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.
As laudable as a program as this is, it stings a bit being in Ireland, which has essentially become a tax haven for multinational corporations. It is nice to support the arts, but it shouldn’t come off the backs of shadily robbing world governments of billions in tax revenues. The cultural impacts of this have become extremely toxic, and hostile to the arts overall internationally.
It also seems like a strange job program. I’m close with someone who works for a US company that incorporated in Ireland. The company is required to have a number of Irish employees who live in the country. Those employees don’t do anything.
Won’t somebody PLEASE think of the world governments.
You do realize that it’s mainly the poor people who are suffering when the rich don’t get taxed, right? It’s the governments getting robbed, yes, but that wasn’t the main takeaway from that comment.
Everyone in here crying about artist getting money and trying to make me think it’s a bad thing is summarily dismissed from my mind.