even if it couldn't find an employment?

One group is pushing for just that

we'll talk with one of its cult fathers and learn more about

the universal basic income

The conservative website 'The Blaze' erupted in anger saturday after it had learnt

that public schools upstate new york were teaching a curriculum included lessons

about universal human rights that were declared by the united nations in 1945

These rights include among other the right to own property

the right to take part in the government of your country

the right to work

and at the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being

of himself in his of his family

but one of the things not directly mention in the UN declaration is the

idea of creating a right to make a basic income whether you're employed or not

one group working to make that idea a reality

is the Basic Income Earth Network

joining me now is one of its co-founders professor Guy Standing

author of the book 'The Precariat - the new dangerous class'

Professor Standing, welcome to the program

Thank you very much - pleasure to be talking to you from Italy

thank you very much and thanks for being here so

early morning for you there

What is the universal basic income and how do you track this back to the

UN declaration of human rights in united nations charter?

well if I may add a correction it wasin 1948, not 1945

and actually the the idea of a basic income goes back

much further than that

and we can trace it to one of the founders of the united states of America

Thomas Paine

who said a very sage thing i think

that the wealth of all of us

depends far more on the contributions of all our ancestors

than anything we do ourselves

and your wealth, my wealth, whatever it might be is much more due to

the creative capacities of all those people who came before us

and in a sense you could say the basic income

- a modest monthly payments to everybody -

it would be equivalent to a social dividend from all the investments

that previous generations have made

now since we've said that

at the Basic Income Earth Network

it's become increasingly popular

around the world

and I just come back from India where we were conducting a pilot

where thousands

of very poor people

are receiving a monthly cash transfer unconditionally, individually

Every man, every woman, and every child is receiving it

and we have been mapping the effects on their lives, their work

their nutrition, help, schooling

and we've seen a transformation in the villages where the basic income

has been paid

we have also been doing that in Africa

and we have been pushing it in latin america

and when I first went to Brazil in the mid-1990s

people loved the idea of having a basic income

but then the president Lula when he was elected, had the courage

to introduce what's called the 'bolsa familia'

whereby millions of people now receive a monthly basic income in effect

and over 60 million people in Brazil recieve it, and it has been extremely successful

reducing inequality, lowering unemployment, increasing economic growth

and contradict what critics say : it is increasing people's work

so it's it's something that is very much

a feasible option

and we believe that given the development of the precariat

we need to think about it

in countries like The United States or my own country

Great Britain

and all over Europe

Thomas Paine proposal that is in his book 'Agrarian Justice' as i recall

suggested that it would be established

each person upon birth a certain amount of money being put into an account would

become available to them off

in adulthood the dividends

would become available

We've played with things sort of like this in the united states right now

In Alaska where Sarah Pallin is governor they recieve

2,000 dollar check, every man woman and child in that state

out of the alaska permanent fund - a large funded money from the oil revenues

and uh... you know every citizen gets that

that's not enough to really be a basic income but it's a it's a floor

In the US we also have

a tax credit if you live in poverty where you actually get money back from

the government

So it seems such a stretch from things that actually been tried here

is it ?

Well... i don't want to give any credit to Sarah Pallin

for the Alaska Permanent found and the dividend... Oh I knwo i just throw that because it

makes conservative crazy

Ahah, I know

it was actually introduced by Jay Hammond in 1966

and it's been gradually built up

i think Alaska's Permanent Fund and the dividends

are an extremely good idea

they're not the same as basic income

and the same one could say about earned income tax credit

which as we know has become the biggest welfare

scheme in the world

now the idea of earned income tax credits is quite unlike a basic income

in the sense that it is supposed to top off low wages

So it's linked to an earned income It is not a Right

And in fact the way it works, is a subsidy

on low-wage labor

and it encourages firms to pay low wages!

It's really a subsidies - A subsidy to walmart's!

yes exactly! it's a subsidy to Walmart's and all others companies that can benefit from

employing low-wage labor. and I think it's enormously expensive

it costs billions of dollars every year... it's one of the reasons why you have

such a huge government deficit

and it contributes to an inefficient labor market

uh... and others

stupidly subsidized distorting system what would be a basic income...

i'm sorry.

I was wondering what would be an appropriate...

if we were to establish something like your suggestion here - where it's universal

everybody has it whether they work not, unconditional

and for every man, woman and child

what would be a foundational amount, this Thomas Paine's amount

what would be the amount that each person should get

in your mind as a minimum - we have just a moment

yeah i think one would have to

develop it

according to the country

and what we say is that in fact you have to build

towards the basic income gradually converting your

existing social transfers, your means-tested benefits like SNAP

and so on

into an unconditional benefits and put them together so that you will gradually

move to paying

a subsistence standard of living. I can imagine for example tha in my own country

Great Britain

that what you would do is you take away your tax credits

and your job seeker allowances

and you'd give everybody a hundred pounds a week, and then you would build up from that

and you would top it off with different types of benefits

and what we've been doing in India for example is we've given very modest

payments each month

but gradually the idea is to

remove subsidies

that are regressive and very inefficient

and replace them to top up the basic income - absolutely perfect sense

Professor Guy Standing,

thank you so much for joining us tonight

i hope your idea works because it is actually viral worldwide

thank you