Cheap promises

Stop whining. Everyone should be rich. Vote for the Tegenpartij (Opposition Party), together for ourselves. It was the motto of the fictional Opposition Party in the Netherlands, run by two shady characters, Jacobse and Van Es. The creators of the fiction, Van Kooten and De Bie, intended to mock populist politicians and their promises. An opinion poll revealed that the party could have won a few seats in the Dutch parliament in 1981, if it had been genuine. But why isn’t everyone rich? Perhaps it is because poor people don’t have enough money. It can’t be that simple, or can it? Some people think it is.

So, why not hand out money for free? It is a scheme known as Universal Basic Income (UBI). There are reasons to consider a UBI. Perhaps, machines and computers will soon do everything. If so, how can we keep humans alive? The wealthy own most of the capital and already get money for doing nothing, while the working class fights over the scraps they leave behind. We can distribute that money more fairly. A UBI might be too expensive, but many countries already have the dole for those who don’t work. And if there are no jobs anymore, everyone must go on the dole.

Some believe that it won’t happen, and if it does, that it will be a nightmare. Most people work for a living, and without them working, we wouldn’t have food on the table or the other things they produce. And so, we should receive a reward for doing something worthwhile. And there is our problem. In ‘advanced’ economies, most people entertain themselves in the bullshit economy, transforming energy and resources into garbage and pollution, while not producing anything we need. A UBI is a more resource-efficient and ecologically friendly way to keep these useless eaters alive.

We run out of resources, so getting money for free is not as stupid as working arse off to leave a wasteland for your children. We should contribute to society if we can. Being redundant is not good at all, as you have no reason to exist. But in the current arrangement, the most wasteful get the highest rewards for transforming energy and resources into waste and pollution. So, it is a bad idea to pay people for doing nothing, but what we do now is worse. If we are to terminate the bullshit economy, a UBI can allow us to adapt to the new situation and survive until we have found sensible employment.

Nightmare scenario?

Until recently, machines mainly did simple tasks. That has already put many people out of work. So far, the surplus of workers has found employment in the bullshit economy. Robots and artificial intelligence may soon make human workers obsolete. And that could be all human workers. When robots can perform the same physical tasks and artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence, there will be no job that machines can’t do, and humans will be redundant. In that case, we may all retire and live off the dole. A UBI would be the fairest arrangement, because we would all be equally useless.

AI will be better at making decisions than humans. Past experiences are no guarantee of the future. We may have heard the phrase ‘this time is different’ so often that we no longer believe it. But you only have to jump into a time machine to find out that every time is different. Horses may have laughed at the first cars and horseless agricultural machines, thinking that humans would continue to need them like they did since time immemorial. They all ended up in slaughterhouses. So, what will happen to all those redundant energy and resource-consuming humans? We will know once it has happened.

Realising our full potential

Proponents of a UBI tell us that handing out money will make our lives wonderful. Once we get money for nothing, we will be free to realise our dreams and achieve our full potential. If you have always wanted to become a blogger or vlogger, you can accomplish this with a UBI, as you don’t have to work for a living. The opponents of the scheme paint a dismal picture of people sinking into an abyss of idleness, filled with writing blogs nobody wants to read and making videos nobody wants to see, while essential jobs remain undone.

Doing a job is about making yourself valuable to others, not about realising your potential. That is how humans have lived and survived since time immemorial. People helped each other. Essential jobs are not always attractive. In countries with benefits, immigrants often do the unattractive, low-paying jobs. These vital jobs, such as harvesting crops, need to be done. The problem is that the production of essentials is often subject to intense competition, so that these jobs are often hard work for low wages.

A game of Monopoly

The game of Monopoly is a model of capitalism. Proponents of capitalism argue that it isn’t, but that is because this model, like any model, is a simplification and not perfect. If you have played the game more than once, you may have noticed it usually goes like this. At first, players buy streets and create capital by building houses and hotels. You can get rich by making the right investments. You also need luck. You need to be at the right place at the right moment. The game ends when most players are bankrupt.

At that point, there are more houses and hotels than players, but few can afford to stay in them. Like any model that has some merit, it says something about the real world. If you see that billionaires own everything and you can’t afford the rent, the game of Monopoly explains what is happening, to some extent, because no model is perfect. Capitalism is a scam against you, and the rig is interest, or profit on capital. Capitalism only works for the masses when enough of that money gets handed out to them.

Monopoly has a property tax on houses and hotels. If you are rich, you have to pay up. The money ends up in a jar, and if you are lucky, that money is yours. If you happen to be poor, the money transfer can keep you in the game. Monopoly also has a UBI. Every time you finish a round, you receive a fixed sum of money. It keeps the game going. Otherwise, it would end sooner as players would run out of cash. If the game ends, the players can wipe out all the houses and hotels and start anew.

For a game of Monopoly, that might be okay, but in the real world, that is like destroying everything, which is a highly inefficient way of reducing wealth inequality. The alternative is taxing the rich and handing out that money to the poor. In reality, the rich pay little in taxes and leave it up to the middle class to support the poor. The underlying cause of this problem is that interest makes wealth accumulate in the hands of a small rent-seeking elite. Without interest, the need for redistributing income might abate.

Bullshit jobs

For most of history, most people worked a few hours per day on average, but they were dirt poor. The Industrial Revolution changed that. Factory owners wanted labourers to work long hours to increase production and their profits. That is still how the economy operates today, even though we don’t need to. In ‘advanced’ economies, only a third of the people do things we truly need. The remaining jobs are pointless bullshit jobs. These occupations range from trading securities to taking orders at a fast-food restaurant. Once resources are gone and the Earth is a wasteland, these jobs will be gone.

For most of history, most people worked a few hours per day on average, but they were dirt poor. The Industrial Revolution changed that. Factory owners wanted labourers to work long hours to increase production and their profits. That is still how the economy operates today, even though we don’t need to. In ‘advanced’ economies, only a third of the people do things we truly need. The remaining jobs are pointless bullshit jobs. These occupations range from trading securities to taking orders at a fast-food restaurant. Once resources are gone and the Earth is a wasteland, these jobs will be gone.

Working is doing something useful for others or society. While doing our jobs, we consume energy and resources, so if our jobs aren’t useful, they aren’t work, but entertainment. We drive our cars to heated or air-conditioned offices. We work hard, so we believe we deserve a holiday and consume energy and resources for relaxation. If we axe all the pointless jobs, we can divide the remaining work, relax more, so we don’t need to waste energy and resources on holidays. The anthropologist David Graeber estimated that at least one-third of all jobs are pointless.¹ In advanced economies, it is probably two-thirds.

So, which jobs can we do without? Graeber mentions a receptionist at a publisher in the Netherlands. She had nothing to do except for taking up an occasional telephone call. Another employee could have done that alongside other tasks. Without a receptionist, no one would take the publisher seriously. And so, the publisher needed a receptionist. It made economic sense. But we can do without the publisher and over 99.99% of the books ever published. Graeber vastly underestimates the inefficiency of the modern economy in terms of the energy and resources it consumes relative to our needs.

In our economic system, a job has economic value when someone pays for it. I could hire you to dress as a rabbit and hop on the street. Perhaps that brings a few smiles to a few faces, so who is to tell this job is pointless? Okay, the cost of making the rabbit suit could have saved a few children from starvation, but that has less economic value. And that is precisely the problem. Think of consultants, managers, salespeople, lawyers, and financial advisors. They don’t make anything we can eat or use to keep our bodies warm, and a small percentage of what they consume could feed those who still go hungry.

These highly peculiar views come from a belief that money is the supreme measure of value and that we need to engage in a rat race to produce and consume as many non-essential items as possible to prevent businesses from becoming unprofitable, as that would collapse the economy. In other words, we commit suicide because economists believe that negative interest rates are impossible. And so, they keep on telling us, like Jacobse and Van Es, that if we just work harder and waste more energy and resources, so that the capital owners can make more money, everyone will become rich.

And so you can see the extent to which usury controls our thinking and makes us do stupid things. Things will collapse, and when they do, Earth will be a wasteland, and money will be worthless. Choosing to do nothing and be on the dole while you can work is not as bad as transforming energy and resources into waste and pollution by working in a non-essential bullshit job. Being a leech is less harmful than being a destroyer. And so, a UBI can help us to make the transition from a wasteful and destructive economic system to a sustainable one that centres on providing for our needs.

Income guarantee

A UBI can become expensive, most notably if the payment is sufficient to live off. An income guarantee is cheaper. Why hand out money to people who have enough? And there should be an incentive to work. Existing welfare schemes often make it financially unattractive to take on a low-paying job. A simple example can explain what an income guarantee scheme might look like. Assume there is an income guarantee of € 800 per month and a 50% income tax.

gross income	tax	net income
€ 0	+ € 800	€ 800
€ 1000	+ € 300	€ 1300
€ 2000	– € 200	€ 1800
€ 3000	– € 700	€ 2300
€ 5000	– € 1700	€ 3300

The income guarantee gets settled with the income tax, so you receive money when your income is low. If your gross income is €2,000, you pay €200 in taxes, and your net income is €1,800. There is an incentive to work as you gain financially from doing a job. When the income guarantee is sufficient to live on, there may be no need for minimum wages, making the job market more efficient. If the income guarantee replaces existing welfare schemes, there may be limited additional costs.

Denmark has an income guarantee, combined with a duty to seek employment if you are unemployed. It makes the Danish labour market flexible. Corporations can adapt their workforce to market requirements. Employment security, education and generous benefits compensate for the lack of job security.² Denmark has a functional social contract and a competent government, which are prerequisites for such a scheme to work. The Danish state offers free childcare, so parents face fewer obstacles to working.

An income guarantee can improve workers’ bargaining position, even when it is not sufficient to live on. If the income guarantee is €500 and the living wage is €1,000, someone doing a cleaning job can work fewer hours, taking labour out of the market, which can result in higher pay to attract workers. An income guarantee might affect employment and income as follows:

• Machines will do unattractive jobs that machines can do cheaply.
• Those who do unattractive jobs that machines cannot do will be paid well.
• Attractive jobs that machines can do cheaply fetch poor pay.
• For other attractive jobs, the pay is hard to predict.

Latest revision: 21 October 2025

Other images: Monopoly game.

1. Bullshit Jobs. David Graeber (2018). Simon & Schuster.
2. Danish Employment Policy. Jan Hendeliowitz. Employment Region Copenhagen & Zealand, The Danish National Labour Market Authority (2008). https://www.oecd.org/employment/leed/40575308.pdf