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.
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
Sam Harris
American author, philosopher, and neuroscientist
Ultimately we need something like a universal basic income. There has to be someway to distribute this kind of technological wealth more fairly to the rest of the world.
Alec Ross
Former Senior Innovation Advisor to Hillary Clinton, currently running for Governor of Marylan
The economy continues to develop in the way it is with bounty and more spread, more billionaires, and more struggling members of the working class. I do think that there will be more and more momentum for safety-net programs like basic income.
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
Yuval Noah Harari
Israeli historian and professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Paying people not to work will only increase inequality and rancor. [...] If universal basic income is aimed to improve the objective conditions of the average person in 2050, it has a fair chance of succeeding. But if it is aimed to make people subjectively more satisfied with their lot in order to prevent social discontent, it is likely to fail.
MIchael Hudson
Economist. Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City.
The problem’s not only income, but what people have to spend it on. Paine didn’t talk about universal income, he talked about everybody should have the right to a place to live, a means of their own self-support. That’s independent from income. Once you economize and financialize it, you put in a distortion. You don’t want to give people income to buy what really should be public goods and servic...See More
Evgeny Morozov
Writer ans researcher on political and social implications of technology.
Basic income, therefore, is often seen as the Trojan horse that would allow tech companies to position themselves as progressive, even caring – the good cop to Wall Street’s bad cop – while eliminating the hurdles that stand in the way of further expansion. Goodbye to all those cumbersome institutions of the welfare state, employment regulations that guarantee workers’ rights or subversive attemp...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.
Chris Hedges
American journalist, Presbyterian minister, and visiting Princeton University lecturer.
The oligarchs do not propose structural change. They do not want businesses and the marketplace regulated. They do not support labor unions. They will not pay a living wage to their bonded labor in the developing world or the American workers in their warehouses and shipping centers or driving their delivery vehicles. They have no intention of establishing free college education, universal governm...See More