Blog
A 4-Day Workweek, Medicare for All, and the Tax That Gets Us There
How a Pigovian automation tax can turn AI’s productivity gains into a 4-day, 32-hour workweek and universal healthcare A recent economics paper laid out what I and others have been saying for years about how companies are facing an automation arms race, and how they can’t
Conservatives Demonized UBI as Programmable Currency. Then They Proposed Exactly That.
RISE pilot programs propose government-controlled spending, behavioral requirements, and weekly surveillance instead of the cash and freedom of choice of basic income There’s a new white paper circulating in conservative policy circles called “Reforming the Safety Net through RISE Pilot Programs.” RISE stands for Resources for Independence, Stability,
Dolly Parton Knew What People Need
How the queen of country music gave unconditional cash to wildfire survivors — and proved basic income works Dolly Parton died today at 80. You’ve probably already seen the tributes pouring in, the greatest hits, the rhinestones, the Jolene memes, the Whitney Houston story, and all of that is real,
Turtles All the Way Down: The Biological Case for Universal Basic Income
If our decisions are shaped by forces we never chose, then punishing people for those decisions and withholding the resources that would improve them is our true moral failure. I got my psychology degree in 2004 with a focus on cognitive neuroscience after first spending two years studying engineering physics.
The Land Dividend: How a Land Value Tax Can Fund a UBI
Why taxing the value of land is potentially the best tax for universal basic income by making housing cheaper, taxing AI indirectly, and pushing rents down instead of up Imagine two plots of land in the heart of a big city, side by side, the exact same size. On one
How to Fund Universal Basic Income by Taxing Consumption: Over $450 a Month From a VAT
Pairing a 10% value-added tax or a tiny 0.1% automated transaction tax with UBI transforms a regressive tax into a progressive dividend for every American A 10% value-added tax (VAT) in the United States could raise about $1.76 trillion a year — enough to fund a universal
How Do We Pay for Universal Basic Income? Tax Stock the Way Companies Already Issue It.
A 1.5% annual stock dilution tax on corporations with revenue over $100M would raise over $1.4 trillion a year — enough to send every American about $365 a month, automatically. Corporations issue new stock all the time — to raise cash, to pay executives, to swallow up other companies. So
The Primordial Credit Argument for Unconditional Basic Income (UBI)
What David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years reveals about gratitude, interdependence, and why UBI is the smallest acknowledgment civilization can make to the unpayable debt of being alive Every time I drop a bag of garbage down the chute in my building, I think about debt. Not
The Universality Argument for Basic Income
Why including everyone — yes, even billionaires like Elon Musk — works better than means-testing ever possibly can Imagine a room with a thousand people. You know that 999 of them need something to survive, and one of them doesn’t. You have two options. Option one: give the same thing
I Just Launched the AI Pledge for Humanity. Here’s Why.
AI leaders keep saying UBI is necessary. This pledge asks them to prove it. I’ve been working on universal basic income full-time since 2013. Thirteen years. In that time, I’ve watched the conversation shift from “that’s a crazy idea” to “that’s inevitable.” Especially among the
