by Faiz Siddiqui | May 24, 2026 | News
Photo by Andy Feliciotti on Unsplash
Elon Musk has a plan for a future where jobs are wiped out by artificial intelligence: a benevolent government will provide.
“Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI,” Musk said in an X post.
Musk has pushed government-issued checks not as a temporary stopgap, but a long-term plan for a world of “amazing abundance” he expects AI to create.“AI/robotics will produce goods & services far in excess of the increase in the money supply,” he added, “so there will not be inflation.”
To red the full article, click here.
by Scott Santens | May 17, 2026 | News, Opinion
Imagine a room with a thousand people. You know that 999 of them need something to survive, and one of them doesn’t. You have two options. Option one: give the same thing to all 1,000 people, and when they leave through a door where everyone’s income is already being checked, take a bit more from the one person who didn’t need it. Option two: before giving anything to anyone, set up an additional checkpoint inside the room, hire people to run it, create paperwork, establish eligibility rules, and test all 1,000 people — knowing that the test will incorrectly fail dozens if not hundreds of people who actually need help — all to avoid giving something to one person for whom the amount is a rounding error.
That is the choice between universal basic income and means-tested anything. When you frame it honestly, the answer is obvious. But we don’t frame it honestly. We frame it as responsible budgeting versus reckless spending. We frame it as helping the deserving versus subsidizing the rich. We frame it in ways that serve the interests of the people who benefit most from the means-tested version. And those people, as I’ll explain, are not the poor.
To read the full article, click here.
by Peter Knight | May 16, 2026 | Featured, News
Photo by Steve A Johnson on Unsplash
Steven Bartlett has interviewed separately three leading experts on artificial intelligence (AI) and a business strategist as part of his podcast series, The Diary of a CEO. These fascinating in-de[th interviews all discuss UBI as a policy for mitigating the social impact of expected massive unemployment accompanying the achievement of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI — a hypothetical type of AI that can match or surpass human cognitive abilities across virtually any intellectual task) through an exponential process known as recursive self-improvement. AGI poses an existential threat to humanity if it proves impossible to solve the “alignment problem” — the challenge of ensuring that AI systems act in accordance with human goals, ethical values, and intentions.
To view the interview of Geoffrey Hinton, click here.
To view the interview of Stuart Russell, click here.
To view the interview of Tristan Harris, click here.
To view the interview of Daniel Priestly click here.
by Peter Knight | May 13, 2026 | Featured, News
Jorge Drescher of Kyiv, Ukraine has written two thought-provoking articles posing conceptual issues related to wages, work, and basic income.
The first article “Wage Negotiation — Observed by a Third Party”, raises a number of doubts concerning the process by which wages are set. “Consent is present. But is freedom?” Is it just? How would the wage negotiation have proceeded if the employee had a Universal Basic Income? Drescher sugests “Perhaps we need to rethink negotiations altogether: not as a game of asymmetric information, but as an encounter on equal footing. As a dialogue that doesn’t just ask, What are you worth? but: What do you need to be free?“
In the second article, “When Income from Work Becomes a Structural Problem”, Drescher argues that the “primary” form of work is undertaken to satisfy basic needs of existence. But when basic needs are satisfied, people undertake more meaningful activity: “cultural, symbolic, identity-forming.” Income, like work, is a socially constructed phenomenon. “Therefore, the social question is not: How do we enable someone without income to earn money through work? But rather: How do we ensure that all people can live in dignity and security, regardless of their economic utility?” The first step toward answering this question is establishing a UBI, a social dividend that enables freedom.
To read”Wage Negotiation — Observed by a Third Party” click here.
To read “When Income from Work Becomes a Structural Problem” click here.
by Doreen Nicoll | May 12, 2026 | Events, News
Ontario Basic Income recipient – Photo credit: Jessie Golem
The Basic Income Canada Network (BICN) along with allies including Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) are organizing the 2026 Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) Congress being held in Toronto from August 20 to 22, 2026. The theme of the BIEN Congress is Basic Income & the Polycrisis: The key to unlocking the puzzle.
The Congress will mark BIEN’s 40th anniversary and it is a testament to how the Basic Income movement has grown internationally as well as how people from a wide array of countries have shared their knowledge and findings.
In fact, the Basic Income movement has accumulated so much knowledge that organizing and sustaining institutional capacity may be the greatest challenge it now faces.
To read the full article, click here.
by Scott Jacobsen | May 4, 2026 | News
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
How can basic income function as climate adaptation infrastructure amid rising energy costs and data center expansion?
Arif Gasilov is Partner, Climate & Environmental Reporting at Gasilov Group, where he advises companies on ESG risk identification, sustainability reporting compliance, and energy regulatory strategy across North American and European jurisdictions. His work focuses on double materiality assessment, climate risk analysis, and navigating disclosure regimes including CSRD, ISSB, SEC, and California SB 253. With a background in environmental science and sustainable built environments, he also covers energy market policy, utility resource planning, and the effects of data center growth on grid capacity and emissions accounting. He has been quoted by U.S. News, Yahoo Finance, and other major outlets globally.
To read the full article, click here.
