Ideas worth spreading

Poverty isn't a lack of character; it's a lack of cash

4,072,296 views |

Rutger Bregman |

TED2017

• April 2017

"Ideas can and do change the world," says historian Rutger Bregman, sharing his case for a provocative one: guaranteed basic income. Learn more about the idea's 500-year history and a forgotten modern experiment where it actually worked -- and imagine how much energy and talent we would unleash if we got rid of poverty once and for all.

"Ideas can and do change the world," says historian Rutger Bregman, sharing his case for a provocative one: guaranteed basic income. Learn more about the idea's 500-year history and a forgotten modern experiment where it actually worked -- and imagine how much energy and talent we would unleash if we got rid of poverty once and for all.

This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

Join BIEN, an international network of people interested in basic income (with 20 national networks).

Donate to GiveDirectly, a top-rated charity that gives money to the extreme poor in East Africa.

About the speaker

Rutger Bregman

See speaker profile

Rutger Bregman is the author of "Utopia for Realists."

Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir | Book

Scarcity: The New Science of Having Less and How It Defines Our Lives

This is the book Eldar Shafir and his colleague Sendhil Mullainathan wrote about their fascinating new theory of poverty. It’s well-written and full of eye-openers. Although I think they don’t take their conclusions far enough, it’s one of most important books on poverty that has been published in the past decade.

Joseph Hanlon, Armando Barrientos and David Hulme | Book

Just Give Money to the Poor: The Development Revolution from the Global South

This is not a very well-known book. But it is, to my knowledge, the first that really made the case for just giving money to the poor. The authors point out that the idea comes from the Global South, where governments have experimented on a huge scale with cash transfers to the poor. And with success!

David Graeber | Article

"Why Capitalism Creates Pointless Jobs"

David Graeber is one of my favorite thinkers. And this essay is probably the best he has ever written. It’s on the phenomenon of – and here comes a very scientific term – ‘bullshit jobs’. As I say during my TED Talk: about a third of the modern workforce thinks her of his job his utterly useless. But how can this happen in capitalist economies? Isn’t there an invisible hand that is supposed to get rid of all useless work? If you believe that, then Graebers essay may cause some cognitive dissonance!

Learn more

This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

Join BIEN, an international network of people interested in basic income (with 20 national networks).

Donate to GiveDirectly, a top-rated charity that gives money to the extreme poor in East Africa.