 Listen, I don't want to talk about politics anymore than you do, but with the midterm elections coming up, it's really important that we discuss how mental health is tied into politics. And today we're going to be talking about the topic of minimum basic income. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And if you're new to my channel, my channel is all about mental health. So sometimes I bring up topics that are going on in the mental health sphere such as politics and mental health care and all of that. So if you're into that, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. So yesterday, my beautiful girlfriend and I, you know what we did? We went down to UNLV where she's going to school for social work and we cast our votes. And then after that, I went over to her house and she did my makeup for Halloween and then we got some cheap Chipotle and it was amazing. But yeah, like as much as I don't want to talk about politics and all of that, like on my channel, like it's important. Like if you care about mental health, which you probably do because you're watching this video and hopefully subscribed as well, like you care about mental health. So there's certain topics that involve mental health as well as politics with voting coming up that we should discuss. And some of you might have already voted already. Some of you might be registering and just haven't voted yet. But like I mentioned this in another video that I did the other day. Like one of the life philosophies I live by is that I have no right to complain about anything unless I'm willing to do something about it. So if you're still wondering about how you should vote and all of that, like here's just some more information. I'm going to try to just lay out facts and not politically influence you if that's even something that I have the power to do. But I just want you to know the facts about minimum basic income and how that affects mental health. So this is a video that I wanted to do a long, long, long time ago. I did a book review on the book Lost Connections, which is one of the best books I've ever read about depression as well as anxiety. So I highly recommend that you check it out. I will link to that video as well as the book down in the description and up in the info card. But anyways, there's a lot of scientific studies throughout this book. And one of the studies that they talk about is this minimum basic income study that actually came from Canada back in the 1970s. So there was this tiny little farm town in I believe Manitoba and it's called Dauphin. And there were some economists, you know, and they had more of a liberal government at this time and they were tossing around the idea of minimum basic income. So they found this small farming community and they're like, okay, let's do an experiment here. Let's track the data for the for a few years. So here's how this experiment worked. All right. Every single family got a minimum basic income depending on the family size. So on average, a four person household got $16,000 per year. That's US dollars. Okay. So I'm not sure how that converts to Canadian dollars. But anyways, they got $16,000 for a four person family. And there was nothing these people could do to not get that money. So they didn't have to get approved. They didn't have to go through like any kind of process or anything like that. And while you were getting this, you could still work. And if you were making money on top of that, they reduced it, but not by much. So for example, if you made an extra $10, they would only give you an extra $5. So they wouldn't give you the full amount. Basically the idea behind this was to give people enough money to survive, but not to go like, you know, buy all this luxurious stuff. So they ran this experiment for a few years and then a new, more conservative government came in and nobody really like knew about this study. Like this study wasn't public. So years later, an economist by the name of Evelyn forget who was at the University of Manitoba, she started learning about this experiment and she wanted to go through the data and say like, okay, well, what, what happened with this? Like how did this work? Did it help? Was it a disaster? What was it? And she couldn't find it. So she ended up finally finding it. And there was like, I think they said like 1800 square feet of bankers boxes with all this data. So she got a team together to go through this data and see what they found by doing this experiment. So before we get into this, like, we need to talk, like, how does this affect mental health? Well, like when it comes to mental health and minimum basic income, for those of you who don't know what minimum basic income is, it's something that certain politicians are trying to fight for where people in the United States get a minimum basic income no matter what you're doing. And there's a lot of arguments from, you know, different sides saying like what, you know, what the drawbacks will be and all of that. But we have empirical data that shows us what these benefits are. So one of the things that we have to discuss, we have to discuss is that people in poverty are much more likely to have symptoms of anxiety as well as depression. They're also more likely to go to the hospital for symptoms of anxiety and depression. One study showed that if you make less than $20,000 a year, you are twice as likely to develop symptoms of depression than somebody who makes $70,000 a year or more. So back to the results, back to the results of this basic income study that they did up in Canada. So one of the things that they did was they went and interviewed a bunch of people who like lived during that time and they talked to people and like there were some stories like there was a young woman whose mother was a mother of six and the father was disabled right and the mother brought an income by cutting people's hair in the living room and like they weren't, they were barely scraping by, barely scraping by and with this basic income, they were able to get like cream for the coffee, right? Just like the little tiny things that made life just a little bit easier. Now something that Evelyn and her team did, they went through all the medical records at the time. So what they found during that span, that hospitalizations for mental illness decreased, decreased by 9%. There were far less people going to the hospital with various types of mood disorders. Now, why is that? Why is that? Well, one of the symptoms of depression that people struggle with and there's another study I did a video about this a long time ago, one of the symptoms of depression that people struggle with is envisioning a future for themselves, okay? Like when we're depressed, we have this like kind of nihilistic view, what's the point? Like where am I going to be in five years? Like people with depression often don't think about that. So part of this, part of this is when you're having your basic needs met financially, it's a lot easier to envision a future. Like some of the people that Evelyn interviewed, they talked about how they had a brighter future ahead of them. So a lot of their symptoms of depression and anxiety started to decrease. Now, one of the arguments that people would have, like when you hear about this is, well, if we did this, people just wouldn't go to work, right? Why would they get a job? But that is the exact opposite of what is true, all right? People actually started working more, okay? And there's a few reasons for this. There's a few reasons for this. One of them is, is that working conditions got so much better, so much better. Like think about the workplace environment now. So many of us feel like we have to beg for a job. So many of us are afraid of losing a job, right? We are completely at the mercy of management and owners and all of that or corporations, whatever it is that we work for, we're at the mercy of them. But when you have a minimum basic income, you can tell a job to kick rocks if they're mistreating you, right? So when the people had more power to make these decisions, employers had to make the workplaces much better. The environment was better, the pay was better, the time off was better, all of these things were better. People were able to take more time off from eternity leave and all of that because the employers weren't able to run this thing like a dictatorship anymore because the people who are looking for jobs, they have more choices to make. Like you didn't have to find a job. You didn't have to work at a place that you hate. Now, if you don't think this is a big deal, think about if you're somebody who struggles with depression, how much of that is based on your work, right? The place where you spend eight, nine, 10 hours a day. A lot of studies say that over time, especially in the technological age where we all have these things, we're working even more hours because we're answering emails before we go to work. We're answering emails after we get to work, after we get home from work, all of these things, right? So employment is a huge part of our depression. Now, something else that plays into our depression and our anxiety is a lack of choices, right? And we feel like we don't have any options, any other choices. Think about how many times you've been depressed at your job or looking for a job because this is the only thing you could do, the only place that you can go, right? Think about that. So when you have more options available for you because you're not freaking out so much about how you're paying your bills, you have more choices on where you can work and all of that. And employers are bad. Now, there was a decrease. There was a decreased employment for teenagers. But why is that? Because more teenagers decided to stay in school. Less teenagers drop out of school to go get a job to help support their family because their family was making minimum basic income. Isn't that crazy? Then there were countless stories from this time where people were taking that money that they got from the government and using it to get secondary education and become college graduates. Like how awesome is that? So what this helps us understand is that depression isn't all about chemical imbalances and genetic predisposition. There are a lot of life circumstances that can lead to depression and anxiety. And I'm going to be making more videos about politics and mental health because think about it, think about it. I haven't even talked about mental health care. So imagine the people who didn't have enough money, right? And they're having more medical issues because of their depression and anxiety. But if they don't have health care, think about how much more anxiety and depression that gives them. You see how all this kind of ties up together? Like it's really, really interesting. So to end this video, like I said, I just want you to think about this stuff. When you're looking at your local politicians or in two years, when you're looking at the federal, we've got to be voting for our president and all that. Like look at the policies that people are backing. Look at scientific evidence. See how this ties into mental health. All of that, like Tristan and I sat down and we looked through each person in Nevada, see where they stand and all of that. And Tristan and I, we looked at both Democrats and Republicans as well as libertarians and the independents and we looked at them. We were just trying to see what policies they backed, what they're about. Because at the end of the day, for me personally, for me, that's all that matters. I don't care what letter is next to their name. I don't know. I don't care what side of the aisle they're on. I don't care if it's red, blue, whatever color it is. It's like, what policies do you back? What do I care about? Okay, cool. I'm gonna support that candidate. All right? So I highly recommend that you research this stuff if you haven't voted yet and go out and vote. Voting is going to be November 6th unless you're in a place like here where there is early voting, okay? But anyways, I wanna hear your comments and thoughts down below about this topic. Like, let me know. Like, do these studies make sense? What are the pros and cons? Like, I don't like doing political stuff because I don't want like the comment section to explode with political debates. Like, please be kind to each other. Let's have like an honest discussion about this, okay? And a kind discussion, okay? Anyways, that's all I got for you with this video. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure to subscribe and ring that notification bell. And a huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon. You are all amazing. And if you would like to support the channel over on Patreon, you can click or tap right there. All right? So thanks again so much for watching. Go out there and vote. And I'll see you next time.