wealth produced by our ancestors.
It's a fundamental demand associated with Thomas Paine for social justice.
The second justification for a basic income
is that it would improve and enhance our sense of freedom.
Republican freedom, as the philosophers call it.
This freedom means the freedom
not to be dominated by figures of authority.
Be abusive husbands, bureaucrats, government officials, or whatever.
This sense of freedom has been lost in the last 30 years of globalization
for millions and millions of people.
And the third justification is that we need basic security.
Without basic security, all of us become irrational.
We are unable to control ourselves, control our time,
deal with the stresses of life.
But if you have basic security,
as the psychologists and economists have taught us,
you not only deal better with stress
but you are more tolerant towards others,
you are more altruistic, you're more productive in what you do.
And believe me, as we have found,
if you have basic security you work more, not less.
And when you work,
you're more productive and more cooperative, not less.
It's a lie to say
that if we had basic income security we would become lazy.
On the contrary, it will release the energies and the dynamism
inside ourselves and inside our communities.
But we need basic security for a more fundamental reason,
which is, why elites and the rich are suddenly listening to this debate.
If we don't have basic security, part of the precariat
the less educated part, not you in this room,
but many people,
will listen to the sirens of populism,
of neo-fascist intolerance.
Today their hero is Donald Trump.
I hope we all laugh a little louder than that.
(Laughter)
Donald Trump.
You have your own charismatic equivalent in Austria,
so don't let's be too smug.
We in Britain have our own equivalents.
In France, Marine Le Pen
will be striding the theaters in the next few months.
But unless we have basic security for the ordinary person in the precariat,
more and more people will be tempted to support that type.
And that's dangerous for all of us, right?
A basic income would also have instrumental advantages in the economy,
boosting development and growth.
And would be ecologically sustainable,
because it would encourage more people
to spend more time doing work that is not labor.
Labor uses up resources in jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs.
The work we do in our communities,
caring for our relatives, caring for things around us,
is more ecologically sustainable.
We need a slow time movement to go with the slow food movement.
It's realistic possibilities, it means changing our concept of growth.
Now I want to end my talk
by reflecting on something that has been a dream I never expected to realize.
For a long time, people said that a basic income is impossible.
For a long time people said, "Only in very rich countries."
And then I was working with the SEWA,
Self-Employed Women's Association of India.
I gave them a talk about basic income,
and one young woman stood up and said,
why don't we try it here?
From that point it took three years for us to design and raise the money,
and we provided 6,000 men, women, and children,
in nine areas,
with a basic income for 18 months.
And we compared what happened to them
with a similar number of people in other areas
who were not receiving the basic income.
So it was a randomized controlled trial.
And what happened was this: First of all, the welfare improved.
The nutrition of people improved,
the sanitation, the schooling of the children,
the health of people improved.
We have a book that's just out, with a woman on the front.
Disabled: she had no legs.
At the beginning of the pilot,
she was so impoverished she had no clothes to wear in public.
By the end of the pilot, she has a beautiful sari,
she has a sewing machine,
and she'd become the seamstress, the dressmaker of the village.
With dignity, doing work.
In addition to the welfare effects, there were equity effects.
If you have a basic income that's equal for everybody,
the relatively poor, the relatively disadvantaged
benefit more than the rich.
But it's a right, so everybody should have it, OK?
It's affordable, as I've shown
in this other book that's just come out.
Now, in addition to the equity effects, there is also an economic effect.
Contrary to all those prejudiced people,
who said that if you give people a basic income
they will sit back and drink,
indulge in things you shouldn't be doing,
blah blah blah.
Sonia Gandhi told us that.
She said, this is a waste of money! Waste of money
So we were very interested to see.
As it turned out, in every area work went up!
In every area, women in particular
were able to do better types of work,
had access to resources.
The only group for which work went down were children!
This is a terrible thing, we have to get really worried about this.
The reason was, of course, is they were going to school.
That's a real setback.
I hope none of you believe that.
Now, in addition, people were more entrepreneurial,
in their small ways,
like this woman buying her sewing machine with the help of her family.
And also we saw people who had been in debt for generations,
in debt bondage.
And they used their little basic income
and their relatives contributed some of theirs,
and they were able to buy their freedom.
And that leads to the fourth effect.
The fourth effect is emancipation.
The emancipatory value of a basic income is greater than the money value.
We only gave a small amount, but it meant people had liquidity.
It meant people had a certain status in their community.
It meant people had control and put aside
on loans and dealing with debts and dealing with this sort of thing.
And the emancipation we've seen in our pilots in India
has also been shown in our pilots in Africa,
and will be shown in the pilots
now being undertaken in Finland, in the Netherlands,
in Canada, and in California, where I've just been invited.
It will show that the emancipation matters.
And I want to end my talk by giving you two anecdotes.
I went to one of the villages, the Indian villages at the beginning.
And we had to get everybody to sign a card
in order for them to get the basic income each month.
But all the young women in that particular village wore veils
so we couldn't take their photographs.
They had to go into a hut,
and have their photographs taken in private.
I went back to that village six months later,
while the pilot was still going
and I said to an Indian colleague of mine,
"Have you noticed a change in this village?"
And he said, "No."
I said, "All the women are not wearing veils,
Why is that?"
And we called some of the women across.
and we asked them, and they were reluctant to say anything,
as people are to strangers.
And then one of them said, "I will tell you.
Before we had to do what the elders told us to do.
Now we have a little money in our pockets,
we can decide ourselves."
That is emancipation.
In the African pilots which we did,
I went at the end and I asked some people,
"What was the best thing about having a basic income?"
And I called some young women across.
I asked this question, and they giggled. They didn't want to answer.
And then one plucked the courage and said, "I'll tell you, for us.
Before, when the men came down from the fields,
at the end of the month, with their money in their pockets,
we had to say, 'yes.'
Now, we say, 'no.'"
That is emancipation.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)