 So an interesting aspect about basic income and how the state has evolved over the last 50 years is that in a certain sense, the decades of neoliberalism in the 1980s and 90s were generally seen as a period where you have austerity cuts in social spending. But the mystery is that when you look at the numbers, public spending didn't decrease in most countries. I'm Daniel Zamora. I'm a professor of sociology at the University of Brussels and I work essentially on economic history, inequality, poverty. Interestingly, over the last 20 years I think basic income has really become kind of an important topic in the development community. So of course you have the United Nations that has been promoting basic income, but even more let's say conservative institutions like the World Bank or the IMF have been kind of interested in the idea and promoting over the last 10 years at least, cash transfers as a tool for poverty alleviation. And so one might say that this is kind of a progress in a certain sense from the structural adjustment policies of the 90s and the market-driven reforms that were imposed in many countries in the global south. But at the same time we have to understand that this focus on cash, which is what makes basic income appealing, of course, is also part of kind of a broader displacement of development economics. And one aspect in particular I think has been quite important over the last 10 or 20 years is like the divorce from questions of poverty and the questions of industrialization. That was kind of a crucial question for most of the post-colonial leaders in the post-war period. So for them it was pretty clear that poverty was not the problem per se. The question was probably was a symptom of a broader question, which was the question of industrialization and the relations between the north and the south and the inequality relations between the north and the south, especially trade relations. And so of course when you think about poverty in that framework, the solution is not just cash transfers. It's about transforming the global division of labor. It's about a state-led industrial policy and that was really at the core of their vision of development. So what's interesting here is like for them poverty elevation was about transforming the economies in which the poor actually live, rather than allowing them to be part of the market, to be part of the economy. So it's not just about altering income distribution but to think or to contest the way we share labor at the global scale more generally. And so the shift here, which I think is kind of important to understand why basic income has become so popular, is a shift from let's say the 50s and 60s a developmental state that is really up to direct investment, to control prices, to create jobs in certain industries from what we call in the book a transfer state. So a state that is less concerned about actually intervening in the economy but just reshaping the distribution of income. So in a certain sense there's a shift from a state that is concerned from rights of the citizens to a state that is more concerned about the spending power of consumers. So there's kind of an important transition here that as you see is not just different tools that we use to think about poverty but it's really how we think about poverty itself that has radically changed and where money takes a bigger part of the story, the meaning of development in that story has radically changed. You immediately see how the policies of the 90s, so that was made by the World Bank and the IMF in countries like Mexico, most of the countries, a lot of countries in Latin America certainly also in South Africa, were basic income or cash transfers because they didn't implement basic income itself but the rise of cash transfers wasn't an alternative to those policies but it was a compliment to it because those policies actually created more inequality, created more poverty in most of those countries and then the question that emerged immediately is how can we mitigate those effects, reduce a new certain sense of poverty but without putting in jeopardy the market reforms and keeping the whole market framework keeping the whole privatization agenda but at the same time guaranteeing to everyone a certain minimal standard of living. So what is kind of striking is that the rise of cash transfers wasn't, let's say, a contestation of the last decades of the 90s and all those reforms, market driven reforms but it was a way to a certain sense go hand in hand with those reforms and created, let's say, a less market with a human face but without really putting into question what are the causes of poverty. You can ask anyone what is poverty, well, everybody will respond it's lacking of money, it's like an obvious answer, right? But for a long time this wasn't the obvious response, I mean this is kind of a recent definition of poverty, one that is actually based on the income distribution, so your place within the income distribution, that's how we call it an inter-individual definition of inequality or poverty. The problem with that definition is that in a certain sense it abstracts poverty so it becomes something that is not embedded within social relations, especially relations of power, so most of the, let's say, thinkers of the early 20th century that thought about poverty, for many of them it was clear that poverty was a question of power relations, so it was the effect of the unequal relations, of power relations within especially the labor market, so if you want to tackle poverty it's not about giving money, it's about giving them more power, it's about transforming those relations, so by allowing collective bargaining, by creating unions, by actually reducing the grip of the market on people's lives, meaning that they actually don't need money to get healthcare, to get education, to get a lot of things, so the rise of this, let's say, cash-centered definitions of poverty, in a certain sense shadows all those political questions about how we organize society, about how we share power, how we define our needs, how we define the jobs we want to do, if you think about it you can immediately see how you can think about poverty of course by the side of money, but you can also think about the other side, meaning reducing the dependence on markets, so of course if you say tomorrow there is rent control it will have an effect on poverty, if tomorrow healthcare is free it will have an effect on poverty, because of course people don't need money to then get those services, and I think that over the last 40 years we've really shifted from one vision of it, which was increasing the rights that people have and then increasing the service they receive and then increasing the market and the dependence we have on the market, we shifted from another vision where we allowed privatization of most public services, we allowed deregulation of the labor market, but at the same time we actually improved the access of cash to a certain amount of people, so we improved in terms of the fiscal apparatus of the state while it retreated on other aspects, especially on public services, and this is the thing is one of the questions that we should contest if we want to think about poverty today and getting away from this kind of a very narrow understanding of poverty, center on cash and center on money. The idea is that and the problem especially one of famous economists of the 20th century called Milton Friedman, so one of Chicago economists, one of the probably most important neoliberal economists, he was actually concerned about in the 30s when he was actually working within the federal estate in the US, he was actually concerned about the rising inequality and poverty, which might be surprising for neoliberal economists but it was definitely a problem for them, it's like okay if we have a free market it generates huge inequalities and what is our response to that, and this is the reason why he came up with a version of basic income, one of the earliest versions of basic income, which was if you want to provide to people a minimum set of resources while keeping the market, keeping what is said the price mechanism that allows society to be organized through decentralized investments, then what we need is to create a system where people if they fall under a certain threshold they will receive money from the state, would be a basic income. So the idea is of course that you can do welfare, you can provide people a certain level of income but without altering the market mechanism, so that's what's his first concern, of course it was huge criticism of the Roosevelt policies and the New Deal and it's kind of an alternative to the welfare state, so instead of having public health care, public education, public services, then you can just get some money and you go on the market and you do the choices you want to do for yourself, so it's a very different vision about how we think about needs and I think this is kind of an important question is how we think about needs and how the way we think about needs has changed over the last 50 years at least because the market is not something that reveals needs that are already there or economists like to say that they reveal preferences, the market actually constitute needs and there is kind of a famous quote from Steve Jobs who said that nobody knew he wanted an iPhone before seeing an iPhone, so of course he actually does produce needs that weren't already there so we rely definitely more on the market to constitute the needs we have as a society unless on collective decision making which was what three men didn't like the fact that rather than letting private investor decide what we need we can put some of those resources in common and decide together what we need and that of course the outcome is very different because the decision is a democratic one rather than one made by consumers and this is I think one of the big shifts that happen during that period and it also makes basically a more appealing solution for welfare because it doesn't require for us to argue or to discuss democratically about our needs but just for consumers to go on the market and make their decisions as they see fit so an interesting aspect about basic income and how the state has evolved over the last 50 years is that in a certain sense the decades of neoliberalism in the 80s the 90s were generally seen as a period where you have austerity cuts in social spending but the mystery is that when you look at the numbers public spending didn't decrease in most countries neither in the United States why it actually increased neither in Europe but what really changed and this is kind of a significant change is the way the states spend its money so while let's say in the 50s the state will I don't know pay for healthcare pay for public servants and actually directly employ a lot of people or build for example social public housing the transition we had in that period was not in reducing spending but rather than building housing we will give you some cash to help you with your rent meaning what we want is like the market to do some it's work in the housing and if there is a problem then we can help you with cash so basically the state in a certain sense public spending stayed the same but the nature of the state radically changed it became definitely more a state that in a certain sense let's say doesn't act on the market but on the borders of the market or around the market by transferring some cash and by altering the rules let's say the conditions of the game rather than completely changing the game which was I think the aim of the new deal and the policies in the post-war period I think if you want to understand also the rising relevance of basic income it's increasing appeal because of course the idea has been around for a long time it's only since the late 60s that it has become let's say policy proposal that is actually considered by politicians and policy makers it's the reason why it really becomes something on the agenda while it was around way before right was in part I mean certainly because we began to think about poverty in monetary terms so for a long time this definition is like quite marginal and then by the 70s we really began to have our contemporary definitions of poverty which is like your position in the income distribution right but of course this this definition has a certain limits I mean it doesn't give you for example a good sense of what does it mean to be poor in a country if you are poor in a country where there is free healthcare and a country where there isn't free healthcare having a certain amount of money it's a completely different thing so your life would be radically different so it doesn't really consider the institutions in which you are living and especially the relation between the state the market and the individuals in those societies so this let's say monetization of poverty completely put aside all those political questions about our relation to the market and also individualized poverty it seems as something that is an accident that is you're in that place in the income distribution but we don't really know why we don't really know the causes and all the policies became more about attacking on the effects of the market meaning the market creates all those inequalities by altering the income distribution rather than actually attacking the market itself and transforming the the causes of poverty so we shifted let's say from a social policy that was about transforming the causes to a social policy that was also only about mitigating the effects