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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.
Agree:
Mark Zuckerberg CEO at Facebook
An entrepreneurial culture thrives when it’s easy to try lots of new ideas. We should explore ideas like universal basic income to give everyone a cushion to try new things. There is something wrong with our system when I can make billions of dollars in 10 years while millions of students can’t afford to pay off their loans, let alone start a business.
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.
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
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
Tim O'Reilly Founder and CEO, O'Reilly Media. Investor. Studied at Harvard University.
I completely agree that Universal Basic Income is a good idea. But I think that’s just the beginning of the discussion.
Sam Altman President of Y Combinator. Investor at Reddit, Stripe, Change.org, Pinterest and many others
I think it’s good to start studying [basic income] early. I’m fairly confident that at some point in the future, as technology continues to eliminate traditional jobs and massive new wealth gets created, we’re going to see some version of this at a national scale.
Andrew Yang 2020 US Presidential Candidate
America needs to take radical steps to prevent Great Depression-level unemployment and a total societal meltdown, including handing out trillions of dollars in cash.
Dustin Moskovitz Co-founder of Facebook
How can we help as many people as possible as much as possible with the resources we have?
Molly Crabapple Artist
The number one thing that would let more independent artists exists in America is a universal basic income.
Tim Höttges CEO of Deutsch Telekom
We have to shield our society. An unconditional simple income can be a basis to lead a decent existence.
Joe Kaeser CEO of Siemens
A kind of basic income will be absolutely inevitable
Enrique Dans Professor of Innovation at IE Business School and blogger
Utopia? Not at all. We need to advance the discussion and make politicians understand that it is the only way forward. And if we don’t move forward, we’re going to end up in a place none of us is going to like.
Richard Branson Founder of Virgin (400 companies)
Policies like these can help people struggling just to survive and allow them to get on their feet, be entrepreneurial and be more creative.
Toomas Hendrik Ilves President of Estonia since 2006
The rapid replacement of jobs by machines/artifical intelligence will lead to the need for a Universal Basic Income.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu Social Rights Activist Who Fought Apartheid
The basic income movement is designed to enhance the dignity and well-being inclusion of all people and move us closer to our vision of social equity
Martin Ford Futurist & NY Times bestselling author of #RiseoftheRobots
Basic income can be a solution to inequality and insecurity, not just mass unemployment
Pedro Domingos Professor of computer science at UW and author of 'The Master Algorithm'
In developed countries, we don't let people starve or go without emergency medical care, so we effectively already have a basic income. Let's start by making it less random and inefficient.
Andy Stern Author Raising the Floor; Richman Center, Columbia University; Former President SEIU
We're about to lose some of the most basic programs we had [because of technology], like Medicare, potentially. I don’t think there's any proof that it's any more politically feasible to hold on to what we have than to build on a big new idea.
Jean-Yves Duclos Minister of Families, Children and Social Development in Canada
I think it’s the principles behind the idea [of a guaranteed income] that matter. These principles are greater simplicity for the government, greater transparency on the part of families and greater equity for everyone
Gotz Werner Founder of Dm-drogerie Markt (Germany's Walgreens)
There has always been someone who put trust in me and said: Mr. Werner, show us what you can do. Exactly the same way the basic income says: We grant you so that you can live humbly but with dignity, and now you can show us what you can do.
Yahtzee Croshaw Creator of Popular Webseries Zero Punctuation
There's probably a huge amount of problems in the world that would probably be fixed if there was a guaranteed income
Keith Hobbs Mayor of Thunder Bay, Canada
If you have a basic income, you have a certain degree of self-worth. A set income and a ‘housing first’ strategy would work wonders,
Naheed Nenshi Mayor of Calgary
I am really, really interested if he will bring that to bear in terms of some really significant changes to the taxation system that would really help us manage poverty in a brand new way,
Willem Buiter Citi's Chief Economist
Use the tax-transfer mechanism (e.g. through a guaranteed minimum income for all, or an ambitious negative income tax, public funding of health care and long-term care etc.) to support those left behind by technological advances.
