Let’s Invest In Being Happier

US Presidential hopeful Andrew Yang wants to rescue society by giving everybody a $10,000 guaranteed income. By coincidence, I was given £10,000 last month – and it’s already transforming my life.

Coins sprouting green shoots
Image: Nattanan Kanchanaprat/Pixabay

TODAY, I’M SEEING my psychotherapist for the first time in three months – and at last I have some good news to give him.

In fact, I hope he will still recognise me, because a lot has changed since we last met.

Back in the summer, I was a cynical, depressed, old guy who felt trapped in his long-time role as a House Husband and Teaching Assistant.

But now, I feel younger and more hopeful.

I am – at last – making realistic plans about how I can change my life, and am putting them into practice.

I sense that I might return to work, and again reap the benefits – financial, social and emotional – that come with doing a job I like.

And, as a result, I feel suddenly, giddily, happy.

All at once, I am grateful for myriad things: from the beauty of this morning’s sunrise to the autumn splendour of the trees at the top of my road.

I am even pleased that today is Monday, because Monday is the day my favourite podcasts come out.

And what has made the difference to me is – more or less – money.

Continue reading “Let’s Invest In Being Happier”

Holding Out For A Hero (Who Advocates A Guaranteed Basic Annual Income…)

Heard of Andrew Yang? He’s the progressive genius who might yet save us all…

Andrew Yang campaigning
Image: Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons

MAYBE there really is a light at the end of the tunnel.
 
It’s a dim one for sure – and almost obscured by the black pall of hopelessness generated by Johnson, Trump, prorogation, austerity, Iran, yada yada – but it is there.
 
And the person holding the torch is a progressive American politician called Andrew Yang, who wants to revolutionise the way we live and work in the western world.
 
For a start, he wants to give us free money.
 
And after that, he wants to turn upside-down the way we think about work – so that a mother or a care assistant might be regarded, and rewarded, as highly as a banker.
 
Yang is one of 10 candidates left in the race to become the US Democratic Party’s candidate to take on Trump in 2020 – and currently polling fifth behind Big Beasts Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris.
 
More excitingly, he claims he is “peeling off” disillusioned Trump supporters from 2016 with his promise of a so-called ‘Freedom Dividend’ – or a guaranteed $1,000 monthly income for all Americans.

Continue reading “Holding Out For A Hero (Who Advocates A Guaranteed Basic Annual Income…)”