Blog
What is Unconditional Basic Income in One Word?
I've been in a couple rooms of around 50 people or so where we were asked to describe in one word, why we believe unconditional basic income is important, and each time I was impressed with the great variety of responses, but also how certain responses were expressed
What is There to Learn From Finland’s Basic Income Experiment? Did It Succeed or Fail?
Evaluating the Preliminary Results of a Partial UBI and Slightly Less Bureaucracy Update: Since I published this article, the official final report was released in early 2020. You can read a summary of the findings here [https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/an-experiment-to-inform-universal-basic-income] . After two years of experimentation within
Basic Income is now a dominant discussion in India's 2019 general election
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTE: Want to listen to this post instead, or as you read it? Click here. [https://anchor.fm/scottsantens/episodes/Basic-Income-is-now-a-dominant-discussion-in-Indias-2019-general-election-e3324r] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- With the historic announcement by India's opposition party [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/30/indias-opposition-wants-u
"The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct, and immediate abolition of poverty." — Martin Luther King Jr.
It is not as widely known as it should be, but Martin Luther King Jr. wrote and spoke about the need for an unconditional basic income before he was killed. Here is a video of him speaking about UBI at Stanford in 1967. One of the answers it seems to
Top 10 Basic Income Articles of 2018
As a moderator of the /r/BasicIncome subreddit, I read a lot of links every year about UBI, probably around 100 per month. Once again, as I did last year, I've compiled a list of the ten articles/papers/reports I consider the most important to read out
Standing on Shoulders
On November 17, 2018, a true human being named Gerald Huff died of pancreatic cancer [https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sfgate/obituary.aspx?pid=190826268]. He was a fellow basic income advocate and a friend. Like me, he was passionate about UBI, so much so that he had been working
What People Get Most Wrong About Unconditional Basic Income
Prospect Magazine approached me to write an article for them about what people get most wrong about unconditional basic income. It was published on December 3, 2018. As it exists behind a soft paywall, the full article can be found below. You can also choose to listen to it in
The Zombification of Intellectual Property and the Tool That Could Finally Reform It
How IP-Funded Basic Income Could Enrich the Public Domain You know what a zombie is, right? Do you know why you know? You know because of a mistake that threw Night of the Living Dead freely into the public domain, bypassing all standard copyright protections. Purely by accident, George Romero’
Doug Ford Cancelled Ontario’s Basic Income Pilot Experiment Because It Was Working
Ontario should demand the completion of the OBIP experiment in the name of empirical evidence and human research ethics Update: Since my publication of this article, two [https://labourstudies.mcmaster.ca/documents/southern-ontarios-basic-income-experience.pdf] surveys [https://assets.nationbuilder.com/bicn/pages/42/attachments/original/1551664357/BICN_-_Signposts_to_Success.
What We Need to Truly Thrive: Democracy and Unconditional Basic Income (UBI)
The text below is a speech I wrote for a keynote in Ireland for DemCon 2018. The PowerPoint I created for it is also available here [https://www.slideshare.net/ScottSantens/unconditional-basic-income-and-democracy] . > “Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.” — Frank Herbert, Dune Fear…
