by Doreen Nicoll | Aug 2, 2026 | News
The Basic Income Canada Network (BICN) is hosting the 2026 Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) Congress at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) from August 19 to 22. This year’s list of impressive presenters will address the theme, Basic Income & the Polycrisis: The key to unlocking the puzzle.
Sheila Regehr, Chair of BICN told rabble.ca:
“While ‘polycrisis’ might not yet be a common word, people around the globe know it well because we all live it daily in many ways — the impacts of AI and social media, floods, drought, fires, health problems, insecure jobs, inflation, racism, steep inequality, war and other interconnected crises that can’t be solved in siloes, or one puzzle piece at a time. It’s a dangerous direction for people and planet.
Toread the full article, click here.
by Ryan Hogg | Jul 30, 2026 | News
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called on governments to tax AI companies to fund a universal basic income and introduce employee retention incentives to account for the potential impact the technology could have on the labor market.
In a five-point blog post covering the potential policy responses to the “AI exponential,” referring to the rapid improvement in the technology’s capabilities, Amodei urged governments to develop regulatory and tax solutions to cushion its disruption.
A universal basic income funded through taxing “relevant companies” or raising the capital gains tax could be necessary, if AI results in widespread job displacement and permanently reduces labor demand, he said.
“Broadly speaking, fast economic growth should create the tax base for shared prosperity,” wrote Amodei.
The Anthropic CEO called for “retention tax incentives to encourage employers not to make layoffs,” alongside wage insurance policies that would compensate people forced to take a lower paying job.
Anthropic is one of the leading AI companies, alongside OpenAI and the traditional Big Tech companies like Microsoft and Google. Its CEO Amodei has previously offered grim prognoses on AI’s impact on the labor force, suggesting it could wipe out half of entry-level white collar jobs within five years.
Governments should also consider “pro-employment incentives” to dissuade companies from replacing labor with AI, Amodei wrote.
by Hannah Thomas, Rachael Black | Jul 28, 2026 | News
Families should be able to work, care for each other, and build toward a future without the constant threat of financial collapse. But the labor market—defined by low wages, volatile income, and eroding employer benefits—no longer delivers that foundation for a growing share of working households. A generation of direct cash pilots has proven that an unconditional living wage floor works. Now the bet is to build one, and philanthropy is uniquely positioned to catalyze the research, state-level pilots, and systems needed to turn that proof into policy at scale.
To read the full article, click here.
by Peter Knight | Jul 23, 2026 | News
In a new publication Cash in Hand, Marc Doussard, Jurgen De Wispelaere and Joe Chrisp make the case for basic income as a policy solution that reinvigorates left-behind places. Featuring a foreword by Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.
Often only viewed as a national policy, recent initiatives and debates open up the idea of basic income being introduced by municipalities and regions. In the regional policy world, the long-term failure of regeneration schemes focused on manufacturing and innovation has led to a focus on endogenous development: Regional dynamism achieved by maximizing the talents and contributions of existing residents. The fit between basic income and this agenda is more than aspirational. Worldwide, regions and municipalities are leading the way in experimenting with basic income and other unconditional cash transfers. Cash in Hand guides readers through the theory, evidence and practical politics of basic income as regional policy.
Cash in Hand will be launched at the BIEN Congress in Toronto (20-22 August 2026), with Marc Doussard and Jurgen De Wispelaere in conversation with Amy Castro, Tom Cooper, Fabienne Hansen and Vibhor Mathur. Join us if you are in Toronto!
Read Cash in Hand here: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rpim20/current
by Scott Santens | Jul 15, 2026 | News
Imagine two plots of land in the heart of a big city, side by side, the exact same size. On one stands a gleaming fifty-story tower full of offices and apartments and shops. On the other sits a zero-story parking lot.
Now ask yourself: which owner pays more in taxes?
The tower owner does. We tax the building, so the more you build, the more you owe. The parking lot owner, who built almost nothing, pays almost nothing, even though the dirt beneath that asphalt is worth a fortune precisely because it sits in the middle of a thriving city that everyone else built up around it. So the parking lot just sits there. Year after year. The owner pays their small tax, and watches the land’s value climb—value they did nothing to create, mind you—waiting to sell for a huge windfall.
I think that’s pretty perverse, and a land value tax (LVT) is built to fix it.
To read the full post, click here.
by Peter Knight | Jul 8, 2026 | News
Last week the UN Special Rapporteur for Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Olivier De Schutter, presented the Roadmap for Eradicating Poverty Beyond Growth to the UN Human Rights Council, outlining a visionary, hopeful, radical pathway beyond the crises and catastrophes of contemporary capitalism and towards a liveable world for all of us. The Roadmap was developed in consultation with over 400 experts from trade unions, movements, UN agencies, universities, policy bodies, and civil society institutions around the world. BIEN EC and Team Members including Neil Howard, Vibhor Mathur, Diana Bashur, Nicholas Langridge and Patrick Brown wrote the Policy Profile on basic income, which is available here. The BIEN community will find it worthwhile to look at the entire Roadmap and the dozens of policy profiles outlining how we transform everything from care to energy to community here.
