The concept of "universal basic income" is gaining currency right now in Silicon Valley, where thinkers from Tesla’s Elon Musk to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg are considering the idea of blunting the impact of automation by driving each person—working or not— with a minimum income for life . As Fortune reports this month, venture investor Sam Altman and his startup incubator firm, Y Combinator, are currently testing the idea with a pilot project involving up to 100 families in Oakland, Calif.
But the idea is hardly new: In fact, it has resurfaced repeatedly over the centuries at times of economic transformation, […]
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