On Basic Income: Interview with Götz Werner
page 3 of 3

taz: You're a dreamer.

GW: If you don't have dreams you can't design your life. If you build a house before dreaming about it first it's going to turn out pretty mediocre.

taz: You're one to talk. You own over 1,700 drugstores, earning a yearly 3.7 billion euros. You are one of the richest 500 Germans.

GW: That's incorrect. Of course, just like other entrepreneurs, I wanted just more and more in the past. Now my main goal is maximising the purpose.

taz: You see the world with different eyes?

GW: I've read the classics. Goethe, Schiller. I understood that my own success is not important. I want to help others to success. It's not about business, it's about people. I try to take people as they would like to be.

taz:"Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come", you say.

GW: Says Victor Hugo. I'm just quoting him.

taz: Has the time come for your idea?

GW: At least it's finally being discussed. Up until two years ago it was a matter for experts. When I hold seminars today, it is to full halls.

taz: What has changed?

GW: The old political slogans have nothing to do with the world that people live in anymore. In spite of temporary success stories, unemployment is on the rise and the unrestrained growth is damaging our resources. Even if Angela Merkel (the current head of German government -translator.) was to shout "full employment is possible" every morning, nobody would believe her.

taz: Even within political parties, all the way from the far left to the right, the unconditional basic income is gathering a following. Why is that?

GW: Because it's both the most radical form of socialism and the most radical form of capitalism. I received a note from a listener at one of my talks saying "Your basic income model has united my socialist heart with my neoliberal mind."

***

Götz Werner is the founder of a major German drug store chain (with 1700 stores) and is one of the most influential advocates of basic income in Germany. He was interviewed by Jens König and Hannes Koch in the newspaper 'taz' ("die tageszeitung). The interview was translated to english by Florian Piesche and posted to the blog 21st Century Digital Boy Dec.7, 2009. Since October 2003, Werner has been the head of Cross-Department Group for Entrepreneurial Studies at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Original German text can be found on the taz website.

Home