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Basic Income
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All citizens receive a regular, liveable and unconditional sum of money. The recipient is not required to work or look for work, and the payment is given independently of any other income.
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Agree:
Tim Berners-Lee Inventor of the World Wide Web
It is one of the ways of addressing massive global inequality
Yanis Varoufakis Former finance minister of Greece, is Professor of Economics at the University of Athens
Either we are going to have a basic income that regulates this new society of ours, or we are going to have very substantial social conflicts that get far worse with xenophobia and refugees and migration and so forth.
Robert Reich Former Secretary of Labor
A minimal guarantee with regard to income, it seems to me as almost inevitable in terms the direction that the structural changes of our economy are taking us in.
Noam Chomsky Linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist
It comes from the right wing originally. Milton Friedman proposed it for example. From his point of view it was part of an effort to undermine welfare state measures. But it doesn’t have to have a reactionary component. It can be interpreted as something progressive. That people have rights. In fact if you read the universal declaration of human rights, 1948, take a look at article 45. It says peo... See More
Christopher Pissarides Nobel Prize winner in Economics
I am very much in favour, as long as we know how to apply it without taking away incentive to work at the lower end of the market
Francis Fox Piven Professor of political science and sociology at the City University of New York
Universal income would facilitate a new economic fairness and stability to a financial system careening out of control
Ralph Nader Consumer advocate, author and former presidential candidate
Basic income would get rid of chronic capitalism
Jeremy Rifkin American Economic and Social Theorist, Author, Political Advisor
Basic income is not a utopia. It's a practical business plan for the next step of the human journey
Lord Robert Skidelsky Economist
An unconditional basic income would make part-time work a possibility for many who now have to work full-time at minimum wages; it would also start to give all workers the same choice as to how much to work, and under what conditions, as is now possessed by owners of substantial capital.
Moshe Vardi AI and Automation Expert With 30 Yrs Experience
we may have to consider instituting a Basic Income Guarantee
Erik Olin Wright Professor of Sociology, University of Wisconsin - Madison
A generous basic income would contribute to revitalizing a socialist challenge to capitalism
Pranab Bardhan Berkeley Economics Professor
India should consider replacing inefficient subsidies with a basic monthly income for all citizens
Ailsa McKay Feminist Economist
A Citizens Basic Income (CBI) would ensure that the financial gains from paid work were always positive and would provide a more secure base for individuals to opt in and out of the labour market, thus promoting greater flexibility with respect to individual life choices.
Philippe Van Parijs Professor at the Faculty of Economic, Social and Political Sciences of the University of Louva
Basic Income: a simple and powerful idea for the twenty-first centuryDisagree:
Joseph Stiglitz Nobel laureate economist based at Columbia University
You want your government to think more carefully about targeting programmes that help those in need, rather than universal. That’s a trade-off given the budget constraints on the public sector
Bill Mitchell Professor of Economics and Musician
A basic income guarantee is a neo-liberal strategy for serfdom without the work ... In addition to a Job Guarantee we also demand a Services Guarantee. It is no good having a bare minimum income if the dentists and doctors and shops in your town are closed and the public transport system is deficient.
Tony Atkinson Research Fellow at Oxford and Professor at the London School of Economics
I don’t in fact favour a basic income as such, what I favour is what I call a participation income
Randall Wray Professor of Economics at U. Missouri–Kansas City, Senior Scholar at Levy Economics Institute
I do not support sending a BIG check to everyone. It is a devaluation of the currency, as prices rise so that the BIG payment essentially becomes the entry price to the marketplace. So we will need to target the BIG to those who do not (or cannot) work. Yes there’s some stigma. But, first we implement Employer of Last Resort so that anyone who is ready and willing to work has a job in the Job Gua... See More
Richard D. Wolff Marxian economist. Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
UBI creates a new difference between those people who work and earn a living and those people who, for wathever reason, don't work but still earn a living. This is going to create two classes of people (...) and for me the big issue is why do that?. I like the idea of community building by not having people that are extremely wealthy or extremely poor, but I don't like this way of doing it, becau... See More
Elizabeth S. Anderson Philosopher. University of Michigan.
Van Parijs would guarantee everyone the maximum unconditional basic income that could be sustained in a society (...) regardless of wether they were able or performing socially useful work. Lazy, able-bodied surfers would be just as entitled to that income as dependent caretakers or the disabled. (...) Van Parij's proposal effectively indulges the tastes of the lazy and irresponsible at the expen... See More
Heiner Flassbeck Economist
(Pro UBI) argument is that, today, the technological evolution is destroying so many jobs that there is no longer any other choice than to decouple income from work. This argument is absurd for many reasons, but mainly because productivity nowadays is rising much slower than several decades ago. If, one day, productivity would increase substantially again, it will be both possible and necessary to... See More
Tyler Cowen Professor of Economics, George Mason University & author of Average is Over
"Let’s send a check to everyone" is an appealing idea, but I've come around to the view that doing so would do more harm than good. [...] It eventually would choke off immigration to the U.S. Voters don't like sending money to immigrants.
Paul De Grauwe Economist. Professor in European Political Economy at the London School of Economics
A universal basic income that has the ambition to ban poverty from the world, is then immensely expensive. That doesn’t need to surprise you. To give the poor (a minority in society) a basic income, you have to also provide a basic income to the large majority that doesn’t need it. This leads to new problems. The working majority receives a basic income that stands loose from labor efforts, bu... See More
Thomas Piketty Compte officiel de Thomas Piketty, chroniqueur @lemondefr, directeur d’études @EHESS_fr et @PS
I have difficulty in understanding those who insist on wishing to pay a basic income of 500 Euros per month to those earning a salary of 2000 Euros, and then deduct the same sum by raising their taxes deducted at source.
Bryan Caplan GMU econ professor, blogger, author
The Universal Basic Income is indeed worse than the status quo. In fact, all the fundamental criticisms of the welfare state apply with even greater force.
