A basic income is a form of social security in which a population group receives a regular sum of money, either from a government or from some other public institution, independent of any other income. [1] [2] [3] This is a list of alternates to universal basic income that intends to give all citizens of a population an unconditional sum of money, which have been implemented or proposed.
Name | Description | Spokespersons | Tested in | Books | Films/articles/interviews |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Universal basic income (UBI), also known by many other names | Periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement. [4] | Philippe Van Parijs, Karl Widerquist, Guy Standing | US and Canada (local experiments); the Iranian basic income is somewhat between a partial and a full basic income.[ citation needed ] | Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income, [5] Real Freedom for All, Public Economics in Action: the Basic Income/Flat Tax proposal, Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy | Negative income tax & work, Negative income tax in Israel, Negative income tax in Ontario, Short info |
Negative income tax (NIT) | Similar to a basic income but means test so that the grant gradually phases out as income increases. | Milton Friedman, Juliet Rhys-Williams, Daron Acemoglu | Capitalism and Freedom, Free to Choose | ||
Wage subsidy, sometimes known as participation income | Scope limited to people in work (varyingly interpreted). | A. C. Pigou, Edmund Phelps, Tony Atkinson | Inequality (2015; Atkinson) | 'Low-wage employment subsidies versus the welfare state' (Phelps) | |
Partial basic income (PBI) | Any basic income set at a level that is less than enough to meet a person's basic needs. [6] | Alaska (Permanent Fund of Alaska) [7] | |||
Personal Basic Income | A Minimum Basic Income that is self-generated by communities by pooling their data into data banks, monetizing its value, and receiving dividends. | Manish Bhan SmartTribe | Early-stage experimentation. | SmartTribe.org | |
Citizen's dividend | Dependent on land value tax values from land and rents | Henry George, Thomas Paine | Alaska (Permanent Fund Dividend) | Agrarian Justice, Progress and Poverty | |
Universal dividend | Dependent on a portion of production, proxied by a fixed and flat tax on personal income and corporate net profits, distributed flat as a non-taxed benefit among all residents or citizens over a certain age. | John Moser | The American Citizen's Dividend | ||
Basic income for households | In the form of BI or NIT. For Working people with children. | Edward Heath | United Kingdom (Family Income Supplement) From 1970-1986 | The Pragmatist's Solution to Poverty': The Heath Government's Tax Credit Scheme and the Politics of Social Policy in the 1970s | |
Basic income + negative income tax | A combination of BI and NIT. | Hermonie Parker investigated several versions in Instead of the Dole | Instead of the Dole | ||
$8000 UBI, $4000 (minimum income), $4000 Carbon tax dividend. Also Known as Supplemental Security Income | For those under 65 seniors, can include individuals aged 65 or older, and disabled children and disabled adults. | Pascal J - naturalfinance.net in Canadian context. | United States (from 1972) As of July 2022, the program provides benefits to approximately five million Americans. | Social Security Administration webpage with information on SSI naturalfinance.net | |
Basic income and social insurance | Andreas Bergh | Bergh 2004 | |||
Stake holding grants | A large one-time grant, usually received when the individual reaches maturity. | Thomas Paine, Bruce Ackerman, Anne Alstott | The Stakeholder Society, Redesigning distribution | ||
European/regional basic income | Basic income for a region, for example Europe. | Van Parijs, Steve Quilley, Phillippe C. Schmitter m.fl. | Marc's proposal, NAFTA-divident | ||
Conditional cash transfers (basic income with strings attached) | Not a guarantee because conditions exist, but conditions are easily fulfilled (or example, children going to school). | Michael Bloomberg | New York City (Opportunity NYC) From 2007-2010 | Just Give Money to the Poor: The Development Revolution from the Global South | Sharing Lessons from the First Conditional Cash Transfer Program in the United States. |
Basic income for special regions (such as Israel-Palestine) | Philippe Van Parijs | ||||
Basic income for food | FIAN | To poor countries | |||
Global basic income | Global Basic Income Foundation, Myron J. Frankman m.fl., World Basic Income | ||||
Local basic income | For a village, city, district, province, etc. | Karl Widerquist | Otjivero (Namibia), 2 villages in China, GiveDirectly project in Kenya, Alaska's Permanent Fund Dividend, [8] Native American Casino Dividends | Alaska's Permanent Fund Dividend, [9] Exporting the Alaska Model [10] | |
Social credit | Social credit movement, C.H. Douglas | ||||
Basic income + flat tax | Equal tax rate. | M. Friedman, Tony Atkinson | Public Economics in Action: The Basic Income/Flat Tax Proposal | ||
Basic income + VAT | Basic income financed by tax on consumption. | Vivant | Germany | ||
Basic income + demurrage | A self stabilizing money supply that is resistant to inflation and deflation. | Omar Syed, Aamir Syed | Sound Money Without Commodities | ||
Basic income justified by equal rights to natural resources | Karl Widerquist, Jay Hammond, Peter Barnes | Alaska, Iran (from 2011) | Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income, [11] Capitalism 3.0 | ||
Social dividend | Based on publicly owned enterprises, see market socialism. | James Meade, Oskar Lange, Abba Lerner, John Roemer, James Yunker | |||
Basic income instead of subventions | Iran (from 2011) | ||||
Carbon fee and dividend | Basic income funded by a carbon tax. | Citizens' Climate Lobby | British Columbia | ||
Basic income to disaster regions | Haiti-1, A way to peace | ||||
Basic income in the form of energy credits | Cosmic Accounting | ||||
Basic income startup (ReCivitas) | "Lifetime Basic Income" | Marcus Brancaglione, Bruna Pereira | Brazil Quatinga Velho (local experiment) | Lessons from the Practice of Basic Income , Basic Income Startup | BRAZIL: Basic Income Startup gives "lifetime basic incomes" to villagers , NGO founds collaborative "projects network" |
Basic income + monetary reform + land value tax | James Robertson, Herman Daly | ||||
Universal right to capital income | "Legislation requiring that a percentage of capital stock (shares) from every initial public offering (IPO) be channeled into a Commons Capital Depository, with the associated dividends funding a universal basic dividend (UBD)", which would be entirely independent of welfare payments and unemployment insurance. [12] | Yanis Varoufakis | The Universal Right to Capital Income | ||
Three Pillars | National Dividend (ND) - a payment to all citizen-residents, paid for by a tax on the commons National Income Supplement (NIS) - distributing all income taxes back to income earners, which would allow all income brackets to benefit from each other's success, and amplify their earnings (and underwrite labour costs). Assisted Savings Program (ASP) - mandatory long-term savings/investment, and distributing all capital gains taxes to ASP accounts, ensuring savers benefit from each other's success, and amplify their savings. [13] Returning tax revenues to citizens through these programs is enabled by a shift to a form of Land Value Tax (called a ULT) for general revenues. The Three Pillars would also replace the minimum wage and state-run pensions. | The New Physiocratic League | The New School of Economics |
Income is the consumption and saving opportunity gained by an entity within a specified timeframe, which is generally expressed in monetary terms. Income is difficult to define conceptually and the definition may be different across fields. For example, a person's income in an economic sense may be different from their income as defined by law.
Citizen's dividend is a proposed policy based upon the Georgist principle that the natural world is the common property of all people. It is proposed that all citizens receive regular payments (dividends) from revenue raised by leasing or taxing the monopoly of valuable land and other natural resources.
The Alaska Permanent Fund (APF) is a constitutionally established permanent fund managed by a state-owned corporation, the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation (APFC). It was established in Alaska in 1976 by Article 9, Section 15 of the Alaska State Constitution under Governor Jay Hammond and Attorney General Avrum Gross. From February 1976 until April 1980, the Department of Revenue Treasury Division managed the state's Permanent Fund assets, until, in 1980, the Alaska State Legislature created the APFC.
Welfare, or commonly social welfare, is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifically to social insurance programs which provide support only to those who have previously contributed, as opposed to social assistance programs which provide support on the basis of need alone. The International Labour Organization defines social security as covering support for those in old age, support for the maintenance of children, medical treatment, parental and sick leave, unemployment and disability benefits, and support for sufferers of occupational injury.
Guaranteed minimum income (GMI), also called minimum income, is a social-welfare system that guarantees all citizens or families an income sufficient to live on, provided that certain eligibility conditions are met, typically: citizenship and that the person in question does not already receive a minimum level of income to live on.
The Basic Income Earth Network is a network of academics and activists interested in the idea of basic income. It serves as a link between individuals and groups committed to or interested in basic income, and fosters informed discussion on this topic throughout the world. BIEN's website defines a basic income as "a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement."
Eduardo Matarazzo Suplicy is a Brazilian left-wing politician, economist and professor. He is one of the founders and main political figures on the Workers Party of Brazil (PT). In the municipal elections of São Paulo in 2016 was consecrated as the most voted city councilor in the history of Brazil.
In economics, a negative income tax (NIT) is a system which reverses the direction in which tax is paid for incomes below a certain level; in other words, earners above that level pay money to the state while earners below it receive money, as shown by the blue arrows in the diagram. NIT was proposed by Juliet Rhys-Williams while working on the Beveridge Report in the early 1940s and popularized by Milton Friedman in the 1960s as a system in which the state makes payments to the poor when their income falls below a threshold, while taxing them on income above that threshold. Together with Friedman, supporters of NIT also included James Tobin, Joseph A. Pechman, and Peter M. Mieszkowski, Jim Gray and even then-President Richard Nixon, who suggested implementation of modified NIT in his Family Assistance Plan. After the increase in popularity of NIT, an experiment sponsored by the US government was conducted between 1968 and 1982 on effects of NIT on labour supply, income, and substitution effects.
The social dividend is the return on the natural resources and capital assets owned by society in a socialist economy. The concept notably appears as a key characteristic of market socialism, where it takes the form of a dividend payment to each citizen derived from the property income generated by publicly owned enterprises, representing the individual's share of the capital and natural resources owned by society.
Universal basic income (UBI) is a social welfare proposal in which all citizens of a given population regularly receive a minimum income in the form of an unconditional transfer payment, i.e., without a means test or need to work. In contrast a guaranteed minimum income is paid only to those who do not already receive an income that is enough to live on. A UBI would be received independently of any other income. If the level is sufficient to meet a person's basic needs, it is sometimes called a full basic income; if it is less than that amount, it may be called a partial basic income. As of 2024, no country has implemented a full UBI system, but two countries—Mongolia and Iran—have had a partial UBI in the past. There have been numerous pilot projects, and the idea is discussed in many countries. Some have labelled UBI as utopian due to its historical origin.
Guy Standing is a British labour economist. He is a professor of development studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and a co-founder of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN). Standing has written widely in the areas of labour economics, labour market policy, unemployment, labour market flexibility, structural adjustment policies and social protection. He created the term precariat to describe an emerging class of workers who are harmed by low wages and poor job security as a consequence of globalisation. Since the 2011 publication of his book The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, his work has focused on the precariat, unconditional basic income, deliberative democracy, and the commons.
Universal basic income is a subject of much interest in the United Kingdom. There is a long history of discussion yet it has not been implemented to date. Interest in and support for universal basic income has increased substantially amongst the public and politicians in recent years.
Global basic income or world basic income is the concept of giving everyone in the world a guaranteed minimum income of money on a regular basis. The proposal usually suggests that the basic income be unconditional. Global basic income is part of the wider discussion on basic income, which typically implemented or proposed at the national level. Pilot schemes are also run at city/region levels.
Universal basic income refers to a social welfare system where all citizens or residents of a country receive an unconditional lump sum income, meaning an income that is not based on need. The proposal has been debated in a number of countries in recent years, including Japan.
Universal basic income in Germany has been discussed since the 1970s, with emphasis placed on its unconditional dimension by 2003. The universal basic income concept has many definitions, such as Philippe Van Parijs', which described it as the income paid by the government, at a uniform level and regular intervals to each adult citizen and permanent residents of the country. The Basic Income Earth Network's criteria constitute one of the most popular proposals and they include: 1) income must be paid to individuals instead of households; 2) income should be paid irrespective of income from other sources; and, 3) it must be paid without requiring performance of any work.
Universal basic income (UBI) is discussed in many countries. This article summarizes the national and regional debates, where it takes place, and is a complement to the main article on the subject: universal basic income.
Universal basic income pilots are smaller-scale preliminary experiments which are carried out on selected members of the relevant population to assess the feasibility, costs and effects of the full-scale implementation of universal basic income, or the related concept of negative income tax (NIT), including partial universal basic income and similar programs. The following list provides an overview of the most famous universal basic income pilots, including projects which have not been launched yet but have been already approved by the respective political bodies or for the negotiations are in process.
Karl Widerquist is an American political philosopher and economist at Georgetown University on its campus in Qatar. He is best known as an advocate of basic income, but is also an interdisciplinary academic writer who has published in journals in fields as diverse as economics, politics, philosophy, and anthropology. He is a consistent critic of propertarianism, right-libertarianism, social contract theory, and the belief that modern societies fulfill the Lockean proviso.
Universal basic income and negative income tax, which is a related system, has been debated in the United States since the 1960s, and to a smaller extent also before that. During the 1960s and 1970s a number of experiments with negative income tax were conducted in United States and Canada. In the 1970s another and somewhat related welfare system was introduced instead, the Earned Income Tax Credit. The next big development in the history of basic income in the United States came in 1982, when the Alaska Permanent Fund was established. It has delivered some kind of basic income, financed from the state's oil and gas revenues, ever since.