It was a British-born American patriot, Thomas Paine, who first proposed a “basic income” plan in 1797. The idea has been recycled every few decades since the 19th century by various utopian communes and left-wing economists. Now, it seems, the idea’s close to becoming a reality in Utrecht.
Under a trial program called “Weten Wat Werkt” or “Know What Works,” (set to begin in January), the Netherlands city would replace government benefits with a guaranteed monthly income of 960 euro per month (roughly $1100) for 250 Dutch citizens currently receiving unemployment aid. The money comes without any work or volunteer requirements. The stated goal? To reduce waste in the Netherlands’ current welfare system.
The program is one of several benefits plans being tested by the city. Other options include a group paid the guaranteed income, with an additional bonus of 150 euro at the end of the month if they complete volunteer work; a second group who is paid the 150 euro at the beginning of the month and must return the money if volunteer work is no performed; and a group receiving traditional benefits without a work requirement. The study will compare results against control groups receiving standard benefits.
Dutch politicians worked for over a year to bring the plan to fruition. In December, the Guardian reported that many supporters of the proposal were loath to mention it to their constituents.
“We had to delete mention of basic income from all the documents to get the policy signed off by the council,” said Lisa Westerveld, a member of the Dutch Green Party. Another member of Dutch parliament spoke of how the members kept mum about the basic income plank of the plan out of fear of public backlash.
“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, another Green party member.
Fear of waste does seem to be a reasonable concern on the part of the Dutch taxpayer, especially when one digs deeper into the bizarre logic behind the “money for nothing” plan. Despite the Dutch having a historic cultural reputation for frugality and a strong work ethic, some contemporary academics in the Netherlands are questioning the tie between employment and well-being.
Rutger Bregman, one such critic of current programs, writes disappointedly of how, “government assistance has become increasingly anchored in employment, with recipients required to apply for jobs, enroll in return-to-work programs, and do mandatory ‘volunteer’ work … the underlying message is clear: Free money makes people lazy.”
He believes that doing away with benefit requirements will result in little reduction to the number of hours low-income residents actually work. Instead, providing a basic income will allow poor residents to learn how to better manage money. He argues that the main reason the poor are poor is that they don’t have much money—an undoubtedly true, if tautological, statement.
Supporters of the program argue that it is more efficient to let poor people buy what they need rather than prescribing them a list of benefits, and they cite a long list of examples of programs where cash handouts worked. In places like Namibia and Malawi, malnutrition and truancy dropped dramatically. In Latin America and Asia where similar programs were tried, the consumption of alcohol and tobacco also declined.
But Utrecht is a far cry from southwest Africa, and it’s not as though the Netherlands suffers from a particularly high malnutrition rate. Whether a free-money program will receive such positive results when applied in a European city remains to be seen.
While pitched as a cost-saving mechanism, the program looks suspiciously like an academic research project given government funding. Loek Groot, an associate professor at the Utrecht University School of Economics, has been assigned to work with the government on the administration of the project. Groot hopes to use the “Weten Wat Werkt” program to study human behavior. As he told the Atlantic, “Human behavior is always unpredictable. We want to know what motivates people, what people respond to.”
Which is fine as an academic question, but is it a justifiable program for welfare reform?
