BIEN | Opinion

Opinion Posts

Here you will find articles expressing opinions about current issues in the Basic Income debate. Opinions expressed are not necessarily the opinions of BIEN.

Jay Hammond, Father of the Alaskan Basic Income, Dies at 83 (from 2005)

Dec 7, 2017 | Opinion, The Indepentarian

This essay was originally published in the USBIG NewsFlash in August 2005. Jay Hammond, the governor of Alaska from 1975 to 1982, who led the fight to create the Alaska Permanent Fund, was found dead at his Homestead about 185 miles southwest of Anchorage, on...

The Basic Income Guarantee Experiments of the 1970s: a quick summary of results

Dec 3, 2017 | Opinion, The Indepentarian

So many countries are currently conducting or seriously talking about starting Universal Basic Income (UBI) experiments that it’s becoming hard to keep track. These are not the first experiments in UBI or other forms of Basic Income Guarantee (BIG). Namibia and India...

The Namibian BIG Proposal in Perspective (from 2005)

Nov 29, 2017 | Opinion, The Indepentarian

This essay was originally published in the USBIG NewsFlash in May 2005. While the Namibian government balks at the difficulty of raising the $200 million it would need to provide its citizens with a minimum income of a little more than 50 cents ($0.50) a day, it is...

Public Reaction to the Basic Income Guarantee Experiments in the 1970s: a case of misunderstanding, misuse, oversimplification, and spin

Nov 26, 2017 | Opinion, The Indepentarian

This post is one of several previewing the book I’m writing on Universal Basic Income (UBI) experiments, and it is the second of two reviewing the five Negative Income Tax (NIT) experiments conducted by the U.S. and Canadian Government in the 1970s. This post draws...

Interview: Basic income should ‘focus on people’

Nov 22, 2017 | Opinion

Portuguese basic income activist Miguel Horta is pushing for a basic income “for all.” He believes people should control UBI, not the government.

Basic Income Experiments—The Devil’s in the Caveats

Nov 21, 2017 | Opinion, The Indepentarian

The devil’s in the details is a common saying about policy proposals. Perhaps we need a similar saying for policy research, something like the devil’s in the caveats. By this, I mean that the evidence any particular piece of research can provide is only a small part...

AS THE UNITED STATES SLIDES INTO RECESSION (from 2001)

Nov 15, 2017 | Opinion, The Indepentarian

This essay was originally published in the USBIG NewsFlash in December 2001. As I was putting this newsletter together, the National Bureau of Economic Research officially announced that the U.S. economy has been in recession since last March. The delay in the...

Universal Basic Income and the Duty to Work

Nov 13, 2017 | Opinion

What should a government faced with an unmanageable level of unemployment do when conventional policy has failed to resolve the issue?

Justice as the Pursuit of Accord: Toward a non-utopian theory of justice

Nov 7, 2017 | Opinion, The Indepentarian

I have just posted a new academic article on my "selected works" cite. It's called, "Justice as the Pursuit of Accord: Toward a non-utopian theory of justice." Here's a brief summary: The hardest thing for any society to do is to avoid oppressing its least advantaged...

Basic Income’s Third Wave

Oct 27, 2017 | Opinion, The Indepentarian

This essay is reprinted from OpenDemocracy, 18 October 2017 Support for unconditional basic income (UBI) has grown so rapidly over the past few years that some might think the idea appeared out of nowhere. In fact, activists have been floating the plan — and other...