A Basic Income is a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement.
The Royal Society of Arts Explains: [2 minutes]
BIEN Congresses
The 24th BIEN CONGRESS in Maricá & Niterói – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – 27-29 August 2025
Linkedin, Instagram, X – biencongress25 (at) gmail [dot] com
BIEN2024 was August 29–31 (Pictures and more coming soon)
Recent News, Opinion, and Research
Nicola Jones and Andy Sumner, Child Poverty, Evidence and Policy
Nicola Jones and Andy Sumner, Child Poverty, Evidence and Policy, Policy Press, 2011, xii + 250 pp, pbk, 1 847 42445 7, £23.99, hbk, 1 847 42446 4, £65 The authors’ purpose isn’t entirely described by the title or subtitle. They claim in their introduction that the...
INTERNATIONAL: Google Gives $2.5 Million to a Direct Cash Transfer Charity
Business Press has been praising GiveDirectly, a direct cash transfer charity. The business press has been reporting very positively on a charity that transfers cash directly to Kenya's poorest residents. In Kenya, cellphones work like debit cards and it is easy to...
VIDEO: Andrew MacAfee recommends BIG in a TED talk
BIG has been recommended in a TED talk by MIT's Andrew McAfee, who cites arguments similar to ones presented at earlier NABIG Congresses. "The New Machine Age" brings on the possibility of a very good or very bad future. He only mentions BIG 9:55 seconds into the talk...
OPINION: Six Lesson from the Alaska Model
Basic income is a regular unconditional cash grant paid to all citizens without any means test or work requirement. It’s often dismissed as a utopian idea. However, a basic income, or something very close to it, exists today in Alaska. It’s called the Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) or sometimes “the Alaska Dividend.” The PFD has been paying annual dividends to Alaskans since 1982 with no conditions except citizenship, residency, and the willingness to fill out a form. After following the Alaska Dividend since 1999, and I want to share six lessons that supporters of progressive economic policy should learn from what I call “the Alaska model,” but first some basic background.
VIDEO: Sustainable Basic Income Proposal
This video is a live discussion with Anna Brix, Darryl Thomas, and Marlen Vargas on the latest developments on basic income to make it a sustainable system that works for everyone in every country in the world. Published on YouTube on June 16, 2013 It’s online at:...
Moase, Godfrey “Why Australians deserve a universal minimum income”
Moase, Godfrey “Why Australians deserve a universal minimum income” The author writes, "I'd like to see every citizen receive a basic income of AUD$30,000 per year. No exceptions, no means testing. This is why." Moase, Godfrey “Why Australians deserve a universal...
Krugman, Paul, “Sympathy for the Luddites”
Nobel Laureate, Paul Krugman endorsed a “minimum income” in his edition of his regular Op-ed column in the New York Times. The column is mostly about technological unemployment, but Krugman concludes that the solution requires, “a strong social safety net, one that...
Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschäppeler, The Change Book: Fifty models to explain how things happen, Profile Books
Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschäppeler, The Change Book: Fifty models to explain how things happen, Profile Books, 2012, 1 78125009 9, hbk, vii + 167 pp, £9.99 For each of the fifty models there is a page or two of text and a page or two of diagrams. To give a flavour:...
OPINION: The European Citizens Initiative for Unconditional Basic Income: shall the expectations be attained?
In April 2012, grassroots organizations and citizens of 15 EU member states united their strengths to promote Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) in the EU and started the European Citizens Initiative (ECI) for UBI. It was a hard job to introduce this ECI, to get it registrated and accepted, to translate it in the several EU languages, to contact the relevant national authority and publish the certificate on their website. But on 14 January 2013, the organizers of this initiative finally obtained the green light of the EU commission!
Karl Widerquist and Michael Howard, Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend: Examining its suitability as a model
Karl Widerquist and Michael Howard, Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend: Examining its suitability as a model, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, xvii + 267 pp, hbk, 0 230 11207 0, £62.50 In 1967 oil was found in the relatively new state of Alaska; in 1976 a constitutional...
Alaluf, Mateo (2013), 'Basic income against the welfare state'
Mateo Alaluf is a Professor of Sociology at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) in Brussels, Belgium. In this opinion piece (in French), he focuses on the renewed interest in basic income throughout Europe, and insists on the fact that basic income is a...
OPINION: Big changes come
While voters of the United States were loudly debating gun control, the deficit, the debt, taxes, immigrant rights, the filibuster law, health care, and a host of other issues, the Obama administration quietly did something that would have been unthinkable a few decades ago. It ordered the military to allow women to serve routinely in combat units. Other changes that would have been unthinkable a few decades ago also seem to be underway.