Does a basic income make people more tolerant and engaged?

Our society is becoming increasingly divided. Yet one thing is clear:

Social cohesion will be more important than ever in the future, as digitalisation, global pandemics and climate change confront us with unprecedented challenges.

A strong civil society is characterised not least by diverse civic engagement. But first you have to be able to afford it. Only those who no longer have to worry about their livelihood can take care of others.

Numerous experiments suggest that an unconditional basic income strengthens civic engagement.

Basic income winner Dana, for example, invested her entire basic income in her social project “Anna & Sascha e.V.”, an inclusive café:

With a basic income, spaces of strength can emerge in which to tackle pressing social issues, because it takes away the pressure to earn a living and creates security. It would encourage us not to choose the quick, short, convenient answers, but to take on social responsibility.

Dana won her basic income in a draw held by our non-profit NGO Mein Grundeinkommen (German). Our next draw is on 17 March 2021, when we will again raffle 21 donation-funded basic incomes of 1,000 euros a month for one year.

Our guest at the draw is Dominik Lucha. On his Instagram channel “Was ihr nicht seht!” (What you don’t see!, German) he makes everyday racism visible and points out that racism in Germany is a structural problem.

We discuss with Dominik Lucha: could a basic income change anything here – for example by encouraging voluntary work in anti-racism projects, removing the breeding ground for financial envy, or simply strengthening the individual?

Mein Grundeinkommen is a non-profit start-up and a young NGO at the same time.

Donations are collected through crowdfunding, and as soon as 12,000 euros have come together, they are raffled as an unconditional basic income of 1,000 euros a month.

The response is huge: founded in 2014, we are now fuelling the debate on unconditional basic income with more than 2.8 million users and over 175,000 large and small donors.

Driven by the question of how we as a society want to live in the future, the young NGO is experimenting with new forms of self-organisation and collective leadership (holacracy) and, together with the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), is studying the unconditional basic income according to scientific standards in the world’s first civil-society pilot project (German).

MEIN GRUNDEINKOMMEN WEBSITE (German)