The Robots Are Not Coming

Earlier this week, I attended The BIG Conference, where OpenResearch presented results by Vivalt et al. from their three-year study of people who received unconditional money. Unsurprisingly, the study participants became less inclined to work jobs. Noah Smith, among others, interpreted this as bad news for Universal Basic Income. But the key...

I wanted to respond to an article recently posted by Scott Santens because he’s highlighted something I see as a major problem in basic income discourse. Elon Musk has been talking about “Universal High Income,” which he distinguishes from regular Universal Basic Income (UBI) in two ways: a) it’s higher, and b) it presumably exists somewhere in...

Ellis Winningham recently wrote a ten-part blog series examining Universal Basic Income (UBI) through the lens of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). Here, I will respond to the first post in the series, entitled “Terms Matter.”

There’s no doubt that the economic carnage that has rocked the world in the last week or so was triggered by a contraction in economic activity associated with Covid-19 and the efforts to contain it. But there’s also no doubt that this shock exposed underlying issues, setting off a cascade of chaos and fear through an economic system overloaded...

People move to a new country if they expect their lives to improve. Robust infrastructure, favorable climate, and stable governance all contribute to a country’s appeal. Basic income takes this to the extreme. A country with basic income actually pays people to live there. Photo by Nitish Meena