Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There

by Rutger Bregman

Why We Should Give Free Money to Everyone London, May 2009 – An experiment is under way. Its subjects: thirteen homeless men. They are veterans of the street. Some have been sleeping on the cold pavement of the Square Mile, Europe’s financial center, for going on forty years. Between the police expenses, court costs, and social services, these thirteen troublemakers have racked up a bill estimated at £400,000 ($650,000) or more.1 Per year. The strain on city services and local charities is too great for things to go on this way. So Broadway, a London-based aid organization, makes a radical decision: From now on, the city’s thirteen consummate drifters will be getting VIP treatment. It’s adiós to the daily helpings of food stamps, soup kitchens, and shelters. They’re getting a drastic and instantaneous bailout. From now on, these rough sleepers will receive free money. To be exact, they’re getting £3,000 in spending money, and they don’t have to do a thing in return.2 How they spend it is up to them. They can opt to make use of an advisor if they’d like – or not. There are no strings attached, no questions to trip them up.3 The only thing they’re asked is: What do you think you need? Gardening Classes “I didn’t have enormous expectations,” one social worker later recalled.4 But the drifters’ desires proved eminently modest. A telephone, a dictionary, a hearing aid – each had his own ideas about what he needed. In fact, most were downright thrifty. After one year, they had s...