The new mayor hopes to raise the amount to US$32 this year. However, if Finland is handing out payments of about US$590 a month - and only to a test group of unemployed people for now - the amount in Marica is a measly 10 Brazilian reais (US$3.20). Left-wing French presidential candidate Benoit Hamon, backed by the star economist Thomas Piketty, has also made the basic income part of his platform. Inconclusively tried around the world for decades, the experiment is currently getting a high-profile rollout in Finland. “The world lacks creativity and Marica is giving the example of a town that knows how to redistribute its riches,” Quaqua said with pride about his pet project.ĭespite his claims, Marica is only taking baby steps. Just about every public building is decorated in socialist red and Quaqua’s office sports portraits of communist revolutionary Che Guevara, whose name is also soon to be given to a new hospital. In Marica - a surviving Workers’ Party bastion in increasingly right-leaning Brazil - the basic income idea fits in well with the leadership’s socialist fervor. The concept has gained traction more recently among high-powered business thinkers, especially in Silicon Valley, as they ponder how society would cope with the ever-expanding role of automation - a trend some futurists believe may create mass unemployment. The idea of a universal basic income is not new, but long considered as a potential tool for social equality and redistribution of wealth.
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