"If you were handed $1,100 a month, would you amount to anything?" So asks the Los Angeles Times in a Sunday headline atop a piece about a unique experiment underway in Germany. Michael Bohmeyer, a 31-year-old Internet entrepreneur in Berlin, is behind Mein Grundeinkommen (My Basic Income), which, so far, is giving 26 people $1,100 each month to spend any way they choose. It's all about helping people feel secure and free, he says, and it's an idea that springs out of his own experience.
The universal basic income has long had many supporters in Germany. The state already pays a sort of "mini basic income" of about $200 per month for all children and young adults up to the age of 25 as long as they are in school or at college, which are also free of charge. But it was never tested in a real-life situation in Germany until Berlin entrepreneur Michael Bohmeyer, 31, decided to launch his "My Basic Income" project in 2014.
"A basic income paid out to everyone could unleash enormous amounts of creativity," said Bohmeyer, who left his Internet start-up business, and for a while was savoring a relatively carefree life, living off those proceeds, when he came up with the basic payment experiment.
"Machines are going to be taking care of just about everything for us over time," added Bohmeyer, who comes from formerly communist eastern Germany. "So to be able to work creatively, people need some security, they need to feel free. And they can get that with a basic income."
At this point, 26 people have been chosen at random to get a taste of basic income. Every few weeks, several more people are selected through drawings to receive 1,000 euros per month each for a year. They're free to do whatever they want with the money. The recipients are picked from a pool of more than 66,000 applicants and drawings are held whenever enough donations are collected. So far a total of 31,449 people have made donations.
"The most popular donation is 33 euros," Bohmeyer says. "That's equal to the daily amount needed to finance a basic income of 1,000 euros per month."
The universal basic income has long had many supporters in Germany. The state already pays a sort of "mini basic income" of about $200 per month for all children and young adults up to the age of 25 as long as they are in school or at college, which are also free of charge. But it was never tested in a real-life situation in Germany until Berlin entrepreneur Michael Bohmeyer, 31, decided to launch his "My Basic Income" project in 2014.
"A basic income paid out to everyone could unleash enormous amounts of creativity," said Bohmeyer, who left his Internet start-up business, and for a while was savoring a relatively carefree life, living off those proceeds, when he came up with the basic payment experiment.
"Machines are going to be taking care of just about everything for us over time," added Bohmeyer, who comes from formerly communist eastern Germany. "So to be able to work creatively, people need some security, they need to feel free. And they can get that with a basic income."
At this point, 26 people have been chosen at random to get a taste of basic income. Every few weeks, several more people are selected through drawings to receive 1,000 euros per month each for a year. They're free to do whatever they want with the money. The recipients are picked from a pool of more than 66,000 applicants and drawings are held whenever enough donations are collected. So far a total of 31,449 people have made donations.
"The most popular donation is 33 euros," Bohmeyer says. "That's equal to the daily amount needed to finance a basic income of 1,000 euros per month."