Dutch health minister, charged with tackling coronavirus, resigns after collapse

DutchNews, March 19, 2020

Bruno Bruins addressing MPs before he collapsed. Photo: Phil Nijhuis via HH

Dutch health minister Bruno Bruins, who is responsible for tackling coronavirus, has resigned. 

Bruins collapsed in parliament on Wednesday night during a debate on the government’s handling of the crisis and said later that he was exhausted and needed to rest overnight at home. 

The state information service did not give a reason for his resignation in a press release, but insiders say his departure is unexpected. 

Hugo de Jonge, Bruin’s colleague at the ministry who has responsibility for welfare and sport, is taking over his role while a new health minister is appointed.

The Dutch are getting taller, and heavier, but Frisians top the list

DutchNews, November 27, 2019 

Photo: Alenmax via Depositphotos.com

The average Dutchman and woman are getting both taller and heavier, the national statistics agency CBS said on Wednesday. 

The average man is now 1.81 metres tall, up 3.8 centimetres on 1981, and weighs 85 kilos, a rise of 2.3 kilos on 40 years ago. 

Women are 1.5 centimetres taller, with an average height of 1.67 metres, and weigh 72 kilos. Their weight has gone up by 4.7 kilos over the period, a far higher proportion than among men. 

The figures come from the latest CBS health survey and are based on self-assessment. 

The CBS researchers found strong regional differences. The smallest people were in Limburg and Brabant, who were on average three centimetres shorter than the tallest at the other end of the country in Friesland and Groningen. 

People in Drenthe and Flevoland are the most likely to be overweight and in both provinces, over half the population are too heavy, the CBS said. 

Junk food 

The CBS said in April that a diet of junk food and calorific drinks is driving up the weight of young Dutch adults, and one in four are officially classified as too heavy. 

While there is little difference between men and women, youngsters with a non-western background are more likely to be seriously overweight than the native Dutch. 

The new figures show that people with a non-western background are also likely to be shorter than the native Dutch, the CBS said.

Morgan the orca gives birth to baby calf despite ‘no breeding’ contract

DutchNews, September 24, 2018 

Morgan in her Spanish tank. Photo: www.freemorgan.org 

Morgan the orca has given birth to a baby calf, eight year after being rescued from the Wadden Sea and transported to an amusement park in Tenerife. 

Staff at the Loro Parque compound said mother and baby were both in good health and Morgan had not rejected her calf, AD reported. However, the birth is controversial because the terms of the transfer included a clause that she would not be allowed to breed. 

Animal rights activists campaigned against the move from Hardewijk dolfinarium, where Morgan recovered after being found in a severely weakened state in the shallow Wadden Sea in 2010. 

The original European CITES certificate approving her transfer stipulated she would be used for research purposes only. However, Morgan was included in a team of performing animals and the Free Morgan Foundation (FMF) claims the park has been trying for years to make her pregnant. 

Loro Parque has also denied claims that Morgan’s health has suffered since she arrived at the park and that she has been attacked by other animals. 

A legal challenge to the transfer was dismissed in 2014 by the Council of State, which ruled that economic affairs minister Henk Bleker had no realistic alternative.

The Netherlands must remain welcoming to migrant workers: employers

DutchNews, June 12, 2018

Over a quarter of migrant labourers work in horticulture and farming.
Photo: Depositphotos.com

People from central and eastern Europe filled almost 5% of Dutch jobs in 2016, according to new research carried out for the employment agency umbrella organisation ABU. 

Together, they contributed €11bn to the Netherlands national income and without their input, Dutch firms would be forced to move or adapt their operations, the research, by SEO Economisch Onderzoek, said. 

Half of the 371,000 people from central and eastern Europe working in the Netherlands in 2016 were employed via staffing agencies. 

‘The demand for more migrant labourers will only increase in the coming years,’ said ABU director Jurrien Koops. ‘This is due both to economic growth and the fact that the working population will shrink from 2021.’ 

In addition, migrant workers mainly do simple and routine jobs, which can’t be filled by Dutch workers, he said. ‘So we cannot talk of them taking Dutch jobs,’ Koops said. ‘Dutch workers simply don’t want to do such work given the pay and the flexibility which it demands.’ 

Nevertheless, efforts will need to be made to make sure the Netherlands remains attractive for seasonal and temporary workers, Koops said. 

Housing 

In particular the shortage of good affordable housing is a major issue, and many seasonal workers are living in overcrowded flats or on holiday parks. 

Several local councils across the Netherlands are bringing in local laws to restrict the number of Eastern Europeans living in certain residential areas, saying they want to keep residential areas ‘liveable’ by limiting the number of foreign workers. 

‘ABU is asking local politicians to show leadership and not to give in to false sentiment about stealing jobs and houses,’ he said. ‘Work together with staffing and housing agencies to eradicate the shortage of quality accommodation.This is the only way our regions will remain a draw to both companies and foreign workers.’ 

Polish community 

Research into the Netherlands’ Polish community by the government’s socio-cultural think-tank SCP earlier this year found three quarters expect to live in the Netherlands for at least the next five years. 

In particular agriculture and greenhouse horticulture are heavily dependent on Polish workers, the SCP said. 

Despite having jobs and working long hours, Polish nationals earn on average a third less than the Dutch and 17% live in poverty. However, just 1.8% are claiming welfare benefits, compared with 2.6% of the Dutch population as a whole.

Less crime, more spending power, more jobs: the Netherlands is getting better

DutchNews, December 12, 2017

The quality of life in the Netherlands has shown improvement over the past 25 years, with crime rates falling, life expectancy increasing, people having more money to spend and educational standards improving, according to a major new report. 

And, despite the apparent rise in anti-immigrant sentiment, attitudes to ‘foreigners’ have softened, with 31% of people thinking there are ‘too many people with other nationalities’ in the Netherlands today, compared with 49% in 1994. 

The government’s socio-cultural think-tank SCP publishes its ‘state of the nation’ round-up every two years but this year has compared the situation in 2017 with that of the Netherlands 25 years ago. 

The report shows that every group in society has progressed since then. Women are more likely to have a job, the number of people with a college or university degree has doubled to 26% and people feel themselves to be safer. 

Some 85% of people are generally satisfied with their lives, a similar proportion to 25 years ago. 

At the same time, there are ‘tough problems to crack and inequalities’, the researchers say. 

The Netherlands is a wealthy country but the number of people living in poverty has risen from 5.7% in 1990 to 6.6% today. And, the SCP says, the problems facing a group of some 700,000 people, largely single parent families and immigrants living off welfare benefits, remain serious. 

‘The task for the future should be to ensure as many people as possible are able to participate fully in society,’ the SCP said. 

12 reasons to be cheerful about life in the Netherlands.

Related Article:

Dutch bees are a bigger threat than terrorists, says new safety atlas

Morgan the ‘Dutch’ orca is pregnant, in breach of agreement

DutchNews, December 5, 2017 - By Hanneke Sanou

Under EU law Morgan, highlighted, cannot be used for mainly commercial
purposes or breeding. Photo: www.freemorgan.org

The wild orca found in the Wadden Sea in 2010 and now kept at the Loro Parque amusement park in Tenerife is pregnant, in contravention of the conditions of her transfer to Spain. 

Loro Parque earlier refused to comment on the pregnancy rumours when contacted by DutchNews.nl but has now confirmed the pregnancy in a statement on its website. In the statement, the park says it ‘considers it a natural right of every animal to reproduce which must not be repressed under any circumstance.’ 

The orca, nicknamed Morgan, was found in a severely weakened state in the Wadden Sea in 2010 and sent to the Dolphinarium in Harderwijk to recover. The then-junior economic affairs minister Henk Bleker, who was responsible for Morgan, decided she could not be returned to the wild and she was sent to the Loro Parque in Spain instead. 

The original European CITES certificate approving the transfer stated that Morgan would be used for research purposes only. However, the orca has since become part of a show of performing animals and, according to the Free Morgan Foundation (FMF), which is fighting to release the animal back into the wild, her health is suffering. Breeding the killer whale would also be in breach of the certificate. 

‘For us this news doesn’t come as a surprise. Loro Parque has been busy for years trying to get Morgan pregnant. They have done this despite the ban on breeding and her young age when a pregnancy can be dangerous to both mother and calf,’ FMF vice chair Hester Bartels said in a statement to the press. 

Morgan is now 11 years old, with an expected average life span of 50. 

Court 

The news about Morgan’s pregnancy comes only weeks before a court hearing on January 23 in which the decision by the junior minister not to intervene regarding Morgan’s situation at Loro Parque goes to appeal. 

The foundation says new evidence has emerged concerning Morgan’s welfare at Loro Parque, including the failure of the Dutch and Spanish CITES management authorities to abide by the terms of Morgan’s exemption certificate. 

They also failed to take affirmative measures to ensure that Morgan is not subjected to breeding, the foundation said. Morgan’s pregnancy will result in a hybrid calf. While this would do nothing for the maintenance of the wild orca population, a calf with a new bloodline would be financially advantageous for the park, the FMF said. 

The park, however, says breeding programmes are in line with the European guideline and the Spanish law on zoos.

Most Dutch under-25s are happy with their lot, but 16% drink too much

DutchNews, November 30, 2017    

No less than 85% of young Dutch adults are happy with their social lives and their lives in general, according to a new report by national statistics office CBS. 

However, their happiness did depend on their age, where they live and level of education, the CBS said. The younger and better educated they were, the more satisfied they were with life. 

Despite the overall happiness rating, around 25% are unhappy with their physical health – mainly because they are overweight. And around half said they had felt tired in the day before the research was carried out. 

The report is based on the responses of 4,000 youngsters aged 18 to 25. Of them, 25% had a migrant background. 

It also found 25% of young Dutch adults smoke, 16% drink too much and 43% had used some form of drug at some point in their lives. Young men with a native Dutch background were most likely to be heavy drinkers.

Finland to test out basic income scheme

Yahoo – AFP, August 25, 2016

Finland's government will test an unconditional basic income amid a growing
debate on the subject in Europe (AFP Photo/Miguel Medina)

Helsinki (AFP) - Switzerland may have voted against the controversial idea of paying all its citizens a guaranteed income, but Finland indicated Thursday it plans to try out a monthly basic payment of 560 euros ($600).

The government said it had chosen the figure for an unconditional basic income in line with a manifesto pledge by centrist Prime Minister Juha Sipila, who took office 15 months ago.

Former businessman Sipila wants to see if the measure can boost employment and simplify the welfare benefits system, and plans to test the idea on a 2,000-strong sample of randomly selected working-age residents.

"The primary goal of the basic income experiment is related to promoting employment," said the health and social affairs ministry, adding that it also aimed to simplify the complicated benefits system in a sustainable way regarding public finances.

Amid a growing debate on the subject, Finland now wants to be the first European country to test the idea nationwide.

In June, voters in Switzerland decisively rejected a far more generous proposal to pay a monthly 2,500 Swiss francs (2,300 euros/$2,500) to each adult and 625 francs for each child.

The idea has support on the political left and right with the former wanting a guaranteed safety net while some liberal voices feel that money for nothing can dissuade some jobless people from seeking work.

Related Article:

Swiss say 'no thanks' to basic income for all

7,300 claim re-immigration benefits to move back home

DutchNews, May 7, 2016

Photo: Depositphotos.com

Some 7,300 people are being paid a special social security benefit after returning to their home country to live, the social insurance bank SVB has told website Nu.nl. 

The re-immigration benefit is payable to people who came to the Netherlands to work for at least eight years and have now gone back home, as well as to a select group of refugees, Nu.nl reported. 

The total bill for the benefit reached nearly €34m last year, compared with €22m five years ago. 

The benefit is only paid if the claimant’s income in their home country is below local minimum income requirements. 

Work

Claimants must be over the age of 55, have come to the Netherlands from the age of 18, worked here for at least eight years and been claiming benefits in the Netherlands for at least a year. 

The benefit, which is being phased out by 2025, was paid to people of 79 different nationalities last year.

In total, nearly 2,800 Turkish nationals made use of the ruling to return home in 2015.

Related Articles:

More children are growing up in low income families - New
Government poised to raise minimum pay for youngsters

Dutch city plans to pay citizens a ‘basic income’, and Greens say it could work in the UK

Long read: Why we should give free money to everyone

Top European countries call to end secrecy of shell companies
President Obama Just Took a Major Step in Response to the Panama Papers

Government poised to raise minimum pay for youngsters

DutchNews, April 21, 2016

Photo: Regering.nl 

The minimum wage for youngsters is to be increased slightly and the age at which adult rates kicks in will be reduced in stages from 23 to 21, social affairs minister Lodewijk Asscher is set to announce later today. 

The plan is one of several contained in a new package of measures aimed at getting more people into work. The package has been put together with employers and unions, and unions in particular have been keen to see changes to youth pay. 

Currently one in six of the under-23s earns the minimum wage, compared with one in 20 people on adult incomes. An 18-year-old on minimum pay earns €32 a day before tax and premiums. The over-22s earn €70. 

The minister is also expected to announce changes to the way seasonal workers are employed and help for small firms faced with paying ill workers sick pay for two years.

Related Articles:

Dutch city plans to pay citizens a ‘basic income’, and Greens say it could work in the UK

Long read: Why we should give free money to everyone

Top European countries call to end secrecy of shell companies
President Obama Just Took a Major Step in Response to the Panama Papers

Long read: Why we should give free money to everyone

DutchNews, April 21, 2016

Photo: Depositphotos.com

We tend to think that simply giving people money makes them lazy. Yet a wealth of scientific research shows the contrary: free money helps lift people out of poverty. The time has come for a radical reform of the welfare state, writes Dutch author Rutger Bregmann.

London, May 2009—An experiment is underway. Its subjects: 13 homeless men. They are veterans of the street. Some have been sleeping on the cold pavement of the Square Mile, Europe’s financial center, for going on 40 years. Between the police expenses, court costs and social services, these 13 troublemakers have racked up a bill estimated at £400,000 or more. Per year. 

The strain on city services and local charities is too great for things to go on this way. So Broadway, a London-based aid organization, makes a radical decision: From now on, the City’s 13 consummate drifters will be getting VIP treatment. It’s adiós to the daily helpings of food stamps, soup kitchens and shelters. They’re getting a drastic and instantaneous bailout. 

From now on, these rough sleepers will receive free money. 

To be exact, they’re getting £3,000 in spending money, and they don’t have to do a thing in return. How they spend it is up to them. They can opt to make use of an adviser if they’d like—or not. There are no strings attached, no questions to trip them up. 

The only thing they’re asked is: What do you think you need? 

Gardening glasses

‘I didn’t have enormous expectations,’ one of the experiment’s social workers later recalled. But the drifters’ desires proved eminently modest. A telephone, a dictionary, a hearing aid—each had his own ideas about what he needed. In fact, most were downright thrifty. After one year, each had spent an average of just £800. 

Take Simon, who had been strung out on heroin for 20 years. The money turned his life around. Simon got clean and started taking gardening classes. ‘For some reason, for the first time in my life, everything just clicked,’ he said later. ‘I’m starting to look after myself, wash and shave. Now I’m thinking of going back home. I’ve got two kids.’ 

A year and a half after the experiment began, seven of the 13 rough sleepers had a roof over their heads. Two more were about to move into their own apartments. All 13 had taken critical steps toward solvency and personal growth. They were enrolled in classes, learning to cook, going through rehab, visiting their families and making plans for the future.

‘It empowers people,’ one of the social workers involved in the project said about the personalized budget. ‘It gives choices. I think it can make a difference.’ 

After decades of fruitless pushing, pulling, pampering, penalizing, prosecuting and protecting, nine notorious vagrants had finally been brought in from the streets. The cost? Some £50,000 a year, including the social workers’ wages. In other words, not only did the project help nine people, it also cut costs considerably. Even the Economist had to conclude that the ‘most efficient way to spend money on the homeless might be to give it to them.’ 

Hard data

Poor people can’t handle money. This seems to be the prevailing sentiment, almost a truism. After all, if they knew how to manage money, how could they be poor in the first place? We assume that they must spend it on fast food and soda instead of on fresh fruit and books. So to ‘help,’ we’ve rigged up a myriad of ingenious assistance programs, with reams of paperwork, registration systems and an army of inspectors, all revolving around the biblical principle that ‘those unwilling to work will not get to eat’ (2 Thessalonians 3:10). Touted as a shift ‘from welfare to workfare,’ the underlying message is clear: Free money makes people lazy. 

Except that according to the evidence, it doesn’t. 

Already, research has correlated unconditional cash disbursements with reductions in crime, child mortality, malnutrition, teenage pregnancy and truancy, and with improved school performance, economic growth and gender equality. ‘The big reason poor people are poor is because they don’t have enough money,’ noted economist Charles Kenny in Bloomberg Businessweek, ‘and it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that giving them money is a great way to reduce that problem.’

In their book Just Give Money to the Poor (2010), scholars at the University of Manchester furnish countless examples of cases where cash handouts with few or no strings attached have worked. In Namibia, figures for malnutrition took a nosedive (from 42 percent to 10 percent), as did those for truancy (from 40 percent to virtually 0 percent) and crime (by 42 percent).

In Malawi, school attendance among girls and women surged 40 percent, regardless of whether the cash came with or without conditions. Time and again, the ones to profit most are children. They suffer less hunger and disease, grow taller, perform better at school and are less likely to be forced into child labour. 

From Brazil to India, from Mexico to South Africa, cash transfer programs have become all the rage across the Global South. By 2010, they were already reaching more than 110 million families in 45 countries. 

The great thing about money is that people can use it to buy things they need instead of things that self-appointed experts think they need. And, as it happens, there is one category of product on which poor people do not spend their free money, and that’s alcohol and tobacco. In fact, a major study by the World Bank demonstrated that in 95 percent of all researched cases in Africa, Latin America and Asia, alcohol and tobacco consumption either remained the same or declined. 

But it gets even stranger. In Liberia, an experiment was conducted to see what would happen if you give $200 to the shiftiest of the poor. Alcoholics, addicts and petty criminals were rounded up from the slums. Three years later, what had they spent the money on? Food, clothing, medicine and small businesses. ‘If these men didn’t throw away free money,’ one of the researchers wondered, ‘who would?’ 

Utopia

Free money: It’s a notion already proposed by some of history’s leading thinkers. Thomas More dreamed about it in his book Utopia in 1516. Countless economists and philosophers—Nobel Prize winners among them—would follow. Its proponents have spanned the spectrum from left to right, all the way to the founders of neoliberal thought, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. And Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) promises that, one day, it will come. 

A universal basic guaranteed income. 

And not merely for a few years, or in developing countries alone, or only for the poor, but just what it says on the box: free money for everyone. Not as a favour, but as a right. Call it the ‘capitalist road to communism.’ A monthly allowance, enough to live on, without having to lift a finger. The only condition, as such, is that you ‘have a pulse.’ No inspectors looking over your shoulder to see if you’ve spent it wisely, nobody questioning if it’s really deserved. No more special benefit and assistance programs; at most an additional allowance for seniors, the unemployed and those unable to work. 

Basic income: It’s an idea whose time has come. 

Mincome, Canada

In a warehouse attic in Winnipeg, Canada, nearly 2,000 boxes lie gathering dust. The boxes are filled with data—graphs, tables, reports, interviews—about one of the most fascinating social experiments in post-war history. 

Evelyn Forget, a professor at the University of Manitoba, first heard about the records in 2004. For five long years she tried to convince Canada’s national archives to allow her access to the warehouse. Finally, in 2009, she succeeded. Stepping into the attic for the first time, Forget could hardly believe her eyes. It was a treasure trove of information on the real-world implementation of Thomas More’s dream from five centuries before. 

In March 1973, the provincial government of Manitoba earmarked a sum of $83 million in modern U.S. dollars for the project. He chose Dauphin, a small town of 13,000 northwest of Winnipeg, as the location of the experiment. Everybody in Dauphin was guaranteed a basic income, ensuring that no one fell below the poverty line. In practice, this meant 30 percent of the town’s inhabitants—1,000 families in all—got a check in the mail each month. A family of four received what would now be around $19,000 a year, no questions asked. 

For four years, all went well, but then elections threw a wrench in the works. A conservative government was voted into power. The new Canadian cabinet saw little point to the expensive experiment, for which the national government was footing three-quarters of the bill. When it became clear the new administration wouldn’t even fund an analysis of the experiment’s results, the researchers decided to pack their files away in some 2,000 boxes. 

When Professor Forget first heard about Mincome, no one knew what, if anything, the experiment had actually demonstrated. For three years, she rigorously subjected the data to all manner of statistical analysis. No matter what she tried, the results were the same every time. 

Mincome had been a resounding success. 

From experiment to law

‘Politically, there was a concern that if you began a guaranteed annual income, people would stop working and start having large families,’ said Forget. 

What really happened was precisely the opposite. Young adults postponed getting married, and birthrates dropped. Their school performance improved substantially: The ‘Mincome cohort’ studied harder and faster. In the end, total work hours only notched down 1 percent for men, 3 percent for married women and 5 percent for unmarried women. Men who were family breadwinners hardly worked less at all, while new mothers used the cash assistance to take several months’ maternity leave, and students to stay at school longer. 

Forget’s most remarkable finding, though, was that hospitalizations decreased by as much as 8.5 percent. Considering the size of public spending on health care in the developed world, the financial implications were huge. Several years into the experiment, domestic violence was also down, as were mental health complaints. Mincome had made the whole town healthier. Forget could even trace the impacts of receiving a basic income through to the next generation, both in earnings and in health. 

Dauphin—the town with no poverty—was one of five guaranteed income experiments in North America. The other four were all conducted in the United States. Few people today are aware that the United States was just a hair’s breadth from realizing a social safety net at least as extensive as those in most western European countries. When President Lyndon B. Johnson declared his “War on Poverty” in 1964, Democrats and Republicans alike rallied behind fundamental welfare reforms. 

First, however, some trial runs were needed. Tens of millions of dollars were budgeted to provide a basic income for more than 8,500 Americans in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Iowa, North Carolina, Indiana, Seattle and Denver in what were also the first-ever large-scale social experiments to distinguish experimental and control groups. The researchers wanted answers to three questions: (1) Would people work significantly less if they receive a guaranteed income? (2) Would the program be too expensive? (3) Would it prove politically unfeasible? 

The answers were no, no and yes.

Declines in working hours were limited across the board. “[The] declines in hours of paid work were undoubtedly compensated in part by other useful activities, such as search for better jobs or work in the home,” noted the Seattle experiment’s concluding report. For example, one mother who had dropped out of high school worked less in order to earn a degree in psychology and get a job as a researcher. Another woman took acting classes; her husband began composing music. “We’re now self-sufficient, income-earning artists,” she told the researchers. Among youth included in the experiment, almost all the hours not spent on paid work went into more education. Among the New Jersey subjects, the rate of high school graduations rose 30 percent. 

And thus, in August 1968, President Nixon presented a bill providing for a modest basic income, calling it “the most significant piece of social legislation in our nation’s history.” A White House poll found 90 percent of all newspapers enthusiastically receptive to the plan. The National Council of Churches was in favor, and so were the labor unions and even the corporate sector (see Brian Steensland’s book The Failed Welfare Resolution, page 69). At the White House, a telegram arrived declaring, “Two upper middle class Republicans who will pay for the program say bravo.” Pundits were even going around quoting Victor Hugo—“Nothing is stronger than an idea whose time has come.”

It seemed that the time for a basic income had well and truly arrived.

“Welfare Plan Passes House […] a Battle Won in Crusade for Reform,” was the headline of the New York Times on April 16, 1970. With 243 votes for and 155 against, President Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan (FAP) was approved by an overwhelming majority. Most pundits expected the plan to pass the Senate, too, with a membership even more progressive than that of the House of Representatives. But in the Senate Finance Committee, doubts reared. “This bill represents the most extensive, expensive and expansive welfare legislation ever handled,” one Republican senator said. Most vehemently opposed, however, were the Democrats. They felt the FAP didn’t go far enough and pushed for an even higher basic income. After months of being batted back and forth between the Senate and the White House, the bill was finally canned. 

In the following year, Nixon presented a slightly tweaked proposal to Congress. Once again, the bill was accepted by the House, now as part of a larger package of reforms. In his 1971 State of the Union address, Nixon considered his plan to “place a floor under the income of every family with children in America” the most important item of legislation on his agenda (see Steensland, page 157). 

But once again, the bill foundered in the Senate. 

Not until 1978 was the plan for a basic income shelved once and for all, however, following a fatal discovery upon publication of the final results of the Seattle experiment. One finding in particular grabbed everybody’s attention: The number of divorces had jumped more than 50 percent. Interest in this statistic quickly overshadowed all the other outcomes, such as better school performance and improvements in health. A basic income, evidently, gave women too much independence. 

Ten years later, a reanalysis of the data revealed that a statistical error had been made; in reality, there had been no change in the divorce rate at all. 

Futile, dangerous and perverse

‘It Can Be Done! Conquering Poverty in America by 1976,’ Nobel Prize winner James Tobin confidently wrote in 1967. At that time, almost 80 percent of Americans supported a guaranteed basic income. Years later, Ronald Reagan would famously sneer, ‘In the ’60s we waged a war on poverty, and poverty won.’ 

Yet some ideas just won’t die. 

Recent years have seen basic income make a comeback on political agendas. Switzerland is already looking forward to a referendum. Large-scale experiments have been announced in Finland and Canada, and are in the works in nearly 20 cities in the Netherlands. Even in Silicon Valley, basic income is the talk of the town. 

Maybe now the time has come that we can finally be rid of that pointless distinction between two types of poor—and to the major misconception that we almost managed to dispel some 40 years ago: the fallacy that a life without poverty is a privilege you have to work for, rather than a right we all deserve. 

Remember: the great milestones of civilization always have the whiff of utopia about them at first. But almost as soon as a utopia becomes a reality, it often comes to be seen as utterly commonplace. Utopias always start out small, with experiments that ever so slowly change the world.

It happened just a few years ago on the streets of London, when 13 street sleepers got £3,000, no questions asked. As one of the aid workers said, ‘It’s quite hard to just change overnight the way you’ve always approached this problem. These pilots give us the opportunity to talk differently, think differently, describe the problem differently…’ 

And that’s how all progress begins. 

Rutger Bregman (1988) is the author of Utopia for Realists: The Casefor a Universal Basic Income, Open Borders, and a 15-Hour Workweek, available in English and published by The Correspondent. Like him on Facebook and follow him on Twitter @rcbregman. 

Translated from Dutch by Elizabeth Manton.

Related Articles:

Dutch city plans to pay citizens a ‘basic income’, and Greens say it could work in the UK

Councils want changes to welfare rules, plan experiments with ‘more friendly’ approach

More Dutch cities may join in ‘basic income’ experiment

Utrecht city council to begin experiments with a basic income

This Dutch City Plans to Give Residents a Universal ‘Basic Income’

Why Should We Support the Idea of Universal Basic Income?

UN aims to 'end poverty' with 2030 agenda for sustainable development

Dutch city plans to pay citizens a ‘basic income’, and Greens say it could work in the UK

Utrecht takes step towards paying people a salary whether they work or not

The Guardian, Daniel Boffey in Utrecht, 26 December 2015

The cafes and restaurants alongside the Oudegracht (Old Canal) in central
Utrecht. Photograph: Alamy

It’s an idea whose adherents over the centuries have ranged from socialists to libertarians to far-right mavericks. It was first proposed by Thomas Paine in his 1797 pamphlet, Agrarian Justice, as a system in which at the “age of majority” everyone would receive an equal capital grant, a “basic income” handed over by the state to each and all, no questions asked, to do with what they wanted.

It might be thought that, in these austere times, no idea could be more politically toxic: literally, a policy of the state handing over something for nothing. But in Utrecht, one of the largest cities in the Netherlands, and 19 other Dutch municipalities, a tentative step towards realising the dream of many a marginal and disappointed political theorist is being made.

The politicians, well aware of a possible backlash, are rather shy of admitting it. “We had to delete mention of basic income from all the documents to get the policy signed off by the council,” confided Lisa Westerveld, a Green councillor for the city of Nijmegen, near the Dutch-German border.

“We don’t call it a basic income in Utrecht because people have an idea about it – that it is just free money and people will sit at home and watch TV,” said Heleen de Boer, a Green councillor in that city, which is half an hour south of Amsterdam.

Nevertheless, the municipalities are, in the words of de Boer, taking a “small step” towards a basic income for all by allowing small groups of benefit claimants to be paid £660 a month – and keep any earnings they make from work on top of that. Their monthly pay will not be means-tested. They will instead have the security of that cash every month, and the option to decide whether they want to add to that by finding work. The outcomes will be analysed by eminent economist Loek Groot, a professor at the University of Utrecht.

A start date for the scheme has yet to be settled – and only benefit claimants involved in the pilots will receive the cash – but there is no doubting the radical intent. The motivation behind the experiment in Utrecht, according to Nienke Horst, a senior policy adviser to the municipality’s Liberal Democrat leadership, is for claimants to avoid the “poverty trap” – the fact that if they earn, they will lose benefits, and potentially be worse off.

The idea also hopes to target “revolving door clients” – those who are forced into jobs by the system but repeatedly walk out of them. If given a basic income, the thinking goes, these people might find the time and space to look for long-term employment that suits them.

But the logic of basic income, according to people to the left of Horst, leads only one way – to the cash sum becoming a universal right. It would be unthinkable for those on benefits to be earning and receiving more than their counterparts off benefits. Horst admitted: “Some municipalities are very into the basic income thing.”

Indeed leftwing councillors in Utrecht believe this is an opportunity to prove to a sceptical public that people don’t just shirk and watch television if they are given a leg-up. “I think we need to have trust in people,” said de Boer.

Caroline Lucas, the Green party’s only MP in the House of Commons, agrees. A basic income – the Greens call it a “citizen’s wage” – has long been party policy. It did not make the cut for their manifesto because they couldn’t find a way to fund it.

But developments in the Netherlands, and a parallel pilot in Finland, have bolstered Lucas’s belief that this idea’s time has come. The Royal Society of Arts has been examining the feasibility of the idea, as has campaign group Compass.

To those who say it is an unaffordable pipedream, Westerveld points out the huge costs that come with the increasinglytough benefits regimes being set up by western states, including policies that make people do community service to justify their handouts. “In Nijmegen we get £88m to give to people on welfare,” Westerveld said, “but it costs £15m a year for the civil servants running the bureaucracy of the current system. We will save money with a ‘basic income’.”

Horst adds: “If you receive benefits from the government [in Holland] now you have to do something in return. But most municipalities don’t have the people to manage that. We have 10,000 unemployed people in Utrecht, but if they all have to do something in return for welfare we just don’t have the people to see to that. It costs too much.”

Lucas says she will seek a parliamentary debate on the policy in the new year, and will ask the government to look into the feasibility of a “basic income” pilot here. “I think in Britain people have quite a puritanical idea of work,” she said. “But this is an urgently needed policy. With increased job insecurity, the idea of everyone working nine to five is outdated. People go in and out of work these days.” “People are increasingly working in what they call the gig economy. The current system is not fit for purpose.”

The idea faces a tough political headwind, of course, not least in the Netherlands. Last Tuesday, Johanna von Schaik-Vijfschaft, 41, could be found updating her CV on one of the computers made available to benefits claimants at the Utrecht council building. A cleaner at a local department store, she had been told by council officials to find more work than the 12 hours she currently does.

But she will be under even more pressure in a few years when her 19-year-old son turns 21 and leaves her care. Once she has no dependants, she will lose £150 of her £500 monthly benefit payment and come under the remit of the participation laws, legislation recently brought in by the rightwing central government to make benefits claimants work harder for their cash. Von Schaik-Vijfschaft could be ordered to do some community work for the council in return for her benefits, and will face the threat of losing more of her income if her application rate for jobs falls away. And if Von Schaik-Vijfschaft were to dress inappropriately for interviews or, worse still, miss an appointment, she will lose all her benefits for a month.

The country’s second city, Rotterdam, has even trialled a “work first” system, where aspiring benefits claimants must put on an orange jacket and spend two months clearing rubbish before they are handed any payments.

“Rules, always the rules,” von Schaik-Vijfschaft said. “But of course I want to work. I want to be busy – we all do.” If the experiment can prove that, maybe Tom Paine’s idea will have its day yet.

HOW IT WORKS

■ A “basic income”, first proposed by Thomas Paine is an income unconditionally granted to all on an individual basis, without any means test or requirement to work.

■ It is paid irrespective of any income from other sources.

■ It is paid without requiring the performance of any work or the willingness to accept a job.

■ Advocates say it will allow people to genuinely choose what sort of employment they take, and to retrain when they wish.

■ Its proponents also claim that a basic income scheme is one of the most simple benefits models, and will reduce all the bureaucracy surrounding the welfare state, making it less complex and much cheaper to administer.

Related Articles:

Councils want changes to welfare rules, plan experiments with ‘more friendly’ approach

More Dutch cities may join in ‘basic income’ experiment

Utrecht city council to begin experiments with a basic income

This Dutch City Plans to Give Residents a Universal ‘Basic Income’

Why Should We Support the Idea of Universal Basic Income?

UN aims to 'end poverty' with 2030 agenda for sustainable development