![]() ![]() ![]() Just about every public building is decorated in socialist red and Quaqua's office sports portraits of communist revolutionary Che Guevara, whose name is also soon to be given to a new hospital. In Marica - a surviving Workers' Party bastion in increasingly right-leaning Brazil - the basic income idea fits in well with the leadership's socialist fervor. The concept has gained traction more recently among high-powered business thinkers, especially in Silicon Valley, as they ponder how society will cope with the ever-expanding role of automation - a trend some futurists believe may create mass unemployment. The idea of a universal basic income isn't new, but long-considered as a potential tool for social equality and redistribution of wealth. He was replaced by another candidate from the leftist Workers' Party, Francisco Horta. "We are a laboratory for the Brazilian left," says Washington Quaqua, who introduced the experiment as mayor in December 2015 before stepping down. In Marica, a seaside town of about 150,000 people near Rio de Janeiro, the left-wing municipal government has spent the last year finding out how it works. Governments and think-tanks around the world are increasingly fascinated by the idea of a universal basic income, where citizens are given cash to spend as they want. Does being handed money every month - no strings attached - sound attractive? The residents of a small town in Brazil are finding out.
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