Maricá (Brazil) (AFP) – Does being handed money every month — no strings attached — sound attractive? The residents of a small town in Brazil are finding out.
Governments and think-tanks around the world are increasingly fascinated by the idea of a universal basic income, where citizens are given cash to spend as they want.
In Marica, a seaside town of about 150,000 people near Rio de Janeiro, the left-wing municipal government has spent the last year finding out how it works.
“We are a laboratory for the Brazilian left,” says Washington Quaqua, who introduced the experiment as mayor in December 2015 before stepping down. He was replaced by another candidate from the leftist Workers’ Party, Fabiano Horta.
The idea of a universal basic income isn’t new, but long-considered as a potential tool for social equality and redistribution of wealth.
The concept has gained traction more recently among high-powered business thinkers, especially in Silicon Valley, as they ponder how society will cope with the ever-expanding role of automation — a trend some futurists believe may create mass unemployment. more
So my parents were wrong about money not growing on trees? This can’t possibly be a good thing.
Does not have a snowballs chance in hell of helping a single person.
These imbeciles on the receiving end never stop to think that this money must first be robbed from someone else against their will before it can be given to them.
Haven’t we already tried that in places like Detroit?
It works until you run out of other peoples money.
So they’re teaching the people of a town in Brazil that the world owes them a living. Good idea! I was starting to worry that entitled people were becoming an endangered species.
“social equality and redistribution of wealth”
Wow, just like the United States, except we the taxpayers give free stuff to those who choose not to work, generation after generation……I think they call that reparations.
I don’t think this will work but there is a huge, looming problem coming with lack of work not lack of people wanting to work. Amazon has been re-inventing retail and making it easier to shop for stuff but in the meantime has been destroying jobs at an incredible rate. A lot of the stuff we now buy is either done entirely by machines or a good portion of it is and the trend is not stopping. Robotics keep advancing and I think you can see on the horizon the advent of computer controlled trucking linking with warehousing which would put thousands out of work. In the past the rate of technological change was slower, and there were other commercial areas just getting started where people could seek a career. The industrial revolution came on kind of quickly but was still a hundred years in the making but change today seems to be almost monthly. As I said, I don’t think this experiment will work out but it will be interesting to see the outcome and we need to start thinking about the future pretty soon. As a side note there is talk about here in Ontario creating something similar in that they are going to create a minimum “floor” income that each citizen can avail themselves to (gee thanks Liberal Party, you’ve damn near completely destroyed the economic vibrancy of the province and now you’re going to come to the rescue by spending more money we don’t have).
Kinda like perpetual motion. Sounds good on paper.
No matter how they package it, this always sounds like some kind of confidence scheme (wink wink) most people would run from. The government takes in all the money and then doles it back out. But don’t worry you income earners, you’ll like the tax breaks (huh?! – so they are going to actually not charge me taxes on the money they are confiscating – how fair!). The only people that want this are the people already getting basic welfare. What is the ultimate fair universal income? We’ve seen from the minimum wage it doesn’t work to solve any of the social issues, it stifles economic growth and there is never an end to the recipients lust for more. If Silicon Valley wants to do that with their money be my guest but don’t pull the rest of us into this farce.
I blame Gene Roddenberry. Star Trek was a socialist utopia dressed up as science fiction. Problem is, people didn’t realize it was science FICTION i.e. NOT reality.
We grew up thinking that this is what our world should be like. Many people still believe in tooth fairies, too. Grow up and stop believing that fiction is reality.
Maybe they should wait to see how that works out for Finland. Or maybe they should just do it because it just sounds so damned fair. That’s the ticket.
Claudia, it’s funny how the socialist utopians of the USS Enterprise never obeyed their own Prime Directive. But I guess it was always for the good of the alien civilizations they were meddling with.
If this happens here I will open a store and sell nothing but rims and tats.
Did they ever address the question as to where the money comes from to pay everybody? Why should somebody work if they get no more money than the person who doesn’t work?
Maybe this town gets money from the government of Brazil. So if this experiment goes nation-wide, then where does the money come from? In other words, this is one huge government-sanctioned pyramid scheme.
They say they are copying the program from Europe, the good old socialist Europe. Here’s part of an interview with Mr. Quaqua (btw, this is his nickname, sounds almost like gaga, crazy.), “At the beginning, the beneficiaries were only the poorest population, about 14,000 families or 35,000 people, which represents a third of the city’s inhabitants. Last year, we expanded the program to the entire population, but those who are in need continue to receive more, R$ 85.00 (about U$28,00) a month, while others receive a symbolic value of R$10 (about U$ 3,00).”
Looks like they load that amount in a card in a local currency that can only be used in local stores.
I guess it’s a step up from cannibalism, I’ll give it that.
We already got welfare here, it don’t work.
When is colorado gonna have weedfare cards?