Shadowing Practice: Universal Basic Income Explained – Free Money for Everybody? UBI - Learn English Speaking with Video
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What if the state covered your cost of living?
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Would you still go to work?
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Go back to school?
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Not work at all?
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What would you do?
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This concept is called Universal Basic Income, or UBI, and it's nothing less than the most ambitious social policy of our times.
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In 2017, basic income is gaining momentum around the world.
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First trials are ongoing or on their way, and the growing number of countries are considering UBI as an alternative to welfare.
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How would it work, and what are the key arguments for and against?
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Right now, people can't really agree what universal basic income is or should be.
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Some want to use it to eliminate welfare and cut bureaucracy.
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Others want it as a free extra for existing programs, or even want it to be so high that work itself becomes optional.
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For this video we'll talk mostly about the minimum basic income, enough money to be above the poverty line.
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In the US this means about $1,000 a month or $12,000 a year.
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The money would not be taxed and you could do whatever you wanted with it.
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In this scenario, UBI is a way of transferring the wealth of a society while still keeping the free market in tax.
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But if we hand out free money, will people just spend it on booze and stop working?
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A 2013 study by the World Bank specifically examined
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if poor people waste their handouts on tobacco and alcohol if they receive it in the form of cash.
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The clear answer?
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No, they don't.
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The opposite is true.
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Other studies have shown that the richer you are, the more drugs and alcohol you consume.
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The lazy and drunk poor person is a stereotype rather than reality.
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What about laziness?
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Universal basic income test runs done in Canada in the 1970s showed that around 1% of the recipients stopped working, mostly to take care of their kids.
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On average, people reduced their working hours by less than 10%.
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The extra time was used to achieve goals like going back to school or looking for better jobs.
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But if laziness and drugs are not a huge deal, why doesn't our current welfare state solve poverty?
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Welfare or unemployment programs often come with a lot of strings attached, like taking part in courses,
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applying to a certain number of jobs a month, or accepting any kind of job offer, no matter if it's a good fit or what it pays.
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Besides the loss of personal freedom, these conditions are often a huge waste of time and only serve to make the unemployment statistics seem less bad.
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Often your time would be much better spent looking for the right job, continuing education or starting a business.
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Another unwanted side effect of many welfare programs is that they trap people in poverty and promote passive behavior.
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Imagine a benefit of $1,000 each month.
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In a lot of programs, if you earn a single dollar extra, the whole thing is taken away.
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If you take a job that's paying $1,200, you might not only lose your benefits, but because of your taxes and other costs like transportation,
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you might end up having less money than before before.
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So if you actively try to better your situation and your total income is not improving or even shrinking,
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welfare can create a ceiling that traps people in poverty and rewards passive behavior.
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A basic income can never be cut and therefore getting a job and additional income will always make your financial situation better.
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Work is always rewarded.
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Instead of a ceiling it creates a floor from which people can lift themselves up.
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But even if UBI is the better model, is it economically feasible?
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What about inflation?
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Won't prices just rise, making everything just like it was before?
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Since the money is not being created by magic or printers, it needs to be transferred from somewhere.
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It's more of a shift of funds than the creation of new ones.
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Hence, no inflation.
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Okay, but how do we pay for it?
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There's no right answer here because the world is too diverse.
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How well off a country is?
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What the local values are?
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Are things like high taxes or cutting the defense budget politically acceptable or not?
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How much welfare state is already in place and is it effective?
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Each country has its own individual path to a UBI.
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The easiest way to pay for a UBI is to end all welfare and use the free funds to finance it.
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Not only would this make a number of government agencies disappear, which in itself saves money, it would also eliminate a lot of bureaucracy.
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On the other hand, cutting them could leave many people worse off than before.
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If the goal is to have a foundation for everybody, there still need to be programs of some sort, because just like countries, people are not the same.
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The second way, higher taxes, especially for the very wealthy.
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In the US, for example, there's been a lot of economic growth, but most of the benefits from it have gone to the richest few percent.
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The wealth gap is rapidly widening, and many argue that it might be time to distribute the spoils more evenly to preserve the social peace.
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There could be taxes on financial transactions, capital, land value, carbon or even robots.
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But UBI is not necessarily expensive.
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According to a recent study, a UBI of $1,000 per month in the US could actually grow the GDP by 12% over 8 years
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because it would enable poor people to spend more and increase overall demand.
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What about the people who do the dirty work?
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Who will work in the fields, crawl through sewers, or lift pianos?
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If you don't need to for survival, will people still do hard, boring and unfulfilling labour?
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UBI might give them enough leverage to demand better pay and working conditions.
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A study calculated that every extra dollar going to wage earners would add about $1.21 to the national economy,
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while every extra dollar going to high-income Americans would add only 39 cents.
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There would still be very rich and poor people, but we could eliminate fear, suffering and existential panic for a significant part of the population.
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Making poor citizens better off could be a smart economic tactic.
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For some, this isn't enough.
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They want a UBI large enough to live a middle-class existence.
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If we set the financial obstacle aside, this idea fundamentally challenges how our society is constructed.
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By earning money, you earn the possibility to take part in society.
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This determines your status and options, but it also forces many people into spending huge chunks of their time on things they don't care about.
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In 2016, only 33% of US employees were engaged at work,
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16% were actively miserable, and the remaining 51% were only physically present.
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Would 67% of people stop working if they could?
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It would be unfair to portray work as just a chore.
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Work gives us something to do.
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It challenges us.
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It motivates us to improve.
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It forces us to engage.
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Many find friends or partners at work.
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We work for social status, wealth and our place in the world.
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We're looking for something to do with our lives.
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And for many people, work gives them meaning.
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There are other concerns with UBI.
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If all welfare programs were exchanged for one single payment, payment, this gives the government a lot of leverage.
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Individual programs are easier to attack or cut than a multitude.
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Or populists might promise drastic changes to the UBI to get into power.
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And a universal basic income doesn't tackle all problems when it comes to inequality.
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Rents for example.
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While $1,000 might be great in the countryside, it's not a lot for expensive metropolitan areas,
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which could lead to poor people moving outwards and the difference between rich and poor becoming even more extreme.
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And of course, for some people, the concept of work itself not being essential for survival is appalling.
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So is the universal basic income a good idea?
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The honest answer is that we don't know yet.
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There needs to be a lot more research, more and bigger test runs.
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We need to think about what kind of UBI we want and what we're prepared to give up to pay for it.
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The potential is huge.
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It might be the most promising model to sustainably eliminate poverty.
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It might seriously reduce the amount of desperation in the world and make us all much less stressed out.
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This video was made possible by a universal basic income provided by you, our viewers.
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10,000 people around the world gift us a monthly income on patreon.com slash kurzgesagt
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You enable us to pay salaries
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and buy new hardware You enable us to make more videos and you enable us to spend more time on them
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Kurzgesagt would truly not be what it is today without your help
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You help us stay independent and you give us the freedom to put quality before quantity Thank you so much
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 114 sentences and 1506 words to shadow. The speech runs for 9:48. The speaker talks at a natural 154 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| welfare noun | /ˈwɛlˌfɛɚ/ | Health, safety, happiness and prosperity; well-being in any respect. |
| universal adjective | /ˌjunəˈvɜɹs(ə)l/ | Of or pertaining to the universe. |
| poverty noun | /ˈpɑːvɚti/ | The quality or state of being poor; lack of money |
| enable verb | /ɪˈneɪ.bəl/ | To make somebody able (to do, or to be, something); to give sufficient ability or power to do or to be; to give strength or ability to. |
| eliminate verb | /ɪˈlɪm.ɪ.neɪt/ | To completely remove, get rid of, put an end to. |
| earn verb | /ɝn/ | To gain (success, reward, recognition) through applied effort or work. |
| survival noun | /sɚˈvaɪ.vəl/ | The fact or act of surviving; continued existence or life. |
| engage verb | /ɪnˈɡeɪd͡ʒ/ | To engross or hold the attention of; to keep busy or occupied. |
| reward noun | /ɹɪˈwɔɹd/ | Something of value given in return for an act. |
| trap noun | /tɹæp/ | A machine or other device designed to catch (and sometimes kill) animals, either by holding them in a container, or by catching hold of part of the body. |
| actively adverb | /ˈæktɪvli/ | In an active manner. |
| unemployment noun | /ʌn.ɪmˈplɔɪ.mənt/ | The state of having no job; joblessness. |
| ceiling noun | /ˈsilɪŋ/ | The overhead closure of a room. |
| inflation noun | /ɪnˈfleɪ.ʃən/ | An act, instance of, or state of expansion or increase in size, especially by injection of a gas or liquid. |
| passive adjective | /ˈpæs.ɪv/ | Being subjected to an action without producing a reaction. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| go back to verb | To stem from; to originate in. | |
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. | |
| hand out verb | To distribute; to give out, either by hand or as if so (figuratively). | |
| stress out verb | To become stressed. | |
| take away verb | /ˌteɪk əˈweɪ/ | To remove something and put it in a different place. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | if we hand out free money, will people |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is called · would not be taxed · is taken |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have shown · there's been |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 12 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, doesn't, we're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: inflation /ɪnˈfleɪ.ʃən/, transaction /tɹænˈzækʃən/, ambitious /æmˈbɪʃ.əs/, optional /ˈɑp.ʃə.nəl/, desperation /ˌdɛspəˈɹeɪʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: universal /ˌjunəˈvɜɹs(ə)l/, eliminate /ɪˈlɪm.ɪ.neɪt/, unemployment /ʌn.ɪmˈplɔɪ.mənt/, bureaucracy /bjʊˈɹɑ.kɹə.si/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like welfare, universal, poverty.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.