As Ireland’s $1,500-a-month basic income pilot program for creatives nears its end in February, officials have to answer a simple question: Is it worth it?
With four months to go, they say the answer is yes.
Earlier this month, Ireland’s government announced its 2026 budget, which includes “a successor to the pilot Basic Income Scheme for the Arts to begin next year” among its expenditures.
Ireland is just one of many places experimenting with guaranteed basic income programs, which provide recurring, unrestricted payments to people in a certain demographic. These programs differ from a universal basic income, which would provide payments for an entire population.
Either UBI for everyone or UBI for no one. Lest we forget, money for this comes from of decades of collaboration in European tax avoidance by greedy multinational corporations to avoid paying their fair share in the other EU countries they operate in.
Otherwise, UBI is a great idea.
edit: “-excludes for example journalism or books for educational purposes, for example: textbooks, technical manuals, writing created for advertising or publicity purposes.”
Yeah, you wouldn’t want journalism or education to be freely accessible as an ocupation… This has to be the most ridiculous ubi experiment in the last decade.
UBI for some.
Little American flags for others
We already have basic income but just for some people. Would it be better to abolish those programs or keep them?
Ireland has a history of supporting artists, mostly with large tax breaks for ARTISTS. While journalists and scholars use writing extensively in their careers, they are not “artists” in the way that people tend to think of that concept. They are not creating art, they are creating knowledge. That’s an honorable endeavor, but it is not strictly art.
i mean yeah that barely costs ireland anything as artists are typically poor and therefore barely pay taxes anyways … /s
I wasn’t implying journalism is art, I’m implying no government is going to give you the tools to depose them.
Regarding “ARTISTS”, let’s see how many of the supported artists actually develop a craft rather than just producing content.
Many many many popular historical artists were not popular in their own time. The if it’s be an artist or go work for a living, that’s still people paying for things in their communities for however long that is. It’s entirely worth it even if they just create content. It’s a fair place to start imho
The overwhelming majority of the EU population works in services industries, whereas we lack specialized tradespeople like construction specialists. If forced to choose, I’d rather see that UBI go to them to support an early retirement plan for those underapreciated classes that have physically demanding work. Anyone can be an artist, especially if we don’t need to have two jobs to make rent.
Perfect being the enemy of good.
Man it’s gotta got to start somewhere. The full value of such a system will not be seen in our life times.
But if “anyone can be an artist” I’ll argue then that is actually the very best place to start this.
Young, old, decrepit, disadvantages, anyone can claim an artist UBI? Fucking great! That sounds like a feature not a bug
Work on your own terms, your own needs, within your own choices. Fucking great.
I’ve lived where the first thing they gets cut from every budget is the Arts.
That certainly hasn’t made the world a better place to live because “work” is always going to be a dog eat dog world where you don’t collaborate you compete. Your usefulness is only determined by how much value can be extracted from you without a care for your well being.
Arts are useless? Can’t make rent with an arts degree? Well guess what now everyone can.
I really don’t understand why you are so pissed about this and seemingly(my interpretation, I could be wrong) uninterested in looking at how this can be good the way it is.