Negative Income Tax is Not Cheaper Than Universal Basic Income, Nor is Guaranteed Income 'More Progressive' by Excluding the Rich
Many people don't know this, but Milton Friedman was once asked in the Spring of 2000 what he thought about a universal basic income (UBI) in comparison to his proposed negative income tax (NIT) and this was his response: "A basic or citizen's income is not an alternative to a
A.I. Will Not Displace Everyone, Everywhere, All at Once. It Will Rapidly Transform the Labor Market, Exacerbating Inequality, Insecurity, and Poverty.
There is no simple way of discussing the economic impact of artificial intelligence. As someone who has been warning about the impacts of automation for a decade now, and trying to get people to understand that automation has already been impacting us for decades, I can tell you that this
The Fable of the Two-Headed Dragon-Tyrant and the UBI Missile
The following short story is an adaptation of The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant by Nick Bostrom, written by GPT-4 with my prompting (and light editing) in response to the open letter calling for a pause on the development of GPT-5. Once upon a time, in a prosperous kingdom, there lived
Did Spain's B-MINCOME Experiment Prove That Unconditional Basic Income Doesn't Work?
Between 2017 and 2019, in the city of Barcelona, an experiment in the provision of monthly cash happened. It was called B-MINCOME. The original intent of the experiment was to test unconditional basic income to gather evidence for a nationwide universal basic income, but the pilot was put through the
ChatGPT Has Already Decreased My Income Security, and Likely Yours Too
Note: You can also listen to this post thanks to an AI I trained with my voice Most of you have by now heard of ChatGPT already, but if you haven't, first I'm happy to hear you're out of your coma, and second, it's what's called a "generative artificial intelligence"
How Money is Born out of Public Spending and Dies by Taxes
If there's one thing most people don't seem to understand about how money works that I think would really help governments work better in the 21st century, it's that money does not flow in the way we perceive it does. It's an illusion. What money actually does is pop into
The FairTax Would Implement a Universal Basic Income
Anyone who supports the FairTax and its monthly 'prebate' also supports UBI even if they swear otherwise Basic income. $279 every month. Tax free money from the government. No work requirements. No income-testing. For every legal resident of the United States, every month, with additional income for kids depending on
One Year After the Expiration of the Enhanced Child Tax Credit, What All Have We Learned About Its Effects?
Summary: The monthly Child Tax Credit payments did not reduce employment, but what they did do was reduce hunger and increase entrepreneurship, and if made permanent would likely generate far greater benefits than its cost, and reduce domestic abuse of women and children. 2022 has come to a close, and
The Spaceballs Argument for Unconditional Basic Income (UBI)
There is an argument frequently made against the concept of unconditional basic income (UBI) that essentially goes like this: "Life requires work. You can't just expect to live without work, and it's wrong for someone to live off the work of others. So UBI has no moral justification." This argument
No, Universal Basic Income Does Not Require Tax Rates of 40 to 60 Percent
Lots of news articles are being written about a new study in Ireland of UBI, and as usual, the discussion is misinforming, as is the study itself. I responded with a long thread on Twitter. Here's that thread in blog form and slightly expanded upon. Today we published our study
