Ireland launches a permanent basic income project for artists

According to the reporting, the scheme—British/Irish people call big government projects like this “schemes,” possibly due to a lack of cultural familiarity with the works of the Canadian outsider artist Snidely Whiplash—is based off an earlier pilot program that found that, a), artists could successfully live off the payments, which amount to about $386 a week, and, b), Irish society benefited from paying creatives to be creative. That includes financial benefits—the country’s culture minister, Patrick O’Donovan, claimed that every euro invested in the pilot generated a 39 percent increase in revenue—and also in the part where the actual artists were happier, and got to spend more time on their work, as opposed to the general drudging horror of keeping their corporeal vessels from collapsing.

Given that the 2,000-person roster for the new program represents 0.03 percent of the Irish population, competition will presumably be pretty tight for the spots. (Those who don’t get selected are invited to apply again in 2029, when the project will be renewed.) Requirements for the program are designed to ensure that applicants are citizens of Ireland who are “professional artists” with “a professional creative practice” based in the country.