My name is Justine Carwardine. I am incredibly active on Twitter and especially in the #WritingCommunity. In US politics, a revolutionary figure by the name of Andrew Yang has just dropped out of the US presidential race. His main platform was to give every American $1000 a month free and clear as a right of citizenship. He called it a Freedom Dividend, but it also has another name. That name is Universal Basic Income.

I heard a lot of detriment towards the scheme, and when I first heard I thought it was too pie in the sky, Then I looked at the data it made sense to me, but that was still not enough. So I decided to do a little experiment.

Background

First, some background. I am not wealthy. In fact, I am so poor that it is a struggle to put food on the table, and I eat the same meals pretty much every day. A year ago I was on the Newstart Payment here in Australia and I lived in a Hostel.

I was in a bad way, so I decided to pursue what I have wanted to do for years, and that was to write novels. I had numerous problems with that goal because, at the time, I didn’t even have a computer. I had an incredibly bad scarcity mindset and I couldn’t think even a month ahead.

I had just finished a course to become a security guard, but I couldn’t even afford to get the licence. So I started to look around for University courses to do with Creative Writing.

I found one through Open University Australia. Now, this allowed me to transfer my Newstart Payment to an Austudy Payment.

Difference between Newstart and Austudy

The difference between the two payments is like night and day. On Newstart, I had to try and find work and declare income every month. I also had to attend regular meetings with a job finding agency who was supposed to find me work but in the end, were next to useless.

On Austudy, the only requirement was that I continued studying the course. Now that meant that I had more time to think about the direction that my life was going in.

Life on Basic Income

About 6 months in I found I couldn’t keep up with the workload for the course. It was just too much for me to handle and I just didn’t know what to do with myself. I couldn’t drop out because that meant going back on the Newstart payment, so I decided to stay enrolled but just not actively study.

This allowed me to do a little bit of a test on myself on the concept of a Basic Income for all. I decided to devote the next 6 months to make sure that I wrote as much as possible and pursue my dream of becoming a novelist.

First off I had moved to through 4 different hostels in the span of those 6 months, and my mental health was worsening to a point where I had a massive breakdown and was considering going to Switzerland to take advantage of there euthanasia options. I was in a bad state, and the people I had surrounded myself with were just making it worse. I didn’t know what to do with my life, and I was no closer to achieving my dream.

That is when I made the decision to use the payment as a Basic Income for 6 months. The first month was rocky, but then as time progressed, my mental health improved to a point where I felt like I wanted to move out of hostels. I also cut contact with the fake friends I had been surrounding myself with.

I moved into one sharehouse, but it seemed like a dump and after a couple of months, I wanted to move out. So I left it and moved into another which so far has been much better.

But that isn’t even the most dramatic change. 6 months ago I only had one book up on Amazon for sale. It was a novel called Xian. In fact, I had taken it down because I was trying to rewrite it because I just didn’t trust my work.

Now 6 months later I have 4 novels up on Amazon for sale. They are:

1. Xian: A novel set in our time where Marcus Ormond, a Demonic Investigator, finds a demon called Samantha Xian lying on the side of a river badly beaten. It follows their struggle to get back at the angel who attacked her.

2. Marys Arrival: The sequel to Xian which follows Marcus and Samantha as they begin to unravel the many shards of what they found while hunting down Gabriel.

3. Murder on the Campaign Trail: A detective Mystery that follows an Australian Detective named Matt Bain as he is pulled into a mystery surrounding the death of someone on the Joe Sands US presidential campaign. While he is investigating, he finds love and a whole of intrigue.

4. Joe Sands Revenge: A sequel to Murder on the Campaign Trail where Matt Bain has joined his old mentor Jasons agency, and they find out the deaths of a couple of web streamers are linked to the campaign.

You can click on the titles and they will take you to the Amazon pages if you want to check them out. I also now have plans for 23 other novels and any sales will go directly to me. They are my own work and I have spent time and effort writing these novels.

There is another couple of points I want to address. Firstly I will address my physical and Mental health. Over the past 6 months, I have radically transformed my diet. I have gone from eating junk food to now cooking my food at home. I have also cut out all the sugary stuff I was eating as snacks and replaced them with fruit and vegetables. I am walking for about 20 minutes every day and I am in really good physical shape. I even went to the doctor a couple of months ago and they were astounded at my health.

I am no longer considering suicide and I am now on the path to greatly improving my mental health and probably finally being free of depression for the first time in years. It still affects me from time to time but not anymore.

Secondly, I want to address my finances. When I started on the Austudy payment, they had been in dire straights. In fact, I was relying on the payment to keep a roof over my head. At the end of the year, they have improved to a point where I can if I wanted to stay off the Newstart payment for a couple of months and this will be the first time in 2 years that I have gone off welfare. That is a major achievement for me and I think one I am quite proud of.

What this has to do with Basic Income

People against Basic Income say that it will disincentivise work. That people will become lazy and you will never get people to actually work. That it will cost too much and that this isn’t something that is feasible in the long term.

I say to them that they have never lived a life of poverty. In the year that I spent where I ad my needs met, I have flourished and produced my novels than in any other time of my life. I have been at the keyboard every single day and most days I have written at least 1000 words. Some days I have even got up to 4000 words in a day. Which was a mark which was inconceivable 12 months ago.

I believe that a Basic Income will help society to reach its full potential and tap those who at the moment have no say in the way that society operates. It is sad that Andrew Yang has dropped out of the race but his plan will live on and the tide is now turning in favour of a Basic Income.

I will welcome the day that it finally arrives because that means that more people will be able to pursue their dreams without fear or favour.