As Ireland’s $1,500-a-month basic income pilot program for creatives nears its end in February, officials have to answer a simple question: Is it worth it?
With four months to go, they say the answer is yes.
Earlier this month, Ireland’s government announced its 2026 budget, which includes “a successor to the pilot Basic Income Scheme for the Arts to begin next year” among its expenditures.
Ireland is just one of many places experimenting with guaranteed basic income programs, which provide recurring, unrestricted payments to people in a certain demographic. These programs differ from a universal basic income, which would provide payments for an entire population.
Can I ask how old you are, and what your parents do/did growing up?
I don’t want to come off as mocking, but it sounds like you don’t understand the role art plays in a functioning society.
Artists explore ideas at the lowest level of a chain of creativity that extends up to scientists and decision makers. In the same way that rocket engineers rely on physicists and chemists to uncover the science that underlies engineering, and physicists and chemists require mathematicians the uncover the math that underlies physics and chemistry, artists essentially research the human condition to allow their society to weigh whether building a rocket is worth doing; where it should go; what it should do; who should be on it; etc.
Our collapsing society could in some part be blamed on the fact that our economic system has failed to fund research into the ideas and social technologies that we need to transition away from obsolete social systems.
I think you are abstracting and giving too much credit to art. I would define myself as an absolute noob in art though in other fields I am pretty capable and creative. It is all about the desire to do something. And it is not art and philosophy that should be leading our society but logic
That’s pathetic. You’re either an artist or a philosopher. No engineer would be able to write such nonsense.
(What no art education does to a mfer)
I’m actually an automation engineer!
Look: it’s fine to be unfamiliar with ideas, but please don’t be rude and stubborn about not knowing something.
You should read Einstein’s writing. Sagan too. If you place technical knowledge as the highest (or only) form of intelligence then maybe they’ll break through for you.
I’d hope no artist or philosopher would be as blinkered as this, or as arrogant. It’s odd how some engineers decide that engineering is the only thing worth bothering with in life, and that all problems are engineering problems of one kind or another. It’s very narrow-minded, and it leads to dangerous political positions with a complete unawareness of the ideology being bought into. I’ve also met engineers who can see more broadly, but it’s definitely a mental trap some fall into.
It is artists who try to find some excuse to call themselves important. And how they deserve to be praised. And how they’re ushering in the progress.
While in reality there are very few artists who created something remarkable, and many of them were, actually, engineers who decided to add some bells and whistles to their work.