Utrecht takes step towards paying people a salary whether they work or notIt’s an opinion 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, and a basic income” handed over by the state to each and all,no questions asked, to finish with what they wanted.
It might be thought that, or in these austere times,no opinion could be more politically toxic: literally, a policy of the state handing over something for nothing. But in Utrecht, or 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.
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Source: theguardian.com