Italy Starts Handing Out Free Money
Five Star’s “citizens’ income” has noble aims, but it risks getting bogged down by its own complexity and the country’s famously inefficient bureaucracy.
Italy's new "citizen's income" has little of the revolutionary spirit of Milton Friedman.
Photographer: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Images
Italy’s Five Star Movement has risen to global prominence more for the colorful oddness of its founder, the comedian Beppe Grillo, than for the seriousness of its populist policies.
But one of its proposals has attracted genuine interest from across the world: The idea of a “citizens’ income.” This concept (a less radical version of the “universal basic income” scheme tried out by Finland) could in theory appeal to both the left and the right; the former because it might reduce inequality, and the latter because it could simplify social security.