“Work saves us from three great evils,” wrote Voltaire. “Boredom, vice, and need.” For the Enlightenment philosopher, toil wasn’t merely a means to gain a living – but the thing that infuses life itself with value. That axiom gets to the heart of how our culture views work.
So it is unsurprising that some find the proposal of a universal basic income (UBI) – which would untether wages from work – incomprehensible. Appearing on Good Morning Britain earlier this week, the businesswoman and Apprentice winner Michelle Dewberry called the potential effectiveness of forthcoming UBI pilot schemes the “height of delusion”.
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