Universal Basic Income or UBI has been the topic of many one-sided discussions in my head while walking to the office of our local AIESEC entity.
First of all, let me define Universal Basic Income so we are all on the same page:
universal basic income
/juːnɪˌvɜː(r)s(ə)l ˌbeɪsɪk ˈɪnkʌm/
nounan income provided by the government for all citizens or residents, without any obligation to work or look for work.
before we go forward
If you've never looked into UBI, the concept might seem insane. I ask you, while you are reading this post, to suspend your doubt and criticism of UBI aside. This is merely a thought experiment and should not be considered as truth.
I'd do it forever if I could get paid...
is what I've heard from nearly all my coworkers in my local AIESEC leadership body. And it breaks my heart. When I hear those words, it makes me wonder if our society is really built around the right fundamental values.
We, specifically in our local AIESEC entity, are not able to support our leadership financially as we still need to increase our performance before we can even think of doing anything else but our costs. If we didn't need to support ourselves as much financially by working at jobs, we could put AIESEC in a higher position on our priority list. We could put impacting people's lives higher on our priority list.
At a time when our entity needs people working hard the most, AIESEC cannot be higher up on the priority list because life gets in the way.
but what if...
we didn't need to work as much to be useful to society? Enter UBI. If we could support ourselves (as in young people) while being beneficial to society, we could change the dominant mindset in the world.
"Giving makes you happy"
is a phrase which many of us have heard before, but can not put into practice because we feel that we don't have anything to give.
However, we do and could have something to give — our time. As we have heard hundreds of times in our life, time is money. What if we could all have more time to do meaningful things for our society when we are young?
I think that there is too much greed in the world and less looking out for others. If you didn't need to get a footing so quickly, you could focus more on giving, which will help you in the future and make you a happier person.
I believe we would have a more generous and happier society. Being able to explore passions and study what is truly interesting to people could lead to faster innovation and a better world for everyone.