I support the idea of a basic income for all people. This article argues for that.
Legend has it that while Henry Ford II was giving a tour around a new, fully automatic factory to union leader Walter Reuther in the 1960s, Ford joked:
‘Walter, how are you going to get those robots to pay your union dues?’
Reuther is said to have replied:
‘Henry, how are you going to get them to buy your cars?’
A world where wages no longer rise still needs consumers. In the last decades, middle-class purchasing power has been maintained through loans, loans and more loans. The Calvinistic reflex that you have to work for your money has turned into a license for inequality.
Furthermore, this idea has been piloted in the US, but was cancelled.
Then came that fatal discovery: the number of divorces in Seattle had gone up by more than 50%. This percentage made the other, positive results seem utterly uninteresting. It gave rise to the fear that a basic income would make women much too independent. For months, the law proposal was sent back and forth between the Senate and the White House, eventually ending in the dustbin of history.
Later analysis would show that the researchers had made a mistake – in reality the number of divorces had not changed.