Universal income

• [New] Universal basic income has been a popular idea among California's tech titans as they grapple with how to handle the inevitable job losses that will come with breakthroughs in automation and artificial intelligence.
• South Africa will not have unSouth Africa will not implement a universal basic income grant until at least March, rolling back a pledge to have it ready by October.
• If universal income replaced all other federal programs aimed at low-income Canadians, the net cost could fall to $44 billion per year.
• Proponents of Universal Basic Income predict that if the government bumped up the minimum monthly support payment, Americans would quit working in fast-food restaurants and other dreary places because they would be freed from the necessity of a mere paycheck just to survive.
• Universal basic income is expected to be trialed across four Scottish council areas in 2018.
• Taxing Amazon, Facebook and Apple more heavily could be one way of paying for a universal basic income.
• The idea of a universal basic income has been gaining traction lately thanks in part to endorsements from big-name Silicon Valley moguls (most recently Mark Zuckerberg) and the looming threat of automation-driven job loss.
• A universal basic income could add as much as $2 trillion in annual expenses to the U.S. budget.
• The UK Green Party has pledged to introduce a universal basic income by 2025, which would see every adult receiving a minimum of £89 per week.
• Ideas like Universal Basic Income and social media memes like Fully Automated Luxury Communism are spreading virally and will increase their reach and impact exponentially as tens of millions are unemployed by automation in the next two decades.
• 2018 will be the year of universal basic income.
• Britain could raise new taxes on Amazon, Facebook and Apple to give every citizen under the age of 55 as much as £10,000 in a form of universal basic income.
• Falling incomes will have grave consequences in places like the United States and Europe.
• The latest experiment in a universal basic income will be coming to Stockton, California, in the next year.
• Elon Musk's vision of a Universal Basic Income for billions of people could only be realized successfully using blockchain technology.
• The State of Hawaii is going to begin evaluating universal basic income.
• Even more tantalizing is the idea that with crypto currencies such as system could come into existence that lives outside the confines of nation states and helps bring about a global Universal Basic Income.
• Finland has become the first country in Europe to pay its unemployed citizens an unconditional monthly sum in a social experiment that will be watched around the world amid gathering interest in the idea of a universal basic income.
• India's proposal to give every citizen a cash transfer using the digital platform Aadhaar could reduce absolute poverty from 22 per cent to 0.5 per cent.
• The groundswell towards Universal Basic Income will make it necessary to give a boost to an economy in uncertain times.
• EU universal income must be seriously considered as rise of robots threatens mass unemployment.
• The Universal Basic Income could pay every adult $12,000 per year to raise the floor and make sure that no American falls into poverty.

Last updated: 07 March 2021