Category: Basic Income

Omidyar Network, a “philanthropic investment firm” created by eBay founded Pierre Omidyar, announced on February 7 that it will donate up to $493,000 to the New York based charity organization GiveDirectly . The funds will be used to support GiveDirectly’s major basic income experiment in Kenya .

In the largest and longest-running basic income trial to date, GiveDirectly will provide unconditional cash transfers to the residents of 200 villages in rural Kenya (about 26,000 people in total). The residents of 40 of these villages (about 6,000 people) will receive monthly payments for 12 years. At about $0.75 per day, […]

Full Post at basicincome.org

NEW DELHI: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today hoped that the Universal Basic Income (UBI) scheme mooted by the Economic Survey will be implemented over the next one year in some parts of the country at least on experimental basis. The Economic Survey, authored by Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian, had suggested that the Centre may come out with UBI scheme under which the government should provide a minimum cash amount to poor people to meet their basic needs.
Speaking at a function to release the book ‘India 2047 Voices of the Young’, Jaitley said under the proposed system UBI […]

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-TheWire.in

The Economic Survey 2016-17 devotes a chapter to the provision of a Universal Basic Income (UBI), describing it as a “raging new idea,” a “radical new vision” and “the shortest path to eliminating poverty”. While warning that the UBI “should not become the Trojan horse that usurps the fiscal space for a well-functioning state,” the survey says a de facto UBI can be instituted in the existing “fiscal space”. It argues that winding up existing subsidies and welfare schemes could generate enough resources to institute UBI. To make this argument, the survey includes a table which lists the subsidies […]

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Techpreneurs Love UBI

Tesla and SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk and Y Combinator president Sam Altman have already come out in support of universal basic income (UBI), and now another tech billionaire is joining their ranks: eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.

His philanthropic investment firm, the Omidyar Network, is stepping up its support of UBI by funding a basic income experiment in Kenya. The experiment is being implemented by charity organization GiveDirectly, which is currently running the small pilot project in a few Kenyan villages. When the program lunches fully in a few months, it’ll be the largest UBI experiment […]

Full Post at trueviralnews.com

The idea of a universal basic income, a guaranteed minimum payment for all citizens, is gaining momentum as a potential solution for an increasingly stratified society—one in which technology and other forms of progress generate enormous wealth for some and unemployment and economic despair for others.

Despite trials in the 1960s and 1970s in the US, Canada, and India, we still don’t know if it reduces poverty while enhancing the quality of life. The earlier experiments, although promising, were incomplete and inconclusive.

The latest benefactor to invest in proving out the idea is eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. On Feb. 7, the […]

Full Post at qz.com

Providing a UBI in place of existing schemes will not change the fundamentally unequal income distribution in the country. The way to resolve the crisis is a redistribution from the rich to the poor.

Representative image. Credit: Reuters The Economic Survey 2016-17 devotes a chapter to the provision of a Universal Basic Income (UBI), describing it as a “raging new idea,” a “radical new vision” and “the shortest path to eliminating poverty”. While warning that the UBI “should not become the Trojan horse that usurps the fiscal space for a well-functioning state,” the survey says a de facto UBI […]

Full Post at thewire.in

India’s Ministry of Finance recently released a whopper of an annual Economic Survey . Don’t let the boring title fool you: this is a magnum opus on contemporary development. (Full disclosure: the lead author is Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian , a friend and senior fellow on leave from CGD.) The Survey contains the usual detailed analysis of the Indian economy. Yet the parts of most interest to developmentistas are likely to be the special chapters on demonetization, low-skill manufacturing, fertility puzzles, urbanization, and more.

“Universal Basic Income: A Conversation With and Within the Mahatma” (Chapter 9) is the one […]

Full Post at www.cgdev.org

The Climate Leadership Council just put forth a proposal for a carbon fee and dividend , as a key policy to combat climate change. The authors are conservatives, including Republican former Secretaries of State James Baker and George Schultz, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and two Chairs from the Council of Economic Advisors in the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations. While there are some aspects of the proposal to question, progressives should get behind the main idea: a steadily rising carbon fee and dividend.

First, the proposal is a very welcome development for the effort to fight climate change, and […]

Full Post at basicincome.org

There’s a lot of buzz around UBI these days and it’s being tested in various countries, and previous tests appear to have been successful.

Would it work in Israel? Should it be tried? I think it would work well here and the benefits are potentially huge for society and the country.

The most common objection is that it would be too expensive and how would the country pay for such a thing? Giving free money to everyone? Crazy! Nobody would go to work ever!However I think that is shortsighted. I came across a quote somewhere recently that went something like "Somewhere […]

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The founder of eBay, Pierre Omidyar, has pledged nearly $500,000 to a program that will provide a basic income to 6,000 people over the next 12 years, according to a recent report by the International Business Times‘ AJ Dellinger. The program, which is called GiveDirectly, plans to use the data it collects on the 6,000 people receiving the basic income over the next 12 years to further research into the more widespread viability of a universal basic income (UBI), which is also referred to as a basic income guarantee or several other names from organization to organization and country […]

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