Late last year I caught wind of an experiment in Utrecht, the Netherlands, involving a set basic income for everyone. Having been in the IT game in one capacity or another since the late 80s and watching with increasingly sweaty palms as my pension years loom, with nothing to show for my labours, other than some guitars and moldy words, I found this idea engrossing.
Some time back I hadn't been able to find anything near permanent employment, living up in the Blue Mountains outside Sydney. I started a small mowing business which allowed some seasonal recurring work and I'd also chase up my agent at that point for whatever acting work I could find (most often reenactment work for Netflix and Fox shows) but for the best part of 2013/2014, my partner and I were really struggling to make the rent and bills and the best the employment agencies could offer was a soulful look of sympathy and the occasional cup of tea and biscuits. I quickly realised that one of the few areas of employment growth in the country is in the job agency sector itself. As fine and sincere as the employees may be, it appeared to me to be one of the best and most profitable private sector rorts to get involved with. The only overheads, outside the paltry wage served to the overburdened staff, were in teabags, instant coffee, plastic kettles, ratty sofas and Glen 20 disinfectant (these last two items for the narrow hall that functions as a waiting room in such establishments). The actual government subsidies, on the other hand, are enormous! So well done, unregulated free market! You go, you good thing!
How then, you may ask, am I able to so flagrantly pontificate to you, and at you, now?
It's simple. After tiring of my twenty four months out in the metaphorical wilderness, I begged for my old job back and got it. At a substantial pay reduction. So at least I'm making amends on the bills accrued and the friendships damaged, and again I'm relatively fearless when it comes to putting food on the table and keeping a roof over our heads.
The one thing, though... The one consistent rage that drove me through that dark time was the fact that my track record is unimpeachable. My Protestant work ethic is as intact now as it was when I was fifteen and starting out in the workforce. Yet I could find no work. I worked and reworked my resume for more than half a dozen employment agencies, with each returning their two cents worth with the most valueless and disingenuous mendacity I think I've ever witnessed. Each one, in their infinite wisdom would return an email or a phone call with variations on the following, "You have a GREAT wealth of experience across a broad swath of the IT sector. But you should lose this paragraph and that one and really emphasise this and this." I should mention that no two agencies could agree on which skills/history/paragraphs should be excised and which should be included or emphasised.
This brings me to the Utrecht experiment. I am keeping a keen eye on it. Rutger Bregman, I believe, is one of the architects of this daring adventure and when I learned last month that he'd released a slender volume entitled, "Utopia for Realists", I immediately bought the Ebook and gobbled its contents up within a couple of days. (In case you didn't notice, the fact that I can afford to purchase and run my Ipad, let alone buy books through the Kindle app allows me to subtly demonstrate my consumer privilege and permits my quiet yet persistent middle class arrogance of old to come rising up like the proverbial tarnished phoenix for the first time in what feels like forever).
I learned about Speenhamland and the bread shortages of 1795. I learned of the Canadian Mincome trials in the late 60s and even Nixon's remarkable efforts around 1970.
One sentiment I feel obliged to echo, from not only Utopia for Realists but other treatises of a similar ilk that I've struggled through is this; living below the poverty line does NOT, as most right wing and conservative pundits fearfully and trenchantly advocate, mean for a second that you're a fifth rate citizen or human being. It does not dole scum nor junkiedom make. It is not a crime. It has nothing to do with being lazy or being imbued with or informed by a weak work ethic (I've been a slacker all my life. I've worked my fucking arse off to be a slacker!). It is not about, nor has it ever been, the dole bludging hydra of yore. Nor is it even a connotation of some sinister illness.
In fact, this marginalisation is on the insidious and slow march due to automation, robiticisation and my old favourite, unchecked hypercapitalism. Soon enough - within two or three generations, it's fair to estimate - many and possibly most of us will be feeling the effects of these (perhaps necessary, certainly unstoppable) evils. We may even fall into one of the many marginalised categories now emerging, ourselves.
The ONLY thing that living below the poverty line means is this: YOU SIMPLY DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO GET BY. Shock and horror, huh? One of the most surprising and recurring metrics from the trials of the past is this: once people obtained an assured and fixed amount of money coming in, a large percentage of them started their own businesses, be they cottage industries or market gardens. All within the course of the first few months. Because they could now AFFORD to have a shot at their dreams. And many of those dreams revolved around being successful! Commerce appears to be in our DNA. And so the strange flowers grew.
When faced with these assured uncertainties just on the horizon, the whole Utrecht (and now I believe not only other Dutch cities but also Denmark and Finland are joining the ranks) thing makes good sense.
D'ye not agree, mo chara?
The experiment continues (some further reading)
Beam me up, Scotty.
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