Universal basic income

Ancient Egypt had a strong, unified theocratic state that owned key parts of the Egyptian economy, including granaries that dispensed grain to the public during hard times.

In a 46 BC triumph, Roman general and dictator Julius Caesar gave each common Roman citizen 100 denarii. Following his assassination in 44 BC, Caesar's will left 300 sestertii (or 75 denarii) to each citizen. Trajan, emperor of Rome from 98 to 117 AD, personally gave 650 denarii (equivalent to perhaps US$430 in 2023) to all common Roman citizens who applied.

In Utopia (1516), English statesman and philosopher Thomas More depicts a society in which every person receives a guaranteed income. In this book, basic income is proposed as an answer to the statement "No penalty on earth will stop people from stealing, if it's their only way of getting food", stating:

instead of inflicting these horrible punishments, it would be far more to the point to provide everyone with some means of livelihood, so that nobody's under the frightful necessity of becoming first a thief, and then a corpse.

Spanish scholar Johannes Ludovicus Vives (1492–1540) proposed that the municipal government should be responsible for securing a subsistence minimum to all its residents "not on the grounds of justice but for the sake of a more effective exercise of morally required charity." Vives also argued that to qualify for poor relief, the recipient must "deserve the help he or she gets by proving his or her willingness to work."

English-born American philosopher Thomas Paine authored Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783), the two most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution. His essay Agrarian Justice was published in 1797. In it, he proposed concrete reforms to abolish poverty. In particular, he proposed a universal social insurance system comprising old-age pensions and disability support, and universal stakeholder grants for young adults, funded by a 10% inheritance tax focused on land, it is also considered one of the earliest proposals for a social security system. Thomas Paine summarized his view by stating that "Men did not make the earth. It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. …

The associated diagram shows a basic income/negative tax system combined with flat income tax (the same percentage in tax for every income level). Axis y is here the pre-tax salary given by the employer and y' is the net income.

For low earnings, there is no income tax in the negative income tax system. They receive money, in the form of a negative income tax, but they do not pay any tax. Then, as their labour income increases, this benefit, this money from the state, gradually decreases. That decrease is to be seen as a mechanism for the poor, instead of the poor paying tax.

That is, however, not the case in the corresponding basic income system in the diagram at right. There, everyone typically pays income taxes. But on the other hand, everyone also gets the same amount of basic income.

But, as the orange line in the diagram shows, the net income is anyway the same. No matter how much or how little one earns, the amount of money received is the same, regardless of which of these two systems are used.

Basic income and negative income tax are generally seen to be similar in economic net effects, but there are some differences:

60% of top U.S. economist panel opposed and 2% favored universal basic income (UBI) financed by ending all transfer programs (including Social Security and corporate subsidies). Daron Acemoglu argued that a better safety net is needed but "UBI is expensive and not generous enough", Markus Brunnermeier that it could shift the norm of whether to work, Barry Eichengreen that one should wait for further experimental data, Oliver Hart that redistribution should be targeted to the most needy, Caroline Hoxby that UBI ignores research on social insurance and optimal taxation. Some oppose ending other transfers.

There is a prevailing opinion that we are in an era of technological unemployment – that technology is increasingly making skilled workers obsolete.

One central rationale for basic income is the belief that automation and robotisation could result in technological unemployment, leading to a world with fewer paid jobs. A key question in this context is whether a basic income could help prevent or alleviate such problems by allowing everyone to benefit from a society's wealth, as well as whether a UBI could be a stepping stone to a resource-based or post-scarcity economy.

U.S. presidential candidate and nonprofit founder Andrew Yang has stated that automation caused the loss of 4 million manufacturing jobs and advocated for a UBI (which he calls a Freedom Dividend) of $1,000/month rather than worker retraining programs. Yang has stated that he is influenced by Martin Ford. Ford believes that the emerging technologies will fail to deliver much employment; on the contrary, because the new industries will "rarely, if ever, be highly labor-intensive". Similar ideas have been debated before in history—that "the machines will take the jobs". What is new is the existence of several academic studies that forecast a future with substantially less employment, in the decades to come. Additionally, US President Barack Obama stated that he believes that the growth of artificial intelligence will lead to an increased discussion around the idea of "unconditional free money for everyone".

Some proponents of UBI have argued that basic income could increase economic growth because it would sustain people while they invest in education to get higher-skilled and well-paid jobs. …

Since the 1960s, but in particular since the late 2000s, several pilot programs and experiments on basic income have been conducted around the world. Some examples include:

The Permanent Fund of Alaska in the United States provides a kind of yearly basic income based on the oil and gas revenues of the state to nearly all state residents. More precisely the fund resembles a sovereign wealth fund, investing resource revenues into bonds, stocks, and other conservative investment options with the intent to generate renewable revenue for future generations. The fund has had a noticeable yet diminishing effect on reducing poverty among rural Alaska Indigenous people, notably in the elderly population. However, the payment is not high enough to cover basic expenses, averaging $1,600 annually per resident in 2019 currency (as of 2019 it has never exceeded $2,100), and is not a fixed, guaranteed amount. For these reasons, it is not always considered a basic income.

Macau's Wealth Partaking Scheme provides some annual basic income to permanent residents, funded by revenues from the city's casinos. However, the amount disbursed is not sufficient to cover basic living expenses, so it is not considered a basic income.

Bolsa Família is a large social welfare program in Brazil that provides money to many low-income families in the country. The system is related to basic income, but has more conditions, like asking the recipients to keep their children in school until graduation. As of March 2020, the program covers 13.8 million families, and pays an average of $34 per month, in a country where the minimum wage is $190 per month.

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (ECBI) opened Harrah's Cherokee Casino in 1997 and it has generated jobs and revenue for the tribe, providing money that the EBCI applies to its people's education, welfare and culture. Each member of the tribe is paid an annual income that started at $500 and has increased to $10,000 as of 2015.