essay on universal basic income

The Deep and Enduring History of Universal Basic Income

Support for universal basic income (UBI) has grown so rapidly over the past few years that people might think the idea appeared out of nowhere. In fact, the idea has roots going back hundreds or even thousands of years, and activists have been floating similar ideas with gradually increasing frequency for more than a century.

Since 1900, the concept of a basic income guarantee (BIG) has experienced three distinct waves of support, each larger than the last. The first, from 1910 to 1940, was followed by a down period in the 1940s and 1950s. A second and larger wave of support happened in the 1960s and 1970s, followed by another lull in most countries through about 2010. BIG’s third, most international, and by far largest wave of support began to take off in the early 2010s, and it has increased every year since then.

Before the First Wave

We could trace the beginnings of UBI into prehistory, because many have observed that “prehistoric” (in the sense of nonliterate) societies had two ways of doing things that might be considered forms of unconditional income.

First, nomadic, hunting and gathering societies of less than 60 people have often been observed to treat all land as commons , meaning that everyone can forage on the land but no one can own it. A similar right to use land has existed in many small-scale agrarian communities right up to the enclosure movement, which was not complete in Europe until the 20th century and is not complete around the world today. The connection between common land and UBI is that both institutions allow every individual to have access to the resources they need to survive without conditions imposed by others.

Second, most observed small-scale, nomadic, hunter-gatherer societies had strong obligations to share what they had with others. If someone camping with the group found more food than they and their immediate family could eat in one meal, they had to share it with everyone in the camp, including people who rarely or never brought back food for the community. The food shared around camp could be seen as a “basic” income.

Some trace the beginning of UBI history to ancient Athens, which used revenue from a city-owned mine to support a small cash income for Athenian citizens.

The modern definition of UBI stipulates the grant must be in cash, and because small-scale hunter-gatherer or agrarian communities do not have cash economies, they do not have UBIs. But these practices show how the values that motivate much of the modern UBI movement are not new to politics but have been recognized and practiced for a very long time.

Some writers trace the beginning of UBI history to ancient Athens, which used revenue from a city-owned mine to support a small cash income for Athenian citizens. This institution sounds like a UBI, except that the meaning of citizen was very different in ancient Athens. Citizens were a small, elite portion of the population. Noncitizens, such as slaves, women, and free noncitizen males, were the bulk of the population and virtually all of its labor force. A UBI for the elite is no UBI at all.

Proposals that begin to fit the modern definition of UBI begin in the 1790s with two writers, Thomas Paine and Thomas Spence. Paine’s famous pamphlet “Agrarian Justice” argued that because private ownership of the land had deprived people of the right to hunt, gather, fish, or farm on their own accord, they were owed compensation out of taxes on land rents. He suggested this compensation should be paid in the form of a large cash grant at maturity plus a regular cash pension at retirement age. That amounts to a stakeholder grant plus a citizens pension: nearly, but not quite, a UBI.

From a similar starting point, Spence carried the argument through to a full UBI, calling for higher taxes on land and a regular, unconditional cash income for everyone. If anyone can be said to be the “inventor” of UBI, it is Thomas Spence, but his proposal remained obscure, and the idea had to be reinvented many times before it became widely known.

Joseph Charlier, a Belgian utopian socialist author, reinvented the idea of UBI in 1848, suggesting the socialization of rent, with the proceeds to be redistributed in the form of a UBI.

Henry George, a late 19th-century economist, set out to solve the problem of persistent poverty despite economic progress. He proposed taxing land value at the highest sustainable rate and using the proceeds for public purposes. At one point, he suggested that part of the proceeds could be distributed in cash to all citizens, but UBI was never a central part of his proposal.

BIG proposals remained sparse until the early 1900s.

The First Wave

By the early 20th century, enough people were discussing BIG to constitute its first wave — or at least its first ripple — of support. The idea was still new enough that most advocates had little knowledge of each other, and they all tended to give their versions of the program a different name.

In the United Kingdom, Bertrand Russell and Virginia Woolf both praised the idea in their writings without naming it. In 1918, Dennis and E. Mabel Milner started the short-lived State Bonus League, which briefly attempted to get a conversation started with pamphlets and other publications, including what was probably the first full-length book on UBI: Dennis Milner’s 1920 publication “Higher Production by a Bonus on National Output.”

Several economists and social policy analysts, especially in Britain, discussed UBI, often under the name social dividend , in the 1930s and early 1940s. These included James Meade (economist and later Nobel laureate), Juliet Rhys-Williams (writer and politician), Abba Lerner (economist), Oskar Lange (economist), and G. D. H. Cole (political theorist, economist, and historian). It was apparently Cole who coined the term basic Income in 1935, although that term did not become standard for more than 50 years.

Major C. H. Douglas (a British engineer) included UBI under the name national dividend in a wider package of proposed reforms he called social credit . His ideas were most prominent in Canada, where the Social Credit Party held power in two western provinces on and off between 1935 and 1991, but the party abandoned support for Douglas’s proposed dividend not long after it first took power.

In 1934, Louisiana senator Huey Long debuted a Basic Income plan he called Share Our Wealth. He seems to have come up with the idea on his own; there is no evidence that he was influenced by the ideas spreading around the United Kingdom in those years. Long’s plan might have served as the basis for a presidential run in 1936 had he not been assassinated in 1935.

Although some of these early advocates were highly respected people, they were unable to get any form of BIG onto the legislative agenda in this era. As World War II drew to a close, most Western democracies built up their welfare systems on a conditional model, typified by the British government’s famous Beveridge Report, which recommended fighting poverty, unemployment, and income inequality with a greatly expanded welfare system based on the conditional model. Discussion of BIG largely fell out of mainstream political discussion for nearly two decades.

The Second Wave

Discussion of BIG was kept alive between the first and second waves largely by economists who increasingly portrayed it as an interesting theoretical alternative to existing social policies.

During the second wave, the phrases income guarantee and guaranteed income were often used without indicating whether the guarantee was a negative income tax (NIT) or a UBI. When specified, it was most often an NIT. However, the second wave was extremely important in directing international attention toward the idea of creating a world in which everyone would have an income above poverty level.

The second wave took off in the early to mid-1960s, when at least three groups in the United States and Canada separately started promoting the idea at about the same time. First, feminists and welfare rights activists, including Martin Luther King Jr., mobilized people frustrated by inadequate and often demeaning conditional programs. The feminist and welfare rights movements for BIG were closely tied together because there was widespread belief that existing welfare programs were inadequate, punitive, and too closely tied to the belief that “typical” families were “headed” by a “male breadwinner” with a “housewife.” Feminists led a large grassroots effort to replace U.S. welfare programs with BIG, and it became an official demand of the British Women’s Liberation Movement by the 1970s.

Some futurists saw a guaranteed income as a way to protect workers from disruptions to the labor market caused by the computer revolution.

Second, futurists such as Robert Theobald and Buckminster Fuller saw a guaranteed income as a way to protect workers from disruptions to the labor market caused by the computer revolution. This effort foreshadowed the automation argument for UBI in the 2010s, but it dropped off considerably in the 1980s and 1990s.

Third, several Nobel Prize–winning economists — including James Tobin, James Meade, Herbert Simon, James Buchannan, and Milton Friedman — and many other prominent economists began arguing that a guaranteed income would represent a more effective approach to poverty than existing policies. To them, BIG would have been an attempt to simplify and streamline the welfare system while also making it more comprehensive. The interest from economists made BIG a hot topic among policy wonks in Washington and Ottawa.

The mainstream media started paying attention to NIT around the time Lyndon Johnson declared War on Poverty . Politicians and policy advisors began to take up the idea. The Canadian government released several favorable reports on guaranteed annual income in the 1970s. For a short time, many people saw some kind of BIG as inevitable and as the next step in social policy: a compromise that everyone could live with. People on the left viewed it as the final piece of the welfare system — a policy that would fill in the remaining cracks. Centrists, conservatives, and people from the burgeoning libertarian movement saw it as a way to make the social safety net more cost-effective and less intrusive.

In 1971, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill introducing a watered-down version of NIT. It missed becoming law by only 10 votes in the Senate. The next year, presidential nominees from both major parties endorsed a variety of similar proposals: Richard Nixon supported the watered-down NIT, and George McGovern briefly proposed a genuine UBI. The similarity of the two nominees’ positions probably made BIG less of an issue in the campaign than it would have been if one of them had opposed it.

Although Nixon won the 1972 election, BIG never got another vote. It died partly because it had no groundswell of support outside the politically marginalized welfare rights movement. Its proponents in Congress made little effort to sell the proposal to the public at large. Many prominent guaranteed income supporters viewed Nixon’s version with skepticism, seeing it as too small with too many conditions to fit the model. In the absence of a wider movement for BIG, politicians paid little or no political cost for letting Nixon’s plan die and letting the idea fade from public discussion.

Although the second wave was most visible in the United States and Canada, the discussion spilled over into Europe, even as the second wave waned in North America. A high-level government report in France focused on NIT in 1973. At about the same time, James Meade and others managed to draw attention to the idea in the United Kingdom. In 1977, Politieke Pariji Radicalen, a small party in the Netherlands, became the first party with representation in parliament to endorse UBI. The next year, Niels I. Meyer’s book “Revolt from the Centre” launched a substantial wave of support in Denmark.

People often look back on the second wave of the BIG movement as a lost opportunity because no country introduced a full UBI or NIT, but the second wave had some major successes. The United States and Canada conducted the world’s first BIG implementation trials. The United States created or expanded several programs that can be seen as small steps in the direction of BIG, including food stamps, the EITC, and the Child Tax Credit. All these programs provide income supplements to low-income people. Although they have restrictions and conditions that UBI and NIT don’t, they represent steps toward BIG because they have fewer conditions than most traditional social policies and because they were proposed or expanded as compromise responses to the guaranteed income movement.

In 1982, the State of Alaska introduced the Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD). The PFD provides yearly dividends, varying usually between $1,000 and $2,000 per year to Alaska residents. Despite being very small, Alaska’s PFD is the closest program yet to meeting the Basic Income Earth Network ’s definition of UBI — falling short only by requiring people to fill out a form to verify that they meet the residency requirement.

Not only did these policies help a lot of people, but their success also provides evidence that can help to push social programs slowly in the direction of universality. But by the late 1970s and early 1980s, politicians such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher dramatically changed the conversation. They successfully vilified virtually all welfare recipients as frauds , no matter how well they might have satisfied programs’ need-based criteria. As a result, many people stopped talking about how to expand or improve the welfare system and started talking about whether and how much to cut it. In response, the left largely went on the defensive. Any suggestion that the existing system might be replaced by something better could at that time be seen as lending support to people who wanted to cut existing programs and replace them with nothing.

In 1980, the United States and Canada canceled the last of their implementation trials. Canada stopped analyzing the data that it had spent years and millions of dollars collecting. For the next 30 years, with a few notable exceptions, mainstream politics in most countries included virtually no discussion of BIG.

Between the Waves

The 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s were downtime for BIG in world politics, but there were significant exceptions, when proposals briefly gathered attention in one place or another. These exceptions and the growth of academic interest in UBI were extremely important to building what became the third wave of the BIG movement. In 1982, a British parliamentary committee considered a UBI proposal. National waves of support happened in the Netherlands, Denmark, and postapartheid South Africa at various times. But for the most part, discussion of UBI took place outside the political mainstream.

Proposals continued to come out in various circles, but they were more easily ignored in this period. For example, Leonard Greene, an aviation expert and successful entrepreneur, wrote two books and sponsored a demonstration project in which he gave a small UBI to several families, but he received little, if any, media response. When I had the pleasure of meeting him, he described his 10-year-old son’s reaction to UBI, “So what you’re saying is that income doesn’t have to start at zero.” I’ve used that phrase ever since.

As one 10-year-old put it, “So what you’re saying is that income doesn’t have to start at zero.”

One place the UBI discussion grew steadily in this period was in academic journals. In 1984, a group of Britons, led mostly by academics, formed the world’s first national UBI network, the Basic Income Research Group (now the Citizen’s Basic Income Trust ). In 1986, a group of academic researchers established a group that was initially called the Basic Income European Network (BIEN). Philippe Van Parijs (a Belgian philosopher) and Guy Standing (a British economist) were the most active leaders of BIEN for the first 20 or 25 years of its existence.

From the founding of BIEN to the present, UBI, rather than NIT, has dominated the BIG movement. However, in the last few years, the NIT model has come back. In some countries, the BIG discussion is dominated by NIT, usually under other names, such as guaranteed income.

The academic debate grew substantially between the mid-1980s and the 2000s, especially in the fields of politics, philosophy, and sociology. By the mid-2000s, national groups existed in at least two dozen countries, including the United States, where the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee (USBIG) Network had been established in December 1999. Because so many UBI networks around the world wanted BIEN affiliation, the network changed its name to Basic Income Earth Network in 2004. Yet UBI stayed mostly outside the political mainstream.

I became interested in UBI as a high school student in 1980, just as the second wave of discussion was dying down. I started writing about it professionally after finishing graduate school in 1996, when the idea seemed hopelessly out of the mainstream. For those of us taking part in UBI events in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it felt less like a movement and more like a discussion group.

Even the activist contingent within BIEN and other networks concentrated more on discussion than action, believing (probably correctly) that they had to increase public awareness before they could gather the critical mass of support needed to make political action viable. Isolation from mainstream politics distracted supporters from how much their movement was growing. But as supporters would learn in retrospect, they were helping to lay the groundwork for a takeoff.

The Third Wave

Interest in UBI has grown enormously since 2010. The discussion crossed over into the mainstream international media by the mid-2010s. In some places, the crossover began earlier. Those of us who were volunteering at BIEN’s Basic Income News service noticed a substantial increase in media attention in late 2011 and early 2012, and media attention has grown steadily since. It is impossible to attribute the third wave of the UBI movement to any single source. It is the confluence of many widely dispersed actions and events, which I will try to sketch here as well as I can.

The financial meltdown of 2008, the subsequent Great Recession, and the Arab Spring sparked a new climate of activism. Public attention turned to poverty, unemployment, and inequality. UBI supporters suddenly had a much more welcoming environment for activism.

By 2008, a national wave of UBI support had begun to swell in Germany. Prominent people from across the political spectrum all began to push different UBI proposals in very public ways. That year, UBI activists in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria attracted the critical mass necessary for effective UBI activism and jointly organized the first International Basic Income Week . This event has taken place every year since and has spread around the world, now including actions as far away as Australia and South America.

In 2008, the Namibian Basic Income Grant Coalition , funded mostly by private donations from the Lutheran Church, began a two-year pilot, giving a small Basic Income to every resident of a rural Namibian village. This project coincided with a smaller one in Brazil and was followed by a much larger one in India in 2010 (both also largely or entirely funded by private donations). These trials attracted substantial media attention both locally and internationally. They helped inspire the privately and publicly funded experiments later conducted around the world.

Just as the Indian experiment faded from the headlines, European activists introduced UBI to the European mainstream media by pushing two citizens’ initiatives, one in Switzerland and one in the European Union, both of which attracted hundreds of thousands of signatures. The EU initiative recruited across Europe and collected signatures from every EU member state. The Swiss initiative collected enough signatures to trigger a national vote, which was held in 2015. Although neither initiative ultimately passed, they both built an infrastructure for UBI activism across Europe and attracted enormous international media attention, which in turn sparked additional activity and attracted more support.

At about this time, journalists around the world started paying attention to UBI, greatly increasing its visibility. By 2015, a third wave was visible to people who were paying attention, and all subsequent activism for UBI owes something to the cumulative results of the actions up to that point.

However, the chain of activism building on activism was only one of many sources of growth in the UBI movement. One of the movement’s most important strengths is its diversity: Support comes from many different places and from people who do not usually work together, follow similar strategies, or adhere to similar ideologies.

By the time the UBI experiment was underway in Namibia, economists and sociologists had already begun reassessing the results of the 1970s NIT experiments in the United States and Canada, bringing renewed press attention to BIG and helping to spark new interest in the idea.

Another source of momentum for UBI came from developing countries that had been streamlining and easing the conditions of eligibility for redistributive programs by creating what are now known as conditional cash transfers (CCTs). Although these programs were conditional, the results from easing conditions were so positive that they significantly bolstered support for further steps toward UBI, not only in lesser-developed countries of the Global South but all around the world. At least one CCT program, Brazil’s Bolsa Familia, inspired by the senator and UBI advocate Eduardo Suplicy, was introduced explicitly as a step toward UBI.

Support comes from many different places and from people who do not usually work together, follow similar strategies, or adhere to similar ideologies.

The third wave of the UBI movement is more identifiably left of center than the second wave, which involved many people who portrayed BIG as a compromise between left and right. But some right-of-center support has boosted the movement as well. For example, a group of philosophers and economists calling themselves Bleeding Heart Libertarians wrote a significant amount of pro-UBI literature in the 2010s.

Mirroring the futurism discourse of the 1960s, new attention to the automation of labor and the related precariousness of employment brought many new adherents to UBI. As unemployment reached new highs during the Great Recession and job openings lagged behind the overall economic recovery, many people, especially in high-tech industries in the United States, began to worry that the pace of automation was threatening large segments of the labor force with high unemployment, low wages, and gig-economy precariousness. Labor leaders, activists, academics, and tech entrepreneurs have all proposed UBI in response, making automation-related labor market changes one of the prime drivers of recent interest in UBI, especially in the United States. Some entrepreneurs, such as Chris Hughes of Facebook and the late Götz Werner of the German drugstore chain DM, have put their money where their mouth is, supporting UBI research, activism, and experimentation, giving an unquestionable boost to the movement.

Another way technology has affected the UBI debate is through cryptocurrencies (privately issued, all-electronic mediums of exchange). Some people see cryptocurrency as a way to bypass central banks entirely and provide users with a UBI in the newly created currency.

Environmentalism has also played a major role in the growth of interest in UBI. Two of the most popular proposals for combating climate change are the tax-and-dividend and cap-and-dividend strategies, both of which involve setting a price on carbon emissions and distributing the revenue to all citizens — thereby creating at least a small UBI. Some environmentalists see UBI as a way to counteract the depletion of resources by giving people a way out of the cycle of work and consumption. These kinds of proposals have received support from both Republicans and Democrats.

Growing interest in UBI, and to some extent tech industry money, have inspired a new round of UBI and UBI-related pilot projects in Finland, Kenya, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, the United States, and many other places. UBI experiments are both a product and a driver of the current wave of support for UBI. This new round is characterized mostly by many small experiments rather than the few large experiments of the 1970s. Part of the reason is that many of the contemporary experiments are privately financed and therefore have to work on more limited budgets.

One exception is GiveDirectly’s enormous project in Kenya . This nonprofit has raised enough funds to finance a UBI of 75 cents per day for 20,000 people for 12 years, in an area where many people live on a dollar per day or less. When complete, this study will be the largest and longest UBI experiment ever conducted.

Between 2017 and 2020, UBI support got a large boost from Andrew Yang’s campaign for president of the United States. He was the first major-party candidate to endorse UBI since 1972, and the first ever to make UBI the centerpiece of their platform. For a political outsider, Yang did extremely well, qualifying for debates and recruiting a large network of supporters. Partly inspired by Yang, many candidates for lower offices also endorsed UBI in 2020 and 2022.

U.S. activism for UBI took off in October 2019, when activists in New York organized a UBI march from Harlem to the South Bronx. Hundreds of people, including myself , participated in the New York march, while 30 cities around the world joined in with their own marches. The march was so successful that organizers decided to make it an annual event. The 2022 march took place on September 24 at the climax of Basic Income Week.

Just as Yang suspended his campaign in 2020, UBI got yet another boost from an unexpected source. The COVID-19 outbreak and the related economic meltdown gave impetus for a temporary, emergency UBI. Suddenly mainstream politicians across the world were discussing UBI.

UBI was particularly well suited to the COVID situation. It functions as a cushion for people who are unable to work either because of social distancing or because of the economic downturn, and at the very same time it functions as a bonus for the essential workers asked to remain on the job during a pandemic. In both ways, it helps reduce the severity of the recession by stimulating the economy from the bottom up. To some extent, these policies represented politicians catching up with activists who had been calling for quantitative easing for the people (rather than for bankers) since the start of the Great Recession in 2009.

As late as perhaps 2015, it remained unclear whether the third wave would match the size and reach of the second. By 2019, the answer was obvious: Grassroots support and international media attention are more extensive than ever. The third wave represents the first truly global wave of UBI support. The first two did not extend much beyond the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, but the third wave involves major campaigns on all inhabited continents.

The Pattern

This look at the ups and downs of the UBI movement shows that UBI has tended to enter the mainstream conversation at times when people were concerned with and open to new approaches to address inequality, poverty, and unemployment. UBI has tended to recede from the mainstream conversation when public attention turned to other issues, or when other ways of addressing inequality became dominant. The first wave subsided when policymakers settled on the attempt to build a comprehensive welfare system on the conditional model. The second wave subsided (at least in the United States and Canada) not in the prosperous economy of the mid-1980s but in the troubling times of the late 1970s, when right-wing politicians convinced large numbers of people that redistributive programs should be cut instead of improved.

The biggest danger to the third wave appears to be growing nationalism. If nationalist politicians can convince enough voters to blame immigrants and foreign competition for growing inequality, they can effectively distract people from mobilizing around better social policies.

Karl Widerquist , a professor of philosophy at Georgetown University-Qatar who specializes in distributive justice, is the author of “ Universal Basic Income ,” from which this article is excerpted.

This article draws heavily on Widerquist’s essay “ Three Waves of Basic Income Support ,” published in “The Palgrave International Handbook of Basic Income,” edited by Malcolm Torry.

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Universal Basic Income - Student Essay

Last updated 13 Jan 2019

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Here is an answer to the question: "Assess the view that the UK Government should use fiscal policy to provide a guaranteed minimum income as a strategy to reduce inequality."

Tim Harford goes bouldering with Rutger Bregman, the provocative thinker whose bestselling book argues for a universal basic income https://t.co/bckPeLuAkm — Financial Times (@FinancialTimes) March 10, 2018

In recent years talk of a guaranteed minimum income, more commonly known as a Universal Basic Income (UBI), has risen enormously. In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, many now look to our struggling welfare systems and unpopular austerity measures in despair. Drastic measures are now being called for. Indeed a guaranteed minimum income is one of those, and yet it has supporters such as Mark Zuckerberg, Stephen Hawking and Bernie Sanders as some of its many advocates. The idea is exactly as it sounds: each and every citizen will gain a certain income per week or month, with no strings attached.

In addition to the financial crisis, the cry for a universal basic income has largely grown due to the ‘hollowing out’ effect of technology that has propelled inequality to unprecedented heights. Primarily, middle-income jobs that are more administrative have been eroded, while the more physically-demanding, lower-income tasks are by and large yet to be automated. And it is why proponents of UBI believe a cash injection into the poorest sections of society could do so much for overall living standards. For one it could stimulate entrepreneurship, because workers will finally have enough in their pocket to make proper investment. Another possibility could be more volunteering in local communities, where workers won’t have to balance three jobs at once with no time for anything else. In an age of consumerism gone mad, there seems few other options but to provide everyone with a small sum on the side in an attempt to temper aggregate demand. It might allow the average gig economy worker to not work late evenings anymore so he can see his children, or the new mother to take a few more weeks leave before rushing back to work.

UBI has in fact already been tested. In January 2017, Finland launched a two-year pilot scheme where 2,000 unemployed people have been given 560 euros (around £475) per month. One lucky beneficiary, Juha Jarvinen, 39, spoke to the BBC about how it transformed his life: “I feel like a free man. I got out of jail and slavery … I felt I am back in society and I have my humanity back”. His situation had been desperate after all. He was running a small business making wooden window frames before it went bust in the 2008 financial crash, and since then he’d hardly recovered. Now though, he’s started up a new business making drums, and it brings in around 1000 euros a month, on top of his UBI. Indeed proponents of UBI will insist for the vast majority that’s how the money is really used.

The argument for UBI is also based upon what society would look like in years to come should it not go ahead. In ten to twenty years, the number of workers being displaced by automation looks set to increase. Their redundant skills with an underfunded benefits system unable to retrain them will then increase brain drain and hysteresis. With GDP growth then suffering, capital investment will dwindle yet further, and tragedies such as the fire at Grenfell Tower last June where cheap materials proved vastly inadequate will only occur more often. But with UBI, the burden on our existing welfare state will be greatly relieved, as families will no longer drain our health care and range of benefits like before. The estimated cost of UBI will therefore have to be contextualised on two counts – not only through it relieving public services but also through the lack of maintenance costs that the benefits system still endures. A world of UBI might seem impossible right now. In fact the same was said before the minimum wage, and even the NHS – where it seemed ridiculous to give the rich something they could already afford. Doubters of UBI should not get too confident.

Indeed they shouldn’t – the pace of economic progress and political upheaval suggests exactly that. But it might also suggest that an argument that floated around for decades might just have passed its sell-by date, because the labour market is not as it was. Only around fifty years ago, the workplace was a male-dominated arena, workers had one job for life and technology was still in its early stages. With all the complexities we therefore face, the notion that we must wipe the slate clean with a universal basic income that caters equally for such diverse circumstances is too simplistic. Already, despite its rigorous means-testing that one would hope should send the money where it’s most in need, we have a failing benefits system that’s desperately underfunded. Thus to provide equally for the families with elderly relatives or young children and those without would only seek to widen inequality by diluting whatever help available to the most deserving. Billionaires would even get a little more.

On the most discounted rate of £75 a week per citizen in the UK, the policy would total to £120 billion, 5% of GDP and to balance the books experts say the marginal rate of income tax would have to hit 75% - far exceeding the next highest tax rate of 60.2% in Denmark. Granted, the current benefits system has its inefficiencies: each year according to the National Audit Office around £230m is spent on sanctioning that saves an estimated £130m, leaving around £100m of government money wasted. But by comparison to UBI the scale of current funding worries are next to nothing. The incentives to work with UBI in place would be almost non-existent, and the long term effects of dependency and emigration of skilful labour could take generations to recover again.

The social benefits claimed by UBI proponents are also misguided. While cutting working hours or even becoming redundant might sound liberating, income won’t be the only loss. People also gain purpose, status, skills, networks and friendships through work. Delinking both income and work, while rewarding people for staying at home is simply a catalyst for social decay. With high unemployment, crime, drugs and broken families will continue to grow and with it so too will pressure on public services. Politically, the idea is also quite a dangerous one. UBI as a utopian thought-experiment sounds so awe-inspiring that real discussion about the future of jobs could well be postponed. The growing clamour in more populous countries with larger inequality could also take on a more populist stance, where leaders on the left will sell it as if it’s a flawless cure for all ills.

To say that UBI is not the answer is not to reject the legitimate concerns of vulnerable workers though. Other solutions must instead be looked at, such as higher marginal rates of taxation. Inevitably, the question is always whether the rich will tolerate it, and on the scale that’s required the answer seems not. In Canada, where UBI was trialled, the majority of respondents in a poll of 1,500 who were open to UBI still were unwilling to pay higher tax to finance the program. The cut from 50 to 45% income taxation in the UK in 2013 after the HMRC estimated the former would probably raise no more revenue also suggests returning to that figure or even beyond would be unwise – equally so if it is used to fund UBI. Bumping the 40% rate to 45% for £46k+ earners is a safer bet but also runs the risk of the same unintended consequences, stifling entrepreneurship that UBI sought to improve and potentially teasing the rich to venture abroad for lower rates.

A rise in VAT tax from 25 to 30% has also been discussed as an alternative, to reduce aggregate demand slightly and help reign in the UK’s long-hours culture – in fact research shows Britons work on average 43.6 hours a week, above the European average of 40.3 and France’s limit of just 35. Alternatively, the government could put greater emphasis on demerit goods such as fast food and sugary drinks, in an attempt to contain the obesity epidemic, thereby at least providing some social benefit.

Complications also arise here, as the inelastic demand for many of these goods would call for a greater level of tax and with that greater potential for backlash. More importantly, much of the consumption of these goods is because they are cheap, and taxing them would be regressive, thus widening inequality rather than reducing it. The same goes for a VAT tax, since the poor spend a higher proportion of their income than the rich.

Other possibilities must be considered, perhaps looking at one of the root causes of growing inequality: technology. With conglomerates such as the ‘FAANG’s (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google) concentrating such a large section of wealth, and start-ups in general locating in cities because of higher multiplier effects, the government could launch training schemes specifically for entrepreneurship in rural areas, for example. Collaborating with the tech firms that are based rurally could help springboard that project. The patent box initiative, allowing lower rates of corporation tax for certain inventions, could also reserve rights to part of the wealth should the firm become the next tech giant.

Another step towards reducing inequality could be introducing what’s known as Universal Basic Assets (UBA), which identifies a fundamental set of resources every citizen should have access to – such as financial security, housing, health care and education – in order to achieve economic prosperity. When divided into three categories: private, public and open, it’s clear that public assets such as public education and health care are hugely important, and through encouraging more capital flows through distributive initiatives, such as cooperatives and employee-stock-owned companies, greater funding can be put aside. The Government could also give people ownership of their data, so they can use it as an asset which they – not Facebook or Google, for example – can leverage, and capture economic value. Critics might say it will discourage entrepreneurship, but ultimately it merely seeks to redistribute new assets to the workers who are fulfilling these firms, and not the original asset holders.

In many ways, the great debate about Universal Basic Income and its alternatives, and its powers to reduce inequality is a worthwhile one whatever stance one takes. As inequality reaches new heights though, the hype around UBI and other suggestions like it have received precious little rigorous examination. Finland’s small-scale experiment of 2,000 unemployed citizens answers few questions, and nor does a similar trial in Ontario, Canada. Nevertheless the number and scale of pilots is starting to see an uptick. Y Combinator’s 5-year trial for 3,000 Americans and Scotland’s investment of over £250m into projects in Edinburgh and Glasgow are just some showing promise.

So perhaps the verdict on whether UBI really does work still awaits us. But lessons can also be learnt from what we know now. The first is that there is much reform still to be done with the benefits system – be it improving conditionality, sanctioning, providing support for people re-skill, or schemes to improve less-affluent workers’ capabilities with technology. Indeed the labour market as a whole could do with better regulation over zero-hours contracts and greater job security, perhaps by handing incentives to employers to minimise turnover. Whatever the solution to reduce inequality and poverty might be, it mustn’t be oversimplified, as is the danger with shouts for a UBI like it’s a silver bullet. But neither must it be ignored.

Suggestions for further reading on this issue

Why Basic Income alone will not be a panacea to social insecurity https://t.co/lr7FSm7YKg — LSE British Politics and Policy (@LSEpoliticsblog) October 22, 2018

Yes, Universal Basic Income can help #endukpoverty , says @anthonypainter https://t.co/LJTukg9W0K — The RSA (@theRSAorg) May 1, 2018

A lack of ambition ended Finland's experiment with a universal basic income https://t.co/AL6bwCDk2F pic.twitter.com/hX0dj7y51G — Bloomberg Opinion (@opinion) April 29, 2018

The ending of the experiment in Finland has drawn media attention for the wrong reasons https://t.co/4WRaeizWSk — The Economist (@TheEconomist) May 1, 2018

Here's how a universal basic income could work pic.twitter.com/hbhT9T5HdJ — Business Insider (@BusinessInsider) May 10, 2018

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Why we should all have a basic income

Basic income for all Image:  Vitaly

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Consider for a moment that from this day forward, on the first day of every month, around $1,000 is deposited into your bank account – because you are a citizen . This is your basic income which is independent of every other source of income and guarantees you a monthly starting salary above the poverty line for the rest of your life.

What do you do? Possibly of more importance, what don’t you do? How does this firm foundation of economic security and positive freedom affect your present and future decisions, from the work you choose to the relationships you maintain, to the risks you take?

The idea is called unconditional or universal basic income , or UBI. It’s like social security for all, and it’s taking root within minds around the world and across the entire political spectrum, for a multitude of converging reasons . Rising inequality, decades of stagnant wages, the transformation of lifelong careers into sub-hourly tasks, exponentially advancing technology like robots and deep neural networks increasingly capable of replacing potentially half of all human labour , world-changing events like Brexit and the election of Donald Trump – all of these and more are pointing to the need to start permanently guaranteeing everyone at least some income.

A promise of equal opportunity

“Basic income” would be an amount sufficient to secure basic needs as a permanent earnings floor no one could fall beneath, and would replace many of today’s temporary benefits, which are given only in case of emergency, and/or only to those who successfully pass the applied qualification tests. UBI would be a promise of equal opportunity, not equal outcome, a new starting line set above the poverty line.

It may surprise you to learn that a partial UBI has already existed in Alaska since 1982 , and that a version of basic income was experimentally tested in the United States in the 1970s. The same is true in Canada, where the town of Dauphin managed to eliminate poverty for five years. Full UBI experiments have been done more recently in places such as Namibia , India and Brazil . Other countries are following suit: Finland , the Netherlands and Canada are carrying out government-funded experiments to compare against existing programmes. Organizations like Y Combinator and GiveDirectly have launched privately funded experiments in the US and East Africa respectively.

I know what you’re thinking. It’s the same thing most people think when they’re new to the idea. Giving money to everyone for doing nothing ? That sounds both incredibly expensive and a great way to encourage people to do nothing. Well, it may sound counter-intuitive, but the exact opposite is true on both accounts. What’s incredibly expensive is not having basic income, and what really motivates people to work is, on one hand, not taking money away from them for working, and on the other hand, not actually about money at all.

Basic income in numbers

What tends to go unrealized about the idea of basic income, and this is true even of many economists – but not all – is that it represents a net transfer. In the same way it does not cost $20 to give someone $20 in exchange for $10, it does not cost $3 trillion to give every adult citizen $12,000 and every child $4,000, when every household will be paying varying amounts of taxes in exchange for their UBI. Instead it will cost around 30% of that, or about $900 billion , and that’s before the full or partial consolidation of other programmes and tax credits immediately made redundant by the new transfer. In other words, for someone whose taxes go up $4,000 to pay for $12,000 in UBI, the cost to give that person UBI is $8,000, not $12,000, and it’s coming from someone else whose taxes went up $20,000 to pay for their own $12,000. However, even that’s not entirely accurate, because the consolidation of the safety net and tax code UBI allows could drive the total price even lower.

Now, this idea of replacing existing programmes can scare some just as it appeals to others, but the choice is not all or nothing: partial consolidation is possible. As an example of partial consolidation, because most seniors already effectively have a basic income through social security, they could either choose between the two, or a percentage of their social security could be converted into basic income. Either way, no senior would earn a penny less than now in total, and yet the UBI price tag could be reduced by about $220 billion. Meanwhile, just a few examples of existing revenue that could and arguably should be fully consolidated into UBI would likely be food and nutrition assistance ($108 billion ), wage subsidies ($72 billion ), child tax credits ($56 billion ), temporary assistance for needy families ($17 billion ), and the home mortgage interest deduction (which mostly benefits the wealthy anyway, at a cost of at least $70 billion per year ). That’s $543 billion spent on UBI instead of all the above, which represents only a fraction of the full list , none of which need be healthcare or education.

So what’s the true cost?

The true net cost of UBI in the US is therefore closer to an additional tax revenue requirement of a few hundred billion dollars – or less – depending on the many design choices made, and there exists a variety of ideas out there for crossing such a funding gap in a way that many people might prefer, that would also treat citizens like the shareholders they are ( virtually all basic research is taxpayer funded ), and that could even reduce taxes on labour by focusing more on capital, consumption, and externalities instead of wages and salaries. Additionally, we could eliminate the $540 billion in tax expenditures currently being provided disproportionately to the wealthiest, and also some of the $850 billion spent on defence .

Universal basic income is thus entirely affordable and essentially Milton Friedman’s negative income tax in net outcome ( and he himself knew this ), where those earning below a certain point are given additional income, and those earning above a certain point are taxed additional income. UBI does not exist outside the tax system unless it’s provided through pure monetary expansion or extra-governmental means. In other words, yes, Bill Gates will get $12,000 too but as one of the world’s wealthiest billionaires he will pay far more than $12,000 in new taxes to pay for it. That however is not similarly true for the bottom 80% of all US households , who will pay the same or less in total taxes.

To some, this may sound wasteful. Why give someone money they don’t need, and then tax their other income? Think of it this way: is it wasteful to put seat belts in every car instead of only in the cars of those who have gotten into accidents thus demonstrating their need for seat belts? Good drivers never get into accidents, right? So it might seem wasteful. But it’s not because we recognize the absurd costs of determining who would and wouldn’t need seat belts, and the immeasurable costs of being wrong. We also recognize that accidents don’t only happen to “bad” drivers. They can happen to anyone, at any time, purely due to random chance. As a result, seat belts for everyone.

The truth is that the costs of people having insufficient basic income are many and collectively massive. It burdens the healthcare system. It burdens the criminal justice system. It burdens the education system. It burdens would-be entrepreneurs, it burdens both productivity and consumer buying power and therefore entire economies. The total cost of all of these burdens well exceeds $1 trillion annually , and so the few hundred billion net additional cost of UBI pays for itself many times over. That’s the big-picture maths.

The real effects on motivation

But what about people then choosing not to work? Isn’t that a huge burden too? Well that’s where things get really interesting. For one, conditional welfare assistance creates a disincentive to work through removal of benefits in response to paid work. If accepting any amount of paid work will leave someone on welfare barely better off, or even worse off, what’s the point? With basic income, all income from paid work (after taxes) is earned as additional income so that everyone is always better off in terms of total income through any amount of employment – whether full time, part time or gig. Thus basic income does not introduce a disincentive to work. It removes the existing disincentive to work that conditional welfare creates.

Fascinatingly, improved incentives are where basic income really shines. Studies of motivation reveal that rewarding activities with money is a good motivator for mechanistic work but a poor motivator for creative work . Combine that with the fact that creative work is to be what’s left after most mechanistic work is handed off to machines , and we’re looking at a future where increasingly the work that’s left for humans is not best motivated extrinsically with money, but intrinsically out of the pursuit of more important goals. It’s the difference between doing meaningless work for money, and using money to do meaningful work.

Basic income thus enables the future of work, and even recognizes all the unpaid intrinsically motivated work currently going on that could be amplified, for example in the form of the $700 billion in unpaid work performed by informal caregivers in the US every year, and all the work in the free/open source software movement (FOSSM) that’s absolutely integral to the internet .

There is also another way basic income could affect work incentives that is rarely mentioned and somewhat more theoretical. UBI has the potential to better match workers to jobs, dramatically increase engagement, and even transform jobs themselves through the power UBI provides to refuse them.

A truly free market for labour

How many people are unhappy with their jobs? According to Gallup, worldwide, only 13% of those with jobs feel engaged with them. In the US, 70% of workers are not engaged or actively disengaged, the cost of which is a productivity loss of around $500 billion per year . Poor engagement is even associated with a disinclination to donate money, volunteer or help others . It measurably erodes social cohesion.

At the same time, there are those among the unemployed who would like to be employed, but the jobs are taken by those who don’t really want to be there. This is an inevitable result of requiring jobs in order to live. With no real choice, people do work they don’t wish to do in exchange for money that may be insufficient – but that’s still better than nothing – and then cling to that paid work despite being the “working poor” and/or disengaged. It’s a mess.

Basic income – in 100 people

Take an economy without UBI. We’ll call it Nation A . For every 100 working-age adults there are 80 jobs. Half the work force is not engaged by their jobs, and half again as many are unemployed with half of them really wanting to be employed, but, as in a game of musical chairs , they’re left without a chair.

Basic income fundamentally alters this reality. By unconditionally providing income outside of employment, people can refuse to do the jobs that aren’t engaging them. This in turn opens up those jobs to the unemployed who would be engaged by them. It also creates the bargaining power for everyone to negotiate better terms. How many jobs would become more attractive if they paid more money or required fewer hours? How would this reorganizing of the labour supply affect productivity if the percentage of disengaged workers plummeted? How much more prosperity would that create?

Consider now an economy with basic income. Let’s call it Nation B . For every 100 working age adults there are still 80 jobs, at least to begin with. The disengaged workforce says “no thanks” to the labour market as is, enabling all 50 people who want to work to do the jobs they want. To attract those who demand more compensation or shorter work weeks, some employers raise their wages. Others reduce the required hours. The result is a transformed labour market of more engaged, more employed, better paid, more productive workers. Fewer people are excluded, and there’s perhaps more scope for all workers to become self-employed entrepreneurs .

Simply put, a basic income improves the market for labour by making it optional . The transformation from a coercive market to a free market means that employers must attract employees with better pay and more flexible hours. It also means a more productive work force that potentially obviates the need for market-distorting minimum wage laws . Friction might even be reduced, so that people can move more easily from job to job, or from job to education/retraining to job, or even from job to entrepreneur, all thanks to more individual liquidity and the elimination of counter-productive bureaucracy and conditions.

Perhaps best of all, the automation of low-demand jobs becomes further incentivized through the rising of wages. The work that people refuse to do for less than a machine would cost to do it becomes a job for machines. And thanks to those replaced workers having a basic income, they aren’t just left standing in the cold in the job market’s ongoing game of musical chairs. They are instead better enabled to find new work, paid or unpaid, full-time or part-time, that works best for them.

The tip of a big iceberg

The idea of basic income is deceivingly simple sounding, but in reality it’s like an iceberg with far more to be revealed as you dive deeper. Its big picture price tag in the form of investing in human capital for far greater returns, and its effects on what truly motivates us are but glimpses of these depths. There are many more. Some are already known, like the positive effects on social cohesion and physical and mental health as seen in the 42% drop in crime in Namibia and the 8.5% reduction in hospitalizations in Dauphin, Manitoba. Debts tend to fall. Entrepreneurship tends to grow. Other effects have yet to be discovered by further experiments. But the growing body of evidence behind cash transfers in general point to basic income as something far more transformative to the future of work than even its long history of consideration has imagined.

It’s like a game of Monopoly where the winning teams have rewritten the rules so players no longer collect money for passing Go. The rule change functions to exclude people from markets. Basic income corrects this. But it’s more than just a tool for improving markets by making them more inclusive ; there’s something more fundamental going on.

Humans need security to thrive , and basic income is a secure economic base – the new foundation on which to transform the precarious present, and build a more solid future. That’s not to say it’s a silver bullet. It’s that our problems are not impossible to solve. Poverty is not a supernatural foe, nor is extreme inequality or the threat of mass income loss due to automation. They are all just choices. And at any point, we can choose to make new ones.

Based on the evidence we already have and will likely continue to build, I firmly believe one of those choices should be unconditional basic income as a new equal starting point for all.

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• IAS Preparation
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Universal Basic Income [UPSC Notes GS III] On UBI

This article will describe in detail about UBI, its guiding principles and requirement of UBI in India.

These UPSC Notes on UBI are aligned with the UPSC Syllabus and aspirants should prepare this topic for General Studies Paper III.

IAS Exam aspirants can find more notes for UPSC Mains General Studies topics from the links given at the end of the article.

UBI – Universal Basic Income

• There are high growth and GDP numbers that the nation is witnessing. But this is not transforming the development of individual and personal empowerment. Despite rapid economic growth millions of people are unemployed and extremely poor, as can be seen in the last three decades.
• There are large groups of landless labourers, agricultural workers and marginal farmers who suffer from multidimensional poverty. These groups have not benefited from economic growth. Various welfare schemes have also failed to bring them out of penury.
• Because people are getting poor, there is a lack of basic amenities the idea of a universal basic income (UBI) is gaining currency globally.
• It has supporters among the political left and right, and among proponents as well as opponents of the free-market economy.

Universal Basic Income – UBI Definition

UBI full form is Universal basic income has three components, agency (by providing support in the form of cash transfers to respect, not dictate, recipients’ choices), unconditional and universality. It is built supposedly that a just or deserved community needs to guarantee a minimum income to each individual which they can count on to provide themselves basic goods, the necessary material foundation and a life of dignity. A universal basic income gives every person unconditional and universal rights. These rights require every individual to have the basic income to fulfil their needs, just by virtue of being a citizen of the country.

In short, A UBI requires the government to pay every citizen a fixed amount of money on a regular basis and without any conditionality.

Current context

To deal with the economic inequality, unemployment and poverty created by the Covid-19 pandemic, many advocate Universal Basic Income (UBI) programme to be a solution. Read more on Coronavirus and its impact on the economy .

• In order to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, governments across the world have imposed measures like lockdown and social distancing. However, collateral damage has been caused by these measures to almost every sector of the economy, so much so that the  International Monetary Fund- IMF  held the current economic crisis could be the worst ever since the  Great depression 1929 .
• With almost 90% of India’s workforce in the informal sector without minimum wages or social security, micro-level circumstances in India are worse than anywhere else. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic , the country was struggling to provide job opportunities for millions of job aspirants who were entering the job market. Read in detail bout the Unemployment in India on the linked page.
• Regular payments through UBI can ensure the sustenance of the workers engaged in the informal sector, at least till the economy normalises.

The National Democratic Alliance government has already unfolded a limited version of the UBI in the form of the Pradhanmantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana (PM-KISAN) which promises ₹6,000 per annum to farmers who own less than 2 hectares of land.

Therefore, expanding it to other sectors is the question of the hour.

Why UBI is required?

• Social Justice: UBI is firstly a test of an egalitarian society. Any society where all people do not earn income equally fails the test of justice. UBI propounds many of the basic values of a society that respects all individuals as equal. It promotes equality because it is anti-paternalistic, opens up the possibility of flexibility in labour markets. It promotes efficiency by increasing transparency in government transfers. Further information on Transparency in the Administration is available on the given link.
• Poverty Reduction: if the current financial system functions properly the UBI- Universal Basic Income may simply be the fastest way of poverty reduction. Know more about Poverty a social challenge on the given link.
• Agency: Our current welfare system, even when well-intentioned, inflicts an indignity upon the poor by assuming that they cannot take economic decisions relevant to their lives. An unconditional cash transfer treats them as agents, not subjects. UBI liberates citizens from paternalistic and clientele relationships with the state. By taking the individual and not the household as the unit of the beneficiary, UBI can also enhance agency, especially of women within households.
• Employment: UBI could open up new potentials for labour markets. It creates tractability by allowing individuals to have fractional or standardized engagements with the labour market without fear of losing benefits. They permit more non-exploitative negotiation since people will no longer be required to accept any working conditions, just so that they can survive.
• Administrative Efficiency: In India in particular, the case for UBI has been heightened because of the weakness of current welfare schemes that are riddled with misallocation, escapes and exclusion of the poor. When the trinity of JAM Jan-Dhan,-Aadhaar and Mobile is fully adopted the time would be apt for a mode of delivery that is administratively more efficient.
• Institutional credit: According to the  National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) data from the 70th round, institutional credits account for less than 15% of the total borrowing by landless agricultural workers; The figure for marginal and small farmers is only 30%. These groups have to borrow from moneylenders and adhatiyas at exorbitant interest rates ranging from 24 to 60%. As a result, they do not stand to benefit much from the interest rate subsidy for the agriculture sector.

Likewise, the benefits of subsidized fertilizers and power are enjoyed largely by big farmers. In urban areas, contract workers and those in the informal sector face a similar problem. The rapid pace of automation of low-skill jobs and formalisation of the retail sector means the prospects of these groups are even bleaker.

Aspirants can check out the following relevant links to prepare comprehensively for the upcoming Civil services exams-

Aspirants can refer to the UPSC Mains Syllabus in the linked article.

The Conceptual Case against UBI

• Reduces the incentive to work: the levels at which universal basic income are likely to be pegged are going to be minimal guarantees at best; they are unlikely to crowd incentives to work.
• Detaches Income from employment: society already does this, but largely for the rich and privileged. Any society where any form of inheritance or accepting non-work related income is allowed already detaches income from employment. So, receiving a small unearned income as it were, from the state should be economically and morally less problematic than the panoply of “unearned” income our societies allow.
• Should income be unconditional, with no regard for people’s contribution to society? Individuals, as a matter of fact, will in most cases contribute to society. In fact, UBI can also be a way of acknowledging non-wage work-related contributions to society.

Benefits of UBI

• Reduces misallocation of resources across districts: a UBI will simply amount to a transfer of resources from above and need not be “accessed” by beneficiaries. In addition, by focusing on universality, UBI reduces the burden on the administration further by doing away with the tedious task of separating the poor from the non-poor.
• Reduces out of system leakage: Conceptually, a UBI reduces out of system leakage because transfers are directed straight to the beneficiaries’ bank accounts. The scope for diversion is reduced considerably since discretionary powers of authorities are eliminated almost wholly.
• Exclusion error: Given the link between misallocation and exclusion errors, a UBI that improves the allocation of resources should mechanically bring down exclusion error. Furthermore, by virtue of being universal, exclusion errors under the UBI should be lower than existing targeted schemes.

Apart from this, it will much more beneficial like it will act as an Insurance against Risk and Psychological Benefits, promotes financial inclusion, etc.

Some pros and cons of UBI are as mentioned below:

Administrative Efficiency: In place of a plethora of separate Govt. schemes, UBI will reduce the administrative burden on the stateImplementation: seeing the current status of financial access to poor, UBI may too much pressure on the banking system.

Guiding Principles for Setting up a UBI

• Gradualism: A guiding principle is gradualism: the UBI must be embraced in a deliberate, phased manner. A key advantage of phasing would be that it allows reform to occur incrementally – weighing the costs and benefits at every step.
• Legal and actual universality: It is important to consider ideas that could exclude the obviously rich i.e., approaching target from the exclusion of the undeserving perspective than the current inclusion of the deserving perspective like define the non-deserving based on ownership of key assets, Adopt a ‘give it up’ scheme, “name and shame” and Self-targeting etc.
• UBI and redistributive resource transfers to states: The UBI offers a possible way-around: a part of the redistributive resource transfers may be transferred by the centre directly into beneficiaries’ accounts in the form of a pilot UBI programme.

The idea of a universal basic income (UBI) is gaining ground globally. It has supporters among the political left and right, and among proponents as well as opponents of the free-market economy. The income transfer scheme might be costly. However, the cost of persistent poverty is much higher.

Way Forward

• The 2017 Economic Survey had flagged the UBI scheme as “a conceptually appealing idea” and a possible alternative to social welfare programmes targeted at reducing poverty.
• UBI envisages an uncompromised social safety net that seeks to assure a dignified life for everyone, a concept that is expected to gain traction in a global economy buffeted by uncertainties on account of globalization, technological change, and automation.
• If universal basic income ever had a time, it is now. It can be implemented to deal with the unemployment, income inequality and poverty posed by Covid-19 pandemic.

Universal Basic Income [UPSC Notes GS-III]:- Download PDF Here

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Universal Basic Income: The Truth Explained by a Top Expert

by Scott Santens | Apr 3, 2024 | News | 0 comments

As a leading expert on the topic of unconditional/universal basic income (UBI), a subject area I’ve been focused on now since 2013, I’m constantly trying to correct the same misunderstandings and incessantly debunking misinformation/disinformation spread about the concept and the evidence behind it. I created a slide deck earlier this year for a webinar I was part of to help inform UBI policy discussion in the EU. To help better inform the discussion more widely, especially in the US, I’ve now recorded myself going through the deck providing extra commentary.

Read more and view the video by clicking here .

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The pros and cons of universal basic income

By Melissa Stewart

Unconditional cash payments to residents are more of a floor to stand on than a safety net, say these Carolina scholars in light of a proposed pilot project to give $500 per month to formerly incarcerated Durham, North Carolina, residents.

The idea of governments giving residents no-strings-attached cash payments is picking up steam, due in part to the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Last June, Mayor Michael Tubbs of Stockton, California, created Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, a coalition to “advocate for a guaranteed income — direct, recurring cash payments — that lifts all of our communities, building a resilient, just America.”

Durham Mayor Steve Schewel joined the group. In January, Schewel announced that Durham was one of 30 U.S. cities being considered to receive a $500,000 slice of a $15 million gift from Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey. The money would fund Universal Basic Income pilot projects, such as the  Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration . Durham council member Mark-Anthony Middleton announced that  Durham’s proposed project  would guarantee $500 per month to 55 formerly incarcerated residents until the pandemic ends and the city’s economy recovers.

Before the pandemic hit, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang put UBI, also known as guaranteed basic income, on the map by making it his signature policy. His proposed “Freedom Dividend” — $1,000 per month payments to every American adult — was a response to job displacement by automation.

For a deeper understanding of this issue, The Well spoke with two Carolina faculty members who have studied UBI.  Fabian Wendt , a teaching assistant professor in the College of Arts & Sciences’ philosophy department and the philosophy, politics & economics program, first came across UBI while studying theories of distributive justice.  Doug MacKay , associate professor in the College’s public policy department, grew interested in UBI through research into paternalism in the U.S. social safety net.

What is universal basic income?

Wendt:  It is a regular cash payment by the government that is given on a monthly or annual basis. It’s unconditional in several respects. In contrast to many other welfare programs that you only get when you prove your willingness to work, a UBI would be unconditional in that respect. It would also be unconditional on what money you make, what you have in general and on what contribution you made to finance the UBI. Finally, it would be unconditional on your family situation, on whether you’re married or not.

UBI is probably best conceived as a floor to stand on, not as a safety net. A safety net is only meant to catch you when you need it, which requires some institution to test whether you really need it, and that opens up all these worries about paternalism, bureaucracy and so on, whereas the UBI would be a floor to stand on for everybody.

MacKay: I completely agree with Fabian’s description. UBI is a platform to stand on and to build a life on. But it’s not something that’s going to allow you to live a great life. The sort of numbers that we’re talking about are, at most, $1,000 a month per person. People will still have a strong motivation to work.

What are the goals of UBI?

MacKay:  The goals really differ, depending on the policymaker but also on who’s proposing it. I think for a lot of folks on the left, they see it as more a platform to build your life on. So it’s going to be there for you when you when you need it.

If you think about the pandemic, when people are losing their jobs, it takes a long time for government to react. Had we had a basic income in place, that would have been a way of ensuring people are secure, have the ability to meet their basic needs and live a dignified human life. They don’t need to appeal to various agencies. They have consistency in terms of being able to afford housing, food and so on. It’s an anti-poverty measure.

You also see from people on the left the idea of UBI as promoting freedom. Oftentimes we talk about freedom as being freedom from constraints. Some folks on the right, libertarians in particular, emphasize the need for government to stay out of our lives. And thinkers on the left often point out that if people are just leaving you alone, you might be unlimited in terms of choices, but you’re not actually going to be able to do anything unless you have resources. So the idea is that if people have a platform to build their lives off, they have resources every month. They can actually do things. They can meet their needs. They can pursue various projects.

On the right side of the political spectrum, people see UBI as potentially realizing a number of goals. One, they emphasize this is anti-paternalistic in nature. There’s an element of government not interfering with the lives of individuals by imposing all these conditionalities on them, but rather just letting them be free to live their lives as they see fit with the income.

The other thing that folks on the right emphasize is the way UBI might allow you to shrink the size of government. People on the left often think of basic income as something we’re going to add to the safety net and keep much of the safety net intact. People on the right often see it as a replacement: We’re going to give people a guaranteed income, and we’re going to get rid of a whole host of social safety net programs that cost a lot of money and require a lot of people to administer.

Wendt:  One thing I found interesting about Andrew Yang’s proposal was his idea to let people choose whether they either take the UBI or keep the benefits from current programs.

Another thing different proponents will disagree upon is how high UBI should be. A thousand dollars a month was Yang’s proposal, but you could also go much lower or much higher. Maybe even “as high as is sustainable,” as [Belgian philosopher and economist and chief UBI proponent Philippe] Van Parijs would say.

Its sustainability will depend on how high it is pitched, but also on how it’s financed. It seems very natural to think that it would be financed through the income tax. That would make it a close relative to a negative income tax proposal, which was popular in the 1960s and ’70s. [The influential American economist] Milton Friedman was a famous advocate of that. But Andrew Yang and others propose a mix in terms of how it’s financed. It could also be a sales tax or capital income tax or some other way.

Andrew Yang put UBI on the map, but what’s driving it and why now?

Wendt:  UBI has often been seen as a response to the challenge of automation — the worry that many people are going to become unemployed and replaced by machines. For example, truck drivers will lose their jobs once there are automated trucks. In the end, that’s not a new concern, though. People have worried that machines would replace jobs at least since the 19th century, but usually new types of jobs were always created elsewhere.

The idea of a UBI was brought up last spring as a response to the pandemic — an emergency UBI. The coronavirus hit so hard. Many people felt like this was a chance to get some serious reform of the welfare state going. In the end we got the stimulus checks instead, which were not completely different, but a one-time thing, and not unconditional. The checks depended on how much you earned.

One thing to emphasize is also how UBI would empower women. It gives working mothers cash to pay for childcare, for example, or it makes it easier to leave an abusive husband if you have something to rely on that is independent from the family situation.

MacKay:  The other thing I would point to are concerns about income inequality. I don’t think this is necessarily a great solution to the problem of income inequality, but I think the economic anxiety leads people to UBI.

Is there evidence that UBI works?

MacKay:  There’s been a variety of studies. There were a couple of really famous experiments in the ’70s in Canada and here in the United States. There was a really interesting study in Manitoba in the late ’70s, where they had a whole town that was subject to a guaranteed income policy — a floor that families would not fall below. A lot of randomized controlled trials in low-income countries have been using cash transfers since the late ’80s, early ’90s. Some of these are conditional cash transfers. In Mexico, for example, you might get a cash transfer from the government if you send your kids to school and take them for yearly doctor visits. And there was one recently in Finland, where they gave $500 per month to unemployed folks.

These are high-quality studies. The evidence has shown that the UBI programs are pretty effective in a number of different ways. The caveat I would give is that they happen in different contexts, and the interventions are very different.

Wendt:  An experiment in Kenya is the largest. It involves around 20,000 people and unconditional cash payments that cover basic needs. It started in 2017 and will last 12 years. There are four different groups. One group gets the cash for the whole 12 years. Another group gets paid up front rather than on a monthly basis, I believe. Another group receives payments for a shorter period of time. And then there’s a control group that doesn’t get any cash. Some people reported that it has changed how women see their role in the household, because they felt entitled to have a say over how to spend the money.

What are the main points of criticism against UBI?

MacKay:  A big one is a reciprocity worry — that in order to get access to public benefits, you should be at least willing to participate in the labor market.

Think of the earned-income tax credit. That’s a cash transfer that goes to low-income Americans. But to get access to it, you need to be participating in the labor force. A lot of programs like SNAP [the federal government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as the Food Stamp Program] and TANF [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, another federal program] have work requirements attached to them. The Trump administration was trying to attach a work requirement to Medicaid programs, as well. The thought is, you should only get access to public benefits if you are participating in the formal labor market and earning an income.

The question they ask is: Why should some group of individuals be participating in the labor force and paying taxes to fund a UBI for other people who aren’t participating in the labor market? One of the responses to this is that UBI recognizes all those forms of contribution to society that aren’t remunerated. Think about parents taking care of their children or poor people taking care of elderly family members. There’s lots of ways in which people contribute to society. And you can think of a UBI as reciprocating in that sense, remunerating people for those contributions.

Wendt:  Another common worry is that UBI is a waste of money on the wealthy. Why should all of those wealthy people get a monthly check? If the goal is to do something about poverty, then why UBI, since the rich by definition are not poor? That’s an understandable concern for sure. But the reply there is that depending on how the UBI is financed, the rich will not be net beneficiaries. They will contribute more to finance the UBI than what they get as their monthly check.

What do you think about the Durham proposal?

MacKay:  This is the first time I’ve heard of a guaranteed income program that’s aimed at people coming out of prison. I think it makes perfect sense. Part of the justification here is that people with a felony record face a lot of difficulty in terms of accessing other public programs. I think they’re actually banned for at least some period of time from federal housing programs and from receiving SNAP benefits. Felons face a lot of difficulty getting jobs. Employers can legitimately ask if they have a record and deny them employment on that basis. So it makes a lot of sense that you would target this type of pilot project at those folks. If you think about who needs a platform in American society, it’s going to be people who don’t have access to these other programs and are economically vulnerable in terms of not being able to get a job. And so I think it makes a lot of sense that you would target the program this way.

Oftentimes we discuss UBI as a major transformation to society, as a sort of utopian policy. That draws a lot of attention. But I think the discussion might lead to a simpler idea — just using cash payments in more of our social safety net programs. That might be more sustainable, more cost effective, than trying to try to implement a full UBI type policy. For that reason, what’s happening in Durham — a guaranteed income for a very narrow group of individuals — is really interesting.

One thing the pandemic has shown us is that the government got a little bit more comfortable with giving cash payments to people. Another thing I’m really excited about are these proposals to expand the child tax credit, both coming from [Mitt] Romney and also coming from the Democrats, which you might think of as a basic income for kids. Every month, they would get a certain amount of money, maybe a few hundred dollars. The parents decide how to spend it, but the thought is it’s kind of like a baseline for kids. We don’t want to spend too much time focusing on the big UBI utopian policy proposals and miss that there’s a lot of interesting and potentially really important, cost-effective policy proposals around using cash payments in very targeted ways.

By Logan Ward, The Well

CUNY Academic Works

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Home > CUNY Graduate Center > Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects > 4321

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Essays on universal basic income.

Nana Mukbaniani , The Graduate Center, City University of New York Follow

Date of Degree

Document type.

Dissertation

Degree Name

Sangeeta Pratap

Committee Members

Randall Filer

Lilia Maliar

George Vachadze

Subject Categories

Macroeconomics

Universal Basic Income, Wealth Distribution, Precautionary Savings, Heterogeneous Agents, Inequality, Minimum Consumption Requirement

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a program in which individuals receive a regular sum of money, usually from the government. The transfer amount is thought to be unconditional of income and enough to cover all subsistence needs. Such a system is easy and cheap to administer because the government does not need to check the eligibility of each applicant. UBI programs are growing as more cities, states and countries (Stockton, California, Newark, New Jersey, Ontario, Canada, Kenya, Finland, Germany, Spain, China, etc) implement experiments of such programs. The idea of a UBI is gaining ground in the U.S.. One of the main responses of the U.S. to high unemployment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine was a modified version of a temporary country-wide UBI program in 2020 (CARES Act). 30 mayors across the U.S. created a coalition - Mayors for a Guaranteed Income - to explore cash payment programs and address the racial wealth inequality. UBI is actively discussed to be a potential policy that can mitigate adverse impact of accelerated automation on wages and employment. Thus, it is important to understand what we have learned from UBI experiments, what macroeconomic models predict in the UBI environment, and what is the best approach to implement such programs. This dissertation consists of three chapters. In the first chapter I review the literature on a Universal Basic Income (UBI) policy. I explore the UBI experiments that have been conducted worldwide, their limitations, and lessons that we have learned from them. I also review the macroeconomic models that address the idea of unconditional transfers, their limitations and the required future developments to evaluate how UBI works in a more complex and realistic environment. In the second chapter, I use general equilibrium model of heterogeneous agents to evaluate the impact of the UBI system, on aggregate levels and distributions of wealth, consumption, labor, and welfare. I contrast this with a targeted transfers system where people need to meet certain eligibility criteria (usually, income) to qualify for transfers. I find that in the UBI system with $1,000 monthly payments, the level of aggregate capital falls by 16% and the inequality of wealth increases no matter how the UBI system is financed: through taxes or through foreign aid. Guaranteed payments induce people to save less because of less precautionary needs. As precautionary savings motive is stronger for the asset poor, people in the lowest wealth quintiles reduce their savings more, which increases the inequality of wealth. Even though the welfare of the least skilled and the asset poor increases significantly because of unconditional transfers, the tax-financed UBI system requires a consumption tax rate to be equal to 43% that slightly reduces the welfare of the wealthier. Even though consumption tax rate is unrealistically high, the effective consumption tax rate (consumption tax net of transfers) decreases on average and aggregate welfare increases by 15.7% as measured by consumption equivalent variation. A hybrid model with both targeted transfers and partial UBI (monthly payments of $500) with low, 5% capital income tax rate (to encourage savings) is more efficient as it provides significant, almost 8% gain in welfare with only 22% consumption tax rate and without compromising output or welfare of the asset rich. In the third chapter, I study the impact of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) policy on aggregate output and welfare when there is an automation of production technologies. When the productivity of robots increases, robots substitute for labor and thus, the share of labor in value added decreases. I use general equilibrium models with heterogeneous agents who face idiosyncratic earnings risk and Cobb-Douglas technology with Traditional Capital and Labor Services. Traditional capital does not include robots and can be employed in production only with labor services. Labor services is a CES nest of robot capital and Human capital that can substitute each other. I calibrate the economy to match the evolution of the labor share in the last three decades. If the productivity of robots doubles, I find that output increases in the new equilibrium and the welfare of wealth poor households decreases significantly resulting in more than 6% decrease in aggregate welfare (measured as consumption equivalent variation, CEV). In such a setting, the transition to a UBI system increases welfare significantly, by more than 15%, however, reduces output by 12% because it reduces the precautionary savings motive. The hybrid system in which every household receives 50% of subsistence requirement and the eligibility threshold for targeted transfers equals 50% of subsistence requirement works well as it is less detrimental to output while increasing aggregate welfare by 4% as CEV. Further increase in output in the UBI and Hybrid systems can be achieved by a lower capital income tax rate.

Recommended Citation

Mukbaniani, Nana, "Essays on Universal Basic Income" (2021). CUNY Academic Works. https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/4321

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Could Universal Basic Income Help End Poverty?

A supporter carries a sign representing Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang's plan for a $1000 monthly universal basic income during a 2019 rally in New York City. Drew Angerer/Getty Images hide caption

A supporter carries a sign representing Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang's plan for a $1000 monthly universal basic income during a 2019 rally in New York City.

People who work on ways to end poverty have been trying a simple approach lately: just giving money to those in need, with no strings attached. Universal basic income, or UBI, once seemed like a radical idea in the US. Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang pitched it as part of his 2020 campaign. It didn't take. But then came the COVID-19 pandemic, which showed that a little money from the government could help some people in big ways. And now, many places in the country are pushing to make UBI a permanent part of the social safety net. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This , sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org . Email us at [email protected] .

This episode was produced by Jonaki Mehta. It was edited by Bridget Kelley and Catherine Laidlaw. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.

Universal Basic Income: A Dynamic Assessment

Universal basic income (UBI) is an increasingly popular policy proposal but there is no evidence regarding its longer-term consequences. We study UBI in a general equilibrium model with imperfect capital markets, labor market shocks, and intergenerational linkages via skill formation and transfers. We find that UBI increases-welfare for older agents but has large-welfare losses for younger agents and future generations. A sizable share of the negative effects stem from the endogenous intergenerational linkages. Modeling automation as an increased probability of an “out-of-work” shock, the model provides insights on the changing welfare consequence of UBI in a riskier environment.

We wish to thank Nora Lustig, Andy Neumeyer, Sergio Ocampo, Stefanie Stantcheva, and seminar audiences at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the 2019 Fordham Macroeconomics Conference, the 2019 California Macroeconomics Conference, University of Houston, the 2020 Barcelona GSE Summer Forum, the 2020 World Econometric Society Meetings, the 2020 Women in Macro Conference, the Bank of Canada, University of Tokyo, and UCSD. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

MARC RIS BibTeΧ

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• June 9, 2020

Published Versions

Diego Daruich & Raquel Fernández, 2024. " Universal Basic Income: A Dynamic Assessment, " American Economic Review, vol 114(1), pages 38-88.

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Universal basic income, explained — and why these free cash handouts remain unlikely

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Think about the federal government’s $1,200 coronavirus relief stimulus checks . Now imagine every adult in the U.S. receiving them on a regular basis.

Such is the driving idea behind creating a recurring income stipend commonly known as universal basic income (UBI), an idea that’s come into focus during the coronavirus pandemic and throughout 2019, when Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang campaigned on a promise to establish a form of UBI that he called the “Freedom Dividend.”

Here’s everything you need to know about UBI, including what it is, the pros and cons, how it works and how likely you could see a policy like this coming to the U.S. — and padding your wallet.

What is universal basic income?

UBI is a government-mandated program in which every U.S. citizen receives a certain amount of money on a regular basis. In other words, it’s a government guarantee that everyone receives a minimum income, whether they’re working or unemployed.

Those checks aren’t means-tested; hence, the term “universal.” If there is criteria on who is eligible for a payment or if payments are sent on a smaller scale, it would simply be referred to as basic income (BI).

That’s the main reason how UBI is different from other entitlement programs including Social Security and welfare, according to Ryan Hughes, founder at Bull Oak Capital.

“UBI is a government payment that would be paid to every adult, regardless of economic means,” Hughes says.

What are some examples of UBI?

Current events have recently cast a brighter spotlight on UBI and BI, but the idea has been around for centuries, with some estimates suggesting philosophers in the early 16th century first discussed the idea of creating a minimum income.

A 2017 pilot program in Finland gave 560 euros for two years to 2,000 unemployed adults aged 25 to 58. When it comes to the U.S., officials in Chicago considered creating a pilot program in which 1,000 low-income families received $1,000 a month. Alaska also gives residents a permanent annual dividend to everyone in its state.

Surprisingly, former President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration spearheaded an economic policy that might technically belong in the same family as UBI or BI, testing out a “negative income tax” for low-income families in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, rural Iowa and North Carolina, as well as Gary, Indiana, Seattle and Denver.

“Usually, some citizens are selected at random to receive the payments over a limited time period,” says Herman Brodie, founder and owner of Prospecta Limited, a United Kingdom-based consultancy firm. “Yet this doesn’t capture the impact of what could be a critical feature of UBI, namely the knowledge that everyone gets it and that it is unlimited.”

Advantages and disadvantages of UBI

Proponents of creating such a program cite it as a fast-track out of poverty, especially helping low-income earners afford essentials in cities where cost of living might outpace minimum wage increases. It might also help put more money in the hands of U.S. workers, who’ve seen the share of income they receive as compensation for their labor rapidly decline since the 1990s .

Other experts say it might help close income inequality in the U.S. All of that might then prop up the U.S. economy, with consumption not so heavily reliant on the nation’s top earners’ willingness to purchase. Experts say that’s only bound to get worse after the pandemic , perhaps adding to proponents’ urgency for establishing a program similar to UBI.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk cited it as a way to help out individuals who’ve lost their jobs due to automation and driverless cars, the disruptive innovation he’s spearheading at his Silicon Valley firm.

But critics of the program have said it could potentially discourage individuals from working and send budget debts and deficits skyrocketing, perhaps leading to an equally crippling inflationary stretch. UBI payments might have to be offset by higher taxes and reduced spending, which theoretically could also have an equally restrictive effect on the economy.

Some critics have argued that instead of creating a UBI program, policymakers might want to instead expand access to Medicare or other entitlement programs.

How UBI could affect other entitlement programs

The entitlement programs equation is adding to even more confusion about what UBI might look like.

More fiscally-conservative taxpayers might demand that UBI replace entitlement programs altogether, which currently cost an estimated $1.1 trillion, according to the Heritage Foundation , a right-leaning think tank. However, Democrats have spoken out against the idea of kicking low-income individuals off those social-safety nets , while even farther left-leaning proponents of the program suggest footing the bill simply by raising new tax revenues.

For Yang’s “Freedom Dividend” pillar, the candidate proposed consolidating some welfare programs and implementing a value-added tax of 10 percent on large corporations to pay for his version of UBI, according to the former candidate’s website . Yang also argues that, by giving every American a minimum income, it would reduce homelessness, incarceration and health care costs.

How likely is UBI to take hold in the US?

That being said, the complications and challenges of implementing such a wide-scale program mean it’s unlikely for UBI to happen in the U.S. anytime soon, even as it’s been recently brought back to national attention by high-profile public figures.

An August 2020 poll from the Pew Research Center also found the majority of U.S. adults (54 percent) oppose establishing a UBI payment of about $1,000 per month for all adults , whether they have a job or not. Less than half (45 percent) say they favor the proposal.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says the Trump administration still supports the idea of sending another round of payments, while a bipartisan team of Congressional lawmakers drafted a list of policy priorities for the next stimulus bill that includes another round of $1,200 payments to individuals .

For now, that means your wallet might only get a taste of UBI if it’s through another round of stimulus checks or any future economic impact payments sponsored by the federal government.

Learn more:

• The budget deficit, explained — and how to prepare for a rising tax burden down the road
• What is economic stimulus and how does it work?
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Home — Essay Samples — Economics — Political Economy — Universal Basic Income

Essays on Universal Basic Income

Brief description of universal basic income.

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a social concept that proposes providing all citizens with a regular, unconditional sum of money, regardless of their employment status or income level. It has gained attention as a potential solution to poverty, inequality, and automation-related job loss. UBI has the potential to transform society by ensuring financial security for all individuals.

Importance of Writing Essays on This Topic

Essays on Universal Basic Income are crucial for academic and personal exploration as they encourage critical thinking, research, and debate on a topic that has far-reaching implications for society. By writing essays on UBI, students and scholars can contribute to the discourse on economic and social policy, and develop a deeper understanding of the potential impacts of UBI on individuals and communities.

Tips on Choosing a Good Topic

• Consider the practical implications of UBI: Explore how UBI can address poverty, inequality, and unemployment.
• Examine the ethical considerations: Investigate the moral and ethical implications of implementing UBI.
• Analyze the economic impact: Delve into the potential effects of UBI on the economy, labor market, and government expenditure.

Essay Topics

• The impact of Universal Basic Income on poverty reduction
• Ethical considerations of implementing Universal Basic Income
• Universal Basic Income and its effect on workforce participation
• The economic implications of Universal Basic Income
• Universal Basic Income as a solution to automation-related job loss
• The role of Universal Basic Income in promoting gender equality
• Universal Basic Income and its impact on healthcare access
• The feasibility of implementing Universal Basic Income in different countries
• Universal Basic Income and its potential effects on entrepreneurship
• The psychological and social impact of Universal Basic Income on individuals and communities

Concluding Thought

Writing essays on Universal Basic Income provides an opportunity to engage with a topic that has the potential to reshape societal structures and address pressing economic and social challenges. By exploring the various aspects of UBI, individuals can contribute to the ongoing dialogue and shape future policy decisions. Get involved in the conversation by delving into the world of Universal Basic Income through your essays.

Universal Basic Income: a Viable Solution Or a Dangerous Experiment

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Home / Essay Samples / Economics / Universal Basic Income

Universal Basic Income Essay Examples

Advantages of universal basic income for the future society.

Many people have suffered from financial and economic problems throughout the globe. The idea of a universal basic income (UBI) has sparked this trend. The UBI is an actual cash payment for all people (2016), the economist states. Indeed, the idea behind the UBI is...

Benefits of Universal Basic Income for United States Citizens

The concept of universal basic income (UBI) has been in discussion for decades and resurfaced as a preeminent leading solution in releasing the financial burdens and serves as an incremental anti-poverty intervention for United States citizens. Historical figures such as Thomas Paine (founding father of...

Universal Basic Income: Give Cash to the Poor

Universal basic income (UBI), in other literature referred as basic income, citizen’s income and unconditional basic income is a regular cash payment, paid periodically by a political community to all its members on an individual basis without means test. The Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN,...

The Benefits of Universal Basic Income for Canadians

Elon Musk, founder of Tesla Motors said“Robotics will take away most people’s jobs, so a universal income is the only solution.” Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates have also made similar comments to Elon’s, depicting an autonomous future that will take over jobs such as factory...

Minimising Fraud and Errors in the UK Benefit System

The project is tailored to consider the current benefit systems in the UK and give particular considerations to reformations in the Universal Incomes and its replacement with a more transparent Universal Basic Incomes (UBI). Protection of frauds and potential errors associated with the current system...

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