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Stockton, California, gave residents a guaranteed income. Here’s what happened
What would happen if you gave people $500 a month, no strings attached? Stockton, California set out to answer that question two years ago as one of the first U.S. towns to pilot a Universal Basic Income program. Former Stockton…
Why universal basic income isn’t going away any time soon
On June 5, the Swiss voted on a proposal for universal basic income. While the proposal was rejected, supporters claim that this is just the beginning of a transition as inevitable as the eight-hour-day once was.
Ask yourself, says a notorious ‘Occupy’ academic, should your job exist?
Increasingly, anthropologist and Occupy activist David Graeber argues, American workers are paid to look busy. The expansion of our days with meaningless work and the growth of entire industries that shouldn't exist, Graeber writes, fuel resentment toward "real" professions like…
Why this ‘gender-crossing’ economist prefers ‘motherly libertarianism’ to government paternalism
Economist Deirdre McCloskey wants to be taxed to finance a minimum income, not a minimum wage. People couldn't persuasively beg with the former, she says, and the government would get out of the business of treating adults like children.
Making a guaranteed income politically viable, Megan McArdle says, would require closing off U.S. borders to immigrants from lower-skilled countries. And that would increase global poverty more than a basic income would reduce U.S. poverty.
Could a guaranteed basic income give rise to another band like the Beatles? Or support a scientific breakthrough like the light bulb? Occupy activist David Graeber thinks a lump sum basic income would liberate workers to do the work they…
What rankles conservatives and liberals about the current welfare system? It's a large bureaucracy, and some say, it doesn't respect poor people's ability to make their own decisions. The basic income, however, would give everyone a lump sum, and as…
Liberal economist Barbara Bergmann opposes the basic income for all the reasons libertarian economist Charles Murray supports it. Instead of replacing public assistance with a minimum income, she would prefer beefing up existing social welfare programs to be more like…
Charles Murray is no fan of U.S. bureaucracy. But cutting checks, he admits, is one of the few things big government does well. He thinks cutting bigger checks -- in the form of a guaranteed income for every adult citizen…
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