[Video link] The presidential limo is a 1987 VW Bug. The presidential pooch has only three functioning legs. The presidential laundry hangs on the line, washed in water hauled from a well in the yard. The president himself, Jose Mujica, who won a landslide victory in Uraguay's 2009 election, carries six bullet wounds in his body, a legacy of his time with the Tupamaros guerrillas in the '60s and '70s. He also spent 14 years in a military prison, including two confined to the bottom of a well. Mujica donates 90 percent of his $144,000 annual salary to charity, bringing his effective income...

23 November, 2012

When German aid workers proposed a basic income support program in Otjivero, an impoverished, disease-ridden, hard-drinking village in Namibia, critics scoffed.  "They'll just drink more," one predicted. But a year into the program, which distributes $100 Namibian (roughly $14.15 Canadian) per month to each of Otjivero's 961 residents, school attendance has soared, public health improved, and crime dropped. Spiegel Online International reports: The basic income scheme doesn't work like charity, but like a constitutional right. Under the plan, every citizen, rich or poor, would be entitled to it starting at birth. There would be no poverty test, no conditions and, therefore,...

20 September, 2009