English music group Massive Attack have released a track calling for a Basic Income as part of a three-track record in which they reflect on the “need to change the damaging systems we live by“.
The group teamed up with professor Guy Standing, a leading academic authority on Basic Income, to make the case for giving every individual a secure financial floor on which to build their lives and contribute to society.
A Basic Income, or Citizens Income, is a regular, unconditional, individual payment made to every qualifying citizen. It is unconditional because it is paid regardless of an individual’s circumstances (i.e. not means-tested) and because no conditions other than qualifying citizenship need to be met to receive it (for example being willing to work or looking for work).
Massive Attack, formed in 1988, have sold more than 13 million records and picked up multiple awards in their 30-year career. Their support of Basic Income, they say, has “nothing to do with naïve notions of an ideal, perfect world, and everything to do with the urgent & practical need to build something better”.