Poverty isn't a lack of character; it's a lack of cash | Rutger Bregman

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 24 October 2017

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"Ideas can and do change the world," says historian Rutger Bregman, sharing his case for a provocative one: guaranteed basic income. Learn more about the idea's 500-year history and a forgotten modern experiment where it actually worked -- and imagine how much energy and talent we would unleash if we got rid of poverty once and for all.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This TED Talk features historian Rutger Bregman, recorded live at TED-2017.
0:16.4	I'd like to start with a simple question.
0:24.8	Why do the poor make so many poor decisions?
0:31.7	I know it's a harsh question, but take a look at the data. The poor borrow more,
0:37.5	save less, smoke more, exercise less, drink more, and eat less healthfully. Why?
0:39.7	Well, the standard explanation was once summed up by the British Prime Minister
0:43.3	Margaret Thatcher, and she called poverty a personality defect.
0:49.6	A lack of character, basically.
0:52.6	Now, I'm sure not many of you would be so blunt.
0:57.6	But the idea that there's something wrong with the poor themselves
1:01.0	is not restricted to Mrs. Stature.
1:04.5	Some of you may believe that the poor should be held responsible
1:07.2	for their own mistakes,
1:09.5	and others may argue that we should help them to make better
1:12.6	decisions. But the underlying assumption is the same. There's something wrong with them.
1:21.1	If we could just change them. If we could just teach them how to live their lives, if they would
1:25.7	only listen. And to be honest, if they would only listen.
1:33.3	And to be honest, this was what I thought for a long time.
1:36.3	It was only a few years ago that I discovered that everything I thought I knew about poverty was wrong.
1:41.3	It all started when I accidentally stumbled upon a paper by a few American psychologists.
1:46.0	They had traveled 8,000 miles all the way to India for a fascinating study.
1:50.0	And it was an experiment with sugar cane farmers.
	...

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