Unconditional Basic Income

bluevelvet wrote: »

I’ll be turning 26 soon. I’m unemployed and currently receiving social welfare which I collect each week. Collecting my payment and signing each month causes me such shame that I wear a hat on those days. My confidence and self-esteem have plummeted. I have no motivation. I’ve become passive, hopeless and angry. I suffer from depression and anxiety. I no longer have any social life. I’ve gained weight and my general appearance and physical health has deteriorated. In short I do not feel like a person anymore. I don’t feel I have the right to the same quality of life as those with jobs. This is how I feel as an unemployed person.

When I visit the welfare office I tolerate the rude staff, or waiting for over an hour to talk to somebody, or a delay in my payment. I tolerate it because I need the payment and In a way I feel this is the treatment I deserve for being a drain on my Country…but part of me feels I don’t deserve it. The approach to those on welfare seems to be to make it so shameful and unpleasant that nobody would want to remain on it. So I wasn’t surprised when I heard the government were proposing to send the long term unemployed out on the streets with a yellow vest to offer directions to tourist and pay them 1 euro an hour.

I receive welfare payments under the assumption that I’m looking for work but the truth is I no longer feel fit for work. I’m such a mental and physical wreck that I wouldn’t last a day in any job. I don’t sleep at night thinking that eventually my payments will be cut or I’ll be forced to do a job I don’t want to do. Either way my mental health will be further devastated and I don’t think I could survive that.

And what ABOUT my mental health, where can I go to receive help?
I was 17 when I was first prescribed anto-depressants. I visited my doctor for help. I had self esteem issues, identity issues and some other issues from my past that I needed to talk about and straighten out in my mind, I was lonely. I needed somebody to talk to. Instead I got higher and higher doses of anti-depressant medication that made me feel “Not me”.

As for having somebody to talk to, my doctor advised I go to my local free clinic. I went to the clinic and was shuffled around to(I’m not kidding) six different therapist, a different one each visit, and each time I would have to repeat my story, which was so hard the first time around. It’s not easy telling a total stranger the most intimate details about you and your life.

One night I was feeling so depressed and hopeless that my mother felt there was something very wrong and brought me to the hospital. I was lucky that one of the therapists from the clinic happened to be working there that night and cared enough to prevent me from being hospitalized. I don’t want to think about where my life might have gone if I had had to endure being hospitalized for mental illness. For a teenager, identity is everything and being confined to a hospital and fed medication only strengthens the idea in a person head that there is something wrong with them, that they are “different” from other people.
The other option is to pay for therapy. It’s ineffective and frustrating trying to explain your problems to a stranger. Not to mind that many therapists are unsuitable or unqualified.

The tragedy of the whole thing is that I know I could get begin to get my life on track if I were in the right circumstances. I’ve been reading about a “Guaranteed Basic Income” which is a unconditional payment every person could be entitled to without paid work. It would eliminate the anxiety of finding a job and worrying about providing for food and shelter. It would eliminate the shame and anxiety of being on welfare. It would eliminate poverty. If I had this payment I could rebuild my confidence, have a social life again, and a routine. I could feel human. I would have the freedom to find work without any pressure or anxiety of failing, I would have the freedom to work on my own projects. My well being and happiness would improve.

I know I’m not alone in this. There are other people out there stuck in a cycle of unemployment, a welfare system that promotes shame and guilt, and a flawed mental health service that arguably does more harm than good.

People are happy when they are doing fulfilling work. Nobody wants to sit around and do nothing. We want to be productive. If we could eliminate the pressure of finding a job by providing a basic income, I know we would see more innovation, more creativity and above all a higher standard of general wellbeing.

People would actually become better, happier more enthusiastic workers if they were working not because they had to but because they choose to. And with the threat of Technological Unemployment replacing jobs in every sector of the job market, we need this more than ever.

basicincomeireland.com/if-you-are-unemployed.html