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Scott Santens

Unconditional/Universal Basic Income (UBI) advocate with a crowdfunded basic income; Founder and President of ITSA Foundation, Author of Let There Be Money; Editor of BasicIncomeToday.com

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Last Month in Basic Income... A Summary of April 2016

Continuing my pledge to monthly summarize the growth of the basic income movement worldwide (that’s the bipartisan call to change your monthly starting point from $0 to somewhere above the poverty line instead), it’s time again to look back at the previous month. You can read last month’

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A Guide to Basic Income: Frequently Asked Questions about UBI

Over the years I've been asked many questions about the idea of an unconditional universal basic income guarantee. Some questions are asked far more than others, and so I've made a point of writing various articles to answer many of these questions. Whatever question you may

A Guide to Basic Income: Frequently Asked Questions about UBI
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Last Month in Basic Income... A Summary of March 2016

Basic income as a global movement around an idea is officially spreading like wildfire. According to Google Trends, interest in the idea has quadrupled just in the past three months. Source: Google Trends [https://www.google.com.sg/trends/explore#q=%22basic%20income%22&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%

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Humanity Needs Universal Basic Income in Order to Stop Impeding Progress

Human beings are waking up early in the mornings to drive to offices to perform imaginary business in imaginary markets involving imaginary customers using imaginary money to buy imaginary goods and services instead of simply enjoying their non-imaginary and most definitely real lives with each other. I believe Richard Feynman

Humanity Needs Universal Basic Income in Order to Stop Impeding Progress
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Deep Learning Is Going to Teach Us All the Lesson of Our Lives: Jobs Are for Machines

(An alternate version of this article was originally published in the Boston Globe) [http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2016/02/24/robots-will-take-your-job/5lXtKomQ7uQBEzTJOXT7YO/story.html] On December 2nd, 1942, a team of scientists led by Enrico Fermi came back from lunch and watched as humanity created the first self-sustaining nuclear

Deep Learning Is Going to Teach Us All the Lesson of Our Lives: Jobs Are for Machines
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The Social Network and Basic Income

There's something I do every single day, throughout the day, even on weekends, and I've done it since 2013. There's a reason I do it beyond what might be typically presumed, and the basis for that reason is my appreciation for complex systems theory

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YouTube as an Intrinsic Motivation Window

As I've blogged about previously, being a cord cutter I watch YouTube instead of TV, and it's because of this I think I don't see people in the same way many do, where there's a mistaken belief people do nothing unless paid

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Inequality and the Basic Income Guarantee

This essay is part of a collection of 37 from the Wicked Problems Collaborative [http://www.wickedproblemscollaborative.com/] of which I’m part, titled “What Do We Do About Inequality?” The book is available on Amazon [http://amzn.to/2bRRDGP] in Kindle and paperback formats. The use of cash transfers

Inequality and the Basic Income Guarantee
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Robots Will Take Your Jobs

My first ever article to be published in the Boston Globe is now available online. It's titled "Robots Will Take Your Job" [http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2016/02/24/robots-will-take-your-job/5lXtKomQ7uQBEzTJOXT7YO/story.html] . For those in and around the Boston area, this story will also

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The Disproportionate Effects of a Universal Basic Income

One very interesting but not so easy to understand element of universal basic income [https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-idea-of-an-unconditional-basic-income-8a2680c73dd3] is how it disproportionately helps traditionally marginalized groups more than anyone else. That sentence alone may be confusing. If everyone gets the same amount, how can one group benefit more than