Noam Chomsky & Yanis Varoufakis discuss Basic Income

In the following video, Yanis Varoufakis and Noam Chomsky talk about the concept of a basic income guarantee also knowns as a universal income. To find out more about this concept visit the basic income network.

Is a basic income neccessary in today’s day and age?

How will it impact humanity’s future?

How did this idea orginate?

Is it compatible with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

These questions and many others are addressed in the following video:

VIDEO: Yanis Varoufakis and Noam Chomsky on a Basic Income

NOTE to Yanis Varoufakis: The video with Yanis Varoufakis was originally published by the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute.

NOTE to Noam Chomsky: This event with Noam Chomsky took place on the 6th of January, 2015 and due the the developments in global affairs, acTVism Munich felt the need to republish these videos to inform the public.

Notable excerpts from the video:

Yanis Varoufakis on the future of humanity and the comparison to sciene fiction films:

We are moving towards a science fiction world that will become non-fiction. But remember, science fiction has two possibilities. One is a Star Trek society, where we’re all equals, and we all benefit from the technology. We don’t have to work. There’s a hole in the wall, you go to it, you get anything you want from it, nobody has been exploited, nobody has worked for it, the machines do it for you. So the machinery, the technology is humanity’s servant. And then we can sit around and explore the universe, we can have philosophical discussions about the meaning of life, which is wonderful, right? That is a good scenario. But then there’s the Matrix too, where the artifacts that we’ve created enslave us. And then we become caught up in an illusion of freedom, rather than the real thing. Whether we go to a Star Trek or to a Matrix like outcome, as a result of technological innovation, is the result of politics. And if it’s not democratic, it will be a Matrix like world.

Noam Chomsky on the origins of a basic income:

Actually that’s an interesting concept. It comes from the right wing originally. Milton Friedman proposed it for example. From his point of view it was part of an effort to undermine welfare state measures. But it doesn’t have to have a reactionary component. It can be interpreted as something progressive.

To read the full transcript of this video, click here.

To view our entire video playlist with Yanis Varoufakis and DiEM25, click here.

To view our entire video playlist with Noam Chomsky, click here.

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About Yanis Varoufakis:

Yanis Varoufakis is professor of Economic Theory at the University of Athens, founder of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25) and former finance minister of Greece.

As finance minister of Greece he resigned shortly after he found out that his prime minister decided to cave into the austerity program of the Troika that the majority of Greece rejected in the historic OXI vote.

To view our entire video playlist with Yanis Varoufakis and DiEM25, click here.

About Noam Chomsky:

Noam Chomsky is a world-renowned political dissident, anarchist, linguist, author and institute professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he’s taught for more than half a century.

Chomsky has written more than 100 books, his latest being “Because We Say So“. Chomsky has been a highly influential academic figure throughout his career, and was cited within the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) more often than any other living scholar from 1980 to 1992.

His work has influenced a wide range of domains, including artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science, logic, mathematics, music theory and analysis, psychology and immunology.