{"id":21087,"date":"2017-03-06T11:23:19","date_gmt":"2017-03-06T10:23:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=21087"},"modified":"2017-03-06T11:23:19","modified_gmt":"2017-03-06T10:23:19","slug":"would-a-universal-basic-income-actually-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=21087","title":{"rendered":"Would a universal basic income actually work?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Rutger Bregman is a Dutch economist who is causing a stir with his book &#8220;Utopia For Realists &#8211; And How We Can Get There&#8221; which is published in English this week. He has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2017\/mar\/06\/utopian-thinking-poverty-universal-basic-income\">an article<\/a> in today&#8217;s &#8220;Guardian&#8221; newspaper in which he summarises his case that &#8220;Poverty is not a lack of character. Poverty is a lack of cash.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He puts the argument for &#8220;an incredibly simple idea: universal basic income \u2013 a monthly allowance of enough to pay for your basic needs: food, shelter, education. And it\u2019s completely unconditional: not a favour, but a right.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But would it actually work? Bregman has looked at the data from a little-known experiment which took place in the Canadian town of Dauphin from 1974-1979.<\/p>\n<p>He insists that the result of introducing a universal basic income was that &#8220;the people in Dauphin had not only become richer, but also smarter and healthier. The school performance of children improved substantially. The hospitalisation rate decreased by as much as 8.5%. Domestic violence was also down, as were mental health complaints.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>You can find a review of Bregman&#8217;s book <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/2017\/feb\/22\/utopia-for-realists-and-how-we-can-get-there-by-rutger-bregman-review\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You can learn more about the Dauphin experiment <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mincome\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rutger Bregman is a Dutch economist who is causing a stir with his book &#8220;Utopia For Realists &#8211; And How We Can Get There&#8221; which is published in English this week. He has an article in today&#8217;s &#8220;Guardian&#8221; newspaper in which he summarises his case that &#8220;Poverty is not a lack of character. Poverty is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21087"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21093,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21087\/revisions\/21093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}