Airdate: Free Money: The Case for Basic Income
VICELAND screens a film on a polarising income topic.
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under Programming
VICELAND tonight screens a doco on experiments for a basic income in Free Money: The Case for Basic Income.
In 2018 Finland ended its universal basic income experiment.
What would you do if your income were taken care of? Just a few years ago, an unconditional basic income was considered a pipe dream. Today, this utopia is more imaginable than ever before, and intense discussions are taking place in all political and scientific camps.
An unconditional basic income means money for everyone – as a human right, without service in return. Depending on the type and scope, a basic income demonstrates very different ideological visions. Which side of the coin one sees depends on one’s own idea of humankind – inactivity as sweet poison that seduces people into laziness, or freedom from material pressures as a chance for oneself and for the community. Do we actually need the whip of existential fear to avoid a lazy, depraved life in front of the TV set? Or does gainful employment give our lives meaning and social footing simply because we haven’t known anything else for centuries?
From Alaska’s oil fields to the Canadian prairie, from Washington’s think tanks to the Namibian steppes, the film takes us on a grand journey and shows us what the driverless car has to do with the ideas of a German billionaire and a Swiss referendum. Free Money: The Case For Basic Income, the first international film in cinemas about basic income, is dedicated to one of the most crucial questions of our times.
Thursday, 29 November at 8.30pm on SBS VICELAND.
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One Response
Finland never trialed a UBI. They trialed unemployment benefit without income and activity tests against their standard unemployment benefit. It was scheduled to run for 2017 and 2018 and will finish up at the end of the month. The final data hasn’t been published, but they have announced that they won’t be changing their welfare system on the basis of the trial.