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 next annual BIEN Congress will occur in Wrocław, Poland on 15-17th July 2027 https://biencongress2027.org/
The theme will be Basic Income and the Spirit of Solidarity: Pathways to Justice and Equality. Call for papers will be up soon.
The last annual BIEN Congress occurred August 19th-22th at the Toronto Metropolitan University.
See pictures from the 24th BIEN CONGRESS in Maricá & Niterói here.
Recent News, Opinion, and Research
The Angine de Poitrine Argument for UBI
Two guys in papier-mâché masks from Saguenay, Quebec, have been playing music together for 20 years since they were 13 years old. For most of that time, they existed in relative obscurity. Then, KEXP posted a video of them playing four songs and the internet lost its...
Dependency Is the System: What Hungary Teaches Us About Basic Income and Democracy
Scene from the documentary "The Price of a Vote" (De! Akcióközösség, 2026) The fall of Viktor Orbán’s government in Hungary raises a question the celebrations have obscured: why did dismantling such a corrupt and inhuman system take sixteen years? The answer lies less...
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Basic Income (BI)
Beginning with Andrew Yang's proposal for a $1,000 a month "Freedom Dividend" during his Democratic Party primary campaign (2019-2020), Basic Income has become salient as a means to mitigate the social and economic turbulence caused by rapid adoption of robotics and...
Intra-Gender Trade-Offs in Basic Income Regimes
Abstract The contemporary debate about basic income and gender primarily adopts an external perspective according to which women as a group are pitched against men as a group. This article examines tensions internal to women as a group. We distinguish three types of...
BIEN Congress 2026 — Toronto: Call for proposals
The Basic Income Canada Network (BICN) in partnership with the Basic Income Earth Network(BIEN) has issued a Call for Session Proposals for the 25th BIEN Congress, taking placeAugust 20–22, 2026 in Toronto, Canada. All presentations will be in person. The Congress...
New article published for the Imagining the Digital Future survey of experts report
AI is going to play a much bigger role in shaping our decisions, work, and daily lives, not because it becomes an allknowing overlord, but because it steadily reduces how much human labor is needed to produce the same outputwhile our institutions still treat wages as...
The Next Moonshot: Universal Basic Income
What Artemis II and the Return to the Moon Should Remind Us About Ending Poverty As I write this, four astronauts are hurtling toward the Moon aboard the Orion spacecraft, named Integrity by its crew. On April 1, 2026, NASA’s Artemis II launched from Kennedy...
BBC Podcast: Why is basic income being debated?
Note: Interviewees include BIEN's Catarina Neves and Jurgen De Wispelaere "Ireland has a new permanent government scheme providing regular cash transfers to 2,000 artists. The people who can access it range from circus performers to opera singers. It follows a pilot...
From UBI to UHI (In 3 Steps)
Present day economics depends on a key premise: that labor markets self-correct after technological disruption. Steam displaced farmers. Electricity displaced the steam worker. The computer displaced the typist. Every time, new jobs emerged and flourished, and the...
The first basic income for workers impacted by AI has begun sending out $1,000 monthly payments
The term "basic Income" in this article does not meet the BIEN definition "The first basic income program for workers who have lost pay, jobs, or opportunities to AI began sending out its first funds this week. The program is run by the nonprofits the AI Commons...
Why UBI Is the Answer to AI Stealing Your Job – Interview with Scott Santens
Julius Moorman recorded this interview with Scott Santens on March 17, 2026. To see the full interview on You Tube, click here.Here are the chapters via YouTube to get an idea of what we discussed and when:0:00 How Scott Got Into UBI3:22 Did AI and COVID Reignite the...
Ireland Makes Basic Income Program for Artists Permanent
Photo by Alejandro Luengo on Unsplash The use of "Basic Income" in this article does not meet BIEN's definition "The Irish government will give 2,000 artists unrestricted weekly stipends, following a successful three-year basic income pilot program. Last week,...