goedenavond haarlem.[good evening, haarlem] feeling good, yeah? so, who here, today, of you, had lunch or breakfastor any meal whatsoever? great, we're lucky. because there is abouta billion people on the planet who live in absolute poverty, and they don't have this privilege. getting a mealis maybe a fanciful thing.
and even industrialized nations,with very developed countries, there is about 15 percentwho live below the poverty line, like in the united states, or even italy. now, the story that we tell ourselvesto justify these kinds of things doesn't really - it's compelling to hear,because it's reassuring, but it's not real. and it's no surprise that we like stories,we evolved by listening to stories, and that's how our brains have developedfor hundreds of thousands of years.
and some of these storiesbecame bestsellers, one of them was the great epicof capitalism versus socialism. and of course we all know the story - well, depends whom you askor who told you the story. and it also works the other way around. (laughter) and these stories, if you reallydig deep, they're just fairytales, because the reality is very different: there is not a single truly100% capitalist country in the world,
as there is no trulysocialist country in the world. they're all many variationsof the two and other ideological systems and other types of societies. but the wealthiestand the healthiest of countries are those that have learnedto actually combine the best of them by looking at the evidence and the results instead of just sticking to an ideologyand telling themselves a reassuring story. we have some of theprime examples of these in the scandinavian and some ofthe more continental european countries,
and i could even includethe netherlands to some respect. it's important that we tell ourselvescredible stories, and not fairytales, because fairytales are very dangerous and can lead to unnecessarysuffering or deaths of hundreds of millions of peopleas we've seen in the past. now we have many challenges,and one of them is unemployment. but instead of telling youa story, or a fairytale, let's have a look at the data. so here is a graph
showing the employment to populationratio in the us - and in the oecd countriesthe statistics are very similar. and this is corporate profitsover the same amount of time. now, if you put the two things together,and you look at the recovery rate - the gray lines are recessions, and [from] the recovery rateyou see the degree of recovery - you see very, very astonishing results. we have corporate profitsat an all-time high, unemployment is at a multi-decade low,
and if you take into account that women entered the workforceonly around that period, we're actually at the lowest point ever, and we're in the shallowestperiod of recovery. we are in what, in economic terms -it's almost called the jobless recovery. now, there is some studies coming out from the oxford martin school,and mit, from my colleagues, that suggestthat half of all jobs in the us are subject to automation -
robots and other artificial intelligenceand smart programs. and research just coming out in europealso suggests the same results. now i've actually performedthe same thought experiment, and i've done my own research two years before the oxfordmartin school and mit, and i had the exact same predictions. and one of the big criticismsthat i received was: sure technology displaces jobs,robots steal jobs, but in the endyou always create new jobs
because you havenew opportunities, new sectors, and there is always time to recoverand find new ways of doing things. i said: "okay, that might be true,but let's look at the data, let's look at the historical perspectiveand the timeframe." so i took all the occupations,and i listed them by number of workers, from the top to the bottom. and i asked myselfa very simple question: what kind of occupationswere invented within, let's say, the next fifty or sixty years?
because if technologyonly displaces temporarily jobs, then there should bea bunch of new occupations that are invented in recent times. actually i had to scroll down quite a lot:number 33, computer programmers. it was invented actually 65 years ago. so the reality isthat new jobs are very few, highly skilled, very sophisticated,very difficult to do, and very few people can do them. and certainly notthe 45-year-old truck drivers,
maybe 70 or 80 million of them, who are going to be totally displacedwithin the next five to seven years. and other hundreds of millionsof people in other professions. so think about a 45-year-old truck driver having to competewith a 17-year-old ukrainian whiz kid who writes four apps a dayon his computer. not very credible. and if you look at another trend, the multi-billion dollarcompanies of today
employ fewer and fewer people, and they havea bigger revenue per employee. if you take apple, google, facebookand amazon, and you combine them, they are worth morethan a trillion dollars together, but they only create 150,000 jobs. and the newest companiescreate even more revenue per employee because they're worthbillions and billions in a very short amount of time, and they employ a few dozensor at maximum a few hundreds of people.
so this is the new economy,this is the reality, and what it leads to is more inequality. now, i'm not stating that this isthe only reason for inequality, but it certainly exacerbates whatever level of inequalityyou might have. and if you lookat the global picture of inequality, the situation is quite dire. you divide the populationin 25 percentiles, and you see that the 75% on the bottomowns less than 20% of all the wealth.
and the richest 2% hasabout 55% of all the wealth. and the richest 85 people, not 85%or 85 million, 85 people, own as much as the bottom 3 billion. this is the reality, and it's onlygetting worse and worse. this is worse than the medieval timeduring the feudal era. this leads to the disappearanceof the middle class, which is very bad because a thrivingsociety has a very strong middle class, for example in the netherlands. and we know from thomas piketty'sgroundbreaking research
that the return of capital - essentially, money that you'vejust sitting there because you have it, or you have real estateor other properties - makes a lot more money than labor. so those who have more capital will onlymake more in this kind of system. and it's a problemthat works at the structural level. this creates structural inequality, which is very different from temporaryinequality or cyclical inequality; it means that it's in the system.
so the story we tell ourselves,or better yet the fairytale, is that this processis not only inevitable, but it's the nature of capitalism,and there is nothing to do. because things are just the way they are. now, of course, we all knowthat this is nonsense because there are countries that havesuccessfully redistribute wealth through policies and throughall sorts of innovations, such as germany and south korea, who have redistributedquite successfully wealth,
and have a very strong middle class, but they're doing also quite wellfinancially and in the global market. so it's not impossible,but it's very difficult. even so, nobody has a long-term solutionfor structural technological unemployment, which is just on the horizon, and actually we are already experiencingsome of it in some countries. one of the proposed solutionsis an unconditional basic income. so, first of all, what is it? well, very simply,it's free money for everybody.
that's the simple version. the more elaborate is a lump sum of income that is distributed unconditionally,without any strings attached, to every person in a country, every month. now, i realize that we might beplagued by selection bias - this is a ted crowd - but i'm going to askthis question anyway. so if you think having a basic income,giving free money to everybody, is a good idea,
raise your hand. okay, perfectly 50/50 almost. great. now, there is a lot of public debate,luckily, on this subject, and it's good becausethis is a very old idea, and now it's beenrekindled in the imagination and in the spirit of the people. the problem with the public debatethat i've noticed is that it's very much basedon ideology and the moral argument.
so whether you agree or not- i'm not very much interested in that. i'm interested in the factthat nobody is having a real discussion, very few are havinga real discussion about this topic. they either agreebecause of some ideological reasons, some idea that they haveabout what people might do, or whether its morally right; or you might disagree because you thinkit's atrocious, not going to work, or you can't just give people moneyfor whatever reason. we are all forgettingthe most important thing,
which is asking the right questions,questions such as: how much will it cost?and: how will you pay for it? how can you finance it? would people stop workingif they just receive an income? and: will it actually solve the problem? this is the main question. and, what is the problemthat we're trying to solve? because we should focus on the goal, not the story or the fairytalethat we tell ourselves,
and we are very attached to,and we defend. we should think about what the goal is. so: what is the goal? otherwise it's going to be just like the discussionwith capitalism and socialism all the way roundfor another hundred years. we don't have that time. so what is the goal? it's difficultto reach a consensus,
but i think a good startingpoint is to start from article 25 of the internationaldeclaration of human rights from the united nations, which states that everyone has the rightto a standard of living adequate for the health and well-beingof himself [and] his family, including food, clothing,housing, medical care, and necessary social servicesand so on. so the question is: does a basic incomefulfill this goal or not?
because if it does, i don't think it really matters,your ideology, because you're actuallyfulfilling the goal. and if it doesn't, it doesn't matterhow good the idea sounds: if it doesn't work, it doesn't work! so the only way to knowif it actually works is to look at the experiments, and nobody actually citesthe experiments or the results, they just pass it along and say,
"oh, we've done the experiments, and we know that it works,and it's settled." no, it's not settled - because these are the countrieswhere we've run the experiments, okay? it might sound promising,but [it involved] 14 countries, [while] there is actually200 countries on the planet, so that's a reality checkfor everybody. only three of those were actuallyan unconditional basic income, and only two had more than1,000 people in the study.
okay, so this is the reality: we don't have a lot of evidenceeither for or against the basic income. we just don't know, because we haven'tdone enough experiments. so let's have a lookat these two experiments. in canada, in the 1970s, for five years, about 10,000 peoplereceived around $500 a month. they wanted to knowif people would stop working. and it turns out: not really,no, people worked just as much. only two categories worked a little less:
women who took extended maternity leaves, which i think is good,spend more time with your kids; and young boys worked less, but there was a higher completion ratein high school for young boys, meaning they stayed more in schoolinstead of going to work right away, which also i think is good. and then an unexpected result:a lower hospitalization rate. this is one of the thingsthat you discover when you actually - run the experiments and seewhat happens in the real world,
instead of just makingeverything up in your head. the second experiment was in india,much more recent, three years, 2011-13, about 6,000 people,with a control group of another 6,000, received about $4 a month. may not sound like a lot, but in rural india this is actually40% of your subsistence. yeah, not everybody has 1,000 eurosjust laying around like that. results were very promising. there was improved food nutrition,food sufficiency, improved livestock,
there was no increase in public badslike alcohol, prostitution and drugs, there was reduced illness, a lot more people were going to school, especially girls, who are usuallymarginalized in society. so it's great that a lot of girlswere going to schools. and people, very counterintuitive, were three times more likelyto be entrepreneurs and start their own business. so people were actually working more,and they were taking more risk,
and there was more innovation. so this is reality. now, these results are promising,but in no way conclusive. because they are very smalland very few, these experiments. and to reach our goal we actuallyhave to ask some other questions, and answer them. for example: what happens with rent? so let's suppose that starting tomorrow each one of us receives1,000 euros every month.
so 1,000 euros just magically pops in yourbank account, every month, the same day. well, what happens to rent? if you're not a homeowner,you have a landlord or a landlady. what's stopping them,other than policy or other mechanisms, to raise the rent exactly 1,000 euros? because that's what the market dictates, you're just going to [ask]as much as possible [for] rent, as much as people can afford. if you [raise it] the same for everybody,
well, that actuallyonly increases inequality because you're moving more capitalto those who already have capital, because of piketty's research. so this basic income would actuallyincrease inequality and increase poverty, and destroy the middle class even faster. then, if you are getting ridof most social programs, and you just kind of say people are free to dowhatever they want with their income so we don't need all this bureaucracy,
there might be a driveto privatize a bunch of things, because you don't needso much social programs and government involvement. well, we know what happenswhen you privatize healthcare. it's a very bad idea,quality goes down, prices go up, and everything goes to the bin. so whatever solution we come up with, we have to rememberthat it's not going to be a panacea, because things need to be contextualized,
and if they're implemented,they must be comprehensive, in a comprehensive packageof larger reforms, to look at the whole ecosystem and the larger implicationsof what you're doing. and they must be differentin every country, because different countrieshave different social contexts, social adaptations, and social norms, and not everybody[has] the same cultural level. so it's never going to bea one-size-fits-all solution.
and the problem isthat we don't have enough experiments. we need more data, but most of allwe need better data. in particular, we need experiments, and i make out a call for everyone who's a policymaker, or is working at university who hasany power whatsoever to influence things, to start trials, talk to me, talk to other peoplein the basic income community. and let's do them,with at least 10,000 people,
with a control group so you knowwhat you're accounting for. it must be truly unconditional: everybody receives it,no strings attached whatsoever, otherwise it's not going to work. it needs to be for more than two years, because what people do if they know it'll bein the long term is very different ã¢â‚¬â€œ they make plans about the future. if they know it's just goingto last 6 months,
you're not going to seethe social dynamics that actually unfold in a complex society. and it must be a true basic income, not a fraction of a percent,of like 10% or 40% of the poverty line; it must be, many economists suggest,about half the median income, or somewhere around that number. and finally, we needdetailed feasibility studies, because there are nowsome preliminary studies that suggest that it mightwork financially,
but we don't really know because no onehas actually done a thorough research looking [at] all the implications,all the way down, in the economic activityin the larger sense, looking at the broader picture. so we need to getin touch with universities, with professors, with economists,with policymakers, with experts, and with entrepreneurs,yes, with entrepreneurs, because there arenew technologies and new innovations that can help us simplify bureaucracy,
because now it's easier than everto run a basic income experiment thanks to technology such asthe block chain and cryptocurrencies. and in developing countriesmobile payments are very successful, like in kenya. there are now lots of groups that are trying to implementbasic income through cryptocurrencies and the swiss in switzerlandare going to vote this year on a basic income in a public referendum. now, i have a feelingthat it's not going to pass,
because they haven't donea feasibility study, and the discussionis at the ideological level. so a lot of peopleare rightly not convinced because no one has actually taken the timeto run an experiment or do a proper study. so there are some worrying trendsthat we need to think about. we have aging population,with fewer people being able to pay taxes and more peoplerequiring a pension; rising inequality; we have the prospectof technological structural unemployment;
and the disappearing middle class. all of this is very worrying. and if we just tell ourselvesstories and fairytales, that this is the way things are, and nothing's going to change,and we can't do anything about it, it'll just be likethe climate change debate, where we just run around in circles, and there's not really a debate, the facts are out the window,and it's just ideology.
it's going to be a disasterif we treat it in the same way. so we need a serious, real public debate, looking at the data,looking at the evidence, getting in touch with experts,civil society, policymakers, everybody, to have a real public debate,so we can find together solutions, so we can reach our goal to givea high standard of living to everybody, all 7.2 billion of us, who are sharing this amazing experiencefor a very brief moment, in this pale blue dot,floating above the sky.
and there is, in the wordsof the great carl sagan, there is perhaps no better demonstrationof the folly of human conceits than the distant image of our tiny world. to me, it underscores our responsibilityto deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherishthe pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. thank you. (applause)
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