Give People Money

Inequality is now the defining issue of our time - but the welfare system isn't working, the charity sector is out of touch, and the digital revolution is changing the economy faster than we know. GIVE PEOPLE MONEY is a radical, global look at the idea of Universal Basic Income - giving all citizens a basic income - and whether this old idea could change our modern world for good. As automation and technology change our working lives, the effects are not going to be limited to manual jobs but will increasingly reach all of us. So what if there's not enough work to go around? What if giving people money is actually a more cost-effective intervention than giving them services, benefits, and programs? This book is about why our current systems aren't working and what the future of welfare might look like in the new dawn of winner-takes-all tech capitalism and the changing role of governments in looking after people. Annie Lowrey journeys to poverty hack-a-thons in Silicon Valley, to startup basic income pilot programs in Kenya, to Switzerland, the Netherlands and Finland, to Corybn's Labour party and also deep into the economic realities of what basic income might mean for the labour markets of the world. It will talk to radicals on the left who see this as the solution to inequality, libertarians on the right who see this as the future of bloated government systems, feminists who see it as the way to recognise the economic value of `homemaking', and to philanthropists, artists, venture capitalists and labour leaders who are all trying to make it work. Surely just giving people money couldn't work. Or could it?