A year without worries for 85 people
Berlin startup offers ‘lottery’ winners a monthly income in social project
Berlin – Miko from Berlin may only be five, but he already has ß1 000 euros (about R14 246) per month to live on – not from hard graft, but as part of an experiment into universal basic income.
He is one of 85 people, including around 10 children, chosen by startup Mein Grundeinkommen (My Basic Income) to receive the payments for a year since 2014.
Founder Michael Bohmeyer has set out to prove to a sceptical public in Germany and further afield that the universal basic income idea is workable.
“Thanks to my first startup, I got a regular income, my life became more creative and healthy. So I wanted to launch a social experiment,” 31-year-old Bohmeyer said.
And he wasn’t alone in wanting to test the idea, as some 55 000 donors have stumped up the cash for the payments in a “crowdfunding” model – with the final recipients picked out in a “wheel of fortune” event livestreamed online.
Mother Birgit Kaulfuss said Miko “can’t really understand, but for the whole family it was exhilarating” when he was chosen – offering a chance to live “in a more relaxed way” and take a family holiday.
“Everyone sleeps more soundly and no one become a layabout,” Bohmeyer said of his beneficiaries.
Recipients’ experiences a welcome spell without financial worries to major turning points in their lives.
“Without day-to-day pressures, you can be more creative and try things out,” Valerie Rupp told public broadcaster ARD in a recent interview.
She was able both to take care of her baby and start a career as a decorator – even as her husband, newly arrived from Mali, was taking German lessons.
Winners have left jobs that were doing little more for them than put bread on the table to become teachers, taken time out to address chronic illness, broken alcohol addiction, taken care of loved ones, or paid for children’s studies.
“It’s at once a gift and a prompt” to make a change, explained Astrid Lobeyer, who used the money to give eulogies at funerals and studied the therapeutic Alexander technique, a method for relieving stress in the muscles.
Bohmeyer’s experiment has fascinated social media and boosted discussion about a universal income in Germany.
In 2009, the German parliament rejected a petition from some 50 000 Germans demanding a universal income. Nevertheless, some 40% of the public still think it’s a good idea, according to a survey last June by pollsters Emnid.
The startup’s 20 employees eat up “60% of the budget“, Bohmeyer admits – while the idea of basing the funding on curiosity or activism by thousands of donors is hardly applicable on a large scale.
“Who will take on the exhausting and sometimes less attractive tasks, like emptying bins or taking care of the elderly,” asked Werner Eichhorst of the Bonn Centre for the Future of Work. –