Top 10 Universal Basic Income Articles of 2024

As the editor of Basic Income Today and a moderator for the Basic Income subreddit, I read a lot of stuff every year about UBI, somewhere around 100 articles a month. Below, I've compiled a list of the top ten articles I consider my favorites out of everything published in 2024.

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10) Is a Universal Basic Income System Even Possible? by Lucas Ropek

To start this list, check out this well-researched and well-balanced overview of universal basic income. Full disclosure, I was interviewed by Lucas to help inform this article, as was Karl Widerquist, so I'm willing to admit some bias on this one, but readers will see he also included multiple anti-UBI viewpoints.

The discussion of the cost of UBI is spot-on in this one, which I think is one of the most important and correct takeaways for readers of this article. Here's where he gets into it:

The $2-3 trillion projections are just bad math. These simplistic calculations involve multiplying the number of people in America (roughly 330 million) by the average UBI output (approximately $10-12k). While they accurately assess the amount of money that would be involved in such a system, they aren’t accounting for the fact that most of that money will be exchanged via the tax system (many people will pay into it, but they will also get that money back, effectively nullifying the need to generate “new” revenue), meaning that the total amount of new revenue that the government actually needs to generate is only about $539 billion, or roughly 3 percent of GDP.

He also gets into how Widerquist prefers (and I agree with this) a design where the bottom 70% see an income boost after taxes, and the top 10% would pay significantly more in taxes despite the UBI functioning as a large tax credit.

This is a good article to keep bookmarked and share with people as a UBI intro.

9) Billionaire Backlash Shows the Power of Basic Income by Neil Howard

Again, full disclosure, this article is based on original research I did into the bills in red states looking to ban basic income pilots in those states. Neil made use of my findings to write this article about the billionaire backlash against all the positive findings from basic income pilots. It's really annoying when someone on the left claims that UBI is bad because capitalism. Clearly there are billionaires who really don't want it, and they are the same ones funding conservative think tanks who push for tax cuts for the rich.

Neil ends his article with the following quote:

"The growing battle against basic income can be seen as a kind of a case study of hegemony at work, a classic example both of the tools the powerful use to maintain their position and the moments at which they choose to use them. For progressives, this can mean only one thing – that basic income might just be an idea whose time has come."

8) Income Support Policies and Firearm Violence Prevention: A Scoping Review by Rowhani-Rahbar, Ali et al.

This one isn't an article or essay but a study. More specifically, it's a scoping review to examine the current state of evidence on the relationship between income support policies and risk of firearm violence. Here's what it found:

"We found 4 studies; of those, 3 were conducted in the United States and 1 in Brazil. All 4 found associations of policy-relevant magnitude between income support policies and reductions in risk of inter-personal firearm violence."

I want to make sure and emphasize this one for a couple reasons. First, we don't really know a lot about the science of gun violence because of how difficult the NRA has made it to collect the data surrounding gun violence in America. So it's really interesting to know about these four studies that point directly at universal basic income reducing gun violence.

Second, the reason I want to uplift this is because it's one of the many studies that the second Trump administration has removed from the CDC website. The link for this one is thanks to archive.org.

If you don't read the actual paper, here's four key quotes from each of the four studies:

Study 1: "A one standard deviation (or 10.11%) increase in percentage of the precinct population receiving public assistance was associated with 10.53 fewer homicides per 100,000 for young adults and 2.9 fewer homicides per 100,000 for adults over the study period."

Study 2: "Bolsa Familia coverage had the most pronounced effect on firearm homicides and in the anticipated direction. The investigators stated that while it may not help reduce the incidence of all homicides, [the monthly cash program] robustly reduces the incidence of firearm homicides specifically."

Study 3: "A one standard deviation increase in welfare spending was associated with 14% lower firearm homicide rates."

Study 4: "The [$1,000 a month] program was associated with reductions in firearm violence; they estimated there were 55% fewer firearm deaths and hospital visits for firearm injury as well as 43% fewer firearm crimes annually due to the program."

7) Participant Stories From the ORUS Basic Income Pilot by OpenResearch

Part of the 3-year OpenResearch basic income pilot was the gathering of qualitative data instead of just quantitative data. Participants were selected at random to provide personal stories of their experience with basic income. It's not possible to truly understand the impact of basic income in this pilot without reading these stories, and so I recommend reading all of them to gain a wider understanding of the data side of the pilot.

Here's just one of the stories I want to highlight here:

"Four years before the program started, Lila was the victim of a horrific domestic violence attack. 'I got shot three times in my head, stabbed in the neck. I was completely paralyzed on the right side, totally blind. Um, some of it has come back and I've learned to like walk and stuff again, but that has definitely like affected my life so much.' As a result, she has PTSD, partial blindness and multiple complications, impairing her ability to drive, and making it difficult for her to work or live independently. She applied for disability benefits but was repeatedly denied. 

When she learns she will be receiving $1,000 a month felt like it was replacing 'the disability that the government keeps refusing me.' Unable to work, she feels if it were not for the program, 'I probably would be homeless without it.'

'It's allowed me to be able to not work but still be able to pay for everything I need to and focus fully on getting my mental health and school stuff figured out. It's a huge help.' In preparation for the end of the program she’s been building up her savings more and talking with lawyers to try once again to apply for disability benefits."

Something you'll find over and over again in these randomly-selected stories is the ability that basic income provides recipients to flee abuse and also actually get some assistance from a system that has no real interest in giving them any.

6) Direct Cash Transfers 'Could Halve Child Poverty' in Oregon by Antonio Gisbert

This is an interview with the Antonio Gisbert, the lead guy behind the Oregon Rebate that voters in Oregon voted on in November 2024, where they ultimately decided against taxing big corporations more to provide a universal basic income to every Oregon resident. The election result was a disappointment, but this interview is not. Antonio does a great job of explaining why the cash was written to be as universal as possible, and how even if it fails, it's an important step in this conversation that isn't going to stop.

It's unfortunate that voters fell for the messaging by big corporations that spent millions of dollars to convince Oregon voters that this would be bad for them, and it was frustrating to see Democratic leaders in the state agree. Most disappointing of all though was to see even fellow UBI advocates be against it for not being perfect in their eyes. Were I living in Oregon, I'd have voted YES.

5) Rentier Capitalism, the Precariat and Basic Income for China by Guy Standing

This one is the text of a talk that Guy Standing gave in China. It's a fantastic class-based overview of where we are in history and why universal basic income is so important.

Here's one excerpt:

"We are living in a transformational moment, a time of constant crisis, in which, to recall Karl Polanyi’s assessment of the 1920s, the world could either lurch into a dark night of authoritarianism, philistinism and neo-fascism or it could make a decisive turn into a new age of Enlightenment. At the moment, the first seems more likely. But it can be averted. The key point on which to concentrate is that we are living in an age of chronic uncertainty, in which crises pile into one another, plunging masses of people in almost every country deeper into social and economic insecurity, impoverishment, stress and ill-health."

He ends by encouraging Xi Jinping to embrace UBI:

Basic income is not a panacea. But it is an imperative if society is to experience a reduction in all the ills of chronic economic and social uncertainty. In his speeches, President Xi has said dozens of times that income inequality must be reduced in China. In other parts of the world similar sentiments are expressed. Providing a basic income would be a powerful way of reducing the inequalities that could otherwise become explosive over the next decade. Let us promote it.

4) Confessions of a [Former] True Believer in Poverty Targeting by Stephen Kidd

Stephen begins this fun essay explaining why universal programs are better than income-tested programs for the poor with the following:

"I have a confession to make: I used to be a true believer in poverty targeting. I know, it’s shocking to hear and difficult for me to admit, but we all, at some time, need to come face-to-face with the Truth Commission and confess our sins. One positive that comes from my dalliance with poverty targeting, however, is that I understand why many other true believers in poverty targeting maintain their devotion to the cult. So as not to be too hard on myself – and others in the same sinking boat – let’s admit that the poverty targeting ideology is highly seductive and it’s very easy to fall prey to its Loreleian charms."

As someone who is constantly trying to get people to see why it's important for UBI to be universal, I really enjoyed this essay from the perspective of someone who didn't initially believe that, but came around to it.

He summarizes what he now believes here:

"I’ve learnt a lot more about the pros and cons of poverty targeting and universality. I now know that the only way to reach the poorest members of society and leave no-one behind is through universality, while poverty targeting always has high exclusion errors. I have learnt that universality promotes dignity and the rights of the individual, while poverty targeting can undermine them. I’ve realized that the main driver of poverty targeting is a desire to keep costs down and thereby reduce taxes, in particular on the rich... So I’m now convinced that if countries wish to effectively reduce poverty, invest in their children, offer dignity to all, build cohesive societies and strong social contracts, grow government revenues and generate sustainable economic growth, it is essential for those countries to establish universal, lifecycle social security systems that protect everyone from the cradle to the grave."

Spot-on. It's great to have Stephen on Team Universality.

3) UBI Could Mean Justice For Everyone. How Do We Get There? by Philippe van Parijs

It's always great to read something new written by Philippe, who is widely regarded as the Godfather of UBI. In this interview he explains how to explain to others why basic income should be universal and why it should be unconditional. He also goes into how he looks at the pilots going on and what he thought of the results of Sam Altman's basic income pilot and what kind of UBI it makes sense to push for first.

Here's his own take on why universality is important and why refundable tax credit framing might be helpful:

"There is a constant job of explaining again and again that giving money to everyone, even the rich, is not better for the rich but it is better for the poor. That is not obvious, but it’s true. Why? Because the UBI needs to be funded, and the high earners will pay for their own UBI and more. Because the automatic nature of universal transfers increases the chance that the poor will actually get what they are entitled to. Universality makes it much harder to be excluded or to fall through the cracks. Because those just below the cut-off line won’t be trapped into poverty by the threat of losing means-tested benefits if they find a job. And because a universal transfer does not stigmatize the poor in the way a targeted transfer does. To get around this impression, however, sometimes we must realize that the best way to reach a basic income is to present it as a refundable tax credit rather than as a paycheck. As simply reducing the taxation of the rich and poor alike, with a cash transfer to those whose tax liability is less than the credit."

2) Why Wait Until the Robots Take Our Jobs? We Need a Basic Income Now by Karl Widerquist

This would be my favorite article of the year simply because I agree with it all so strongly, save for the wonderful creativity in what I decided was my top favorite. In this article, Karl does a marvelous job of explaining the immediate need for UBI from a technological impact on employment angle, as opposed to the typical belief that such an argument only exists in the future.

Here's his reasoning that I 100% agree with as being key:

"One of the central reasons we all need UBI is that most of us haven’t shared the benefits that automation and economic growth have created over the last 40 or 50 years. From the 1930s to the mid-1970s, median income tended to rise at about the same pace as national income, as measured by gross domestic product. This indicates that most people were sharing some of the economic benefits of growth. But since then, most of the benefits of economic growth have gone to the top 1% of the population, and living standards of 99% have stagnated."

UBI should be seen as a GDP dividend and we should have started receiving it in the 1970s when GDP growth began to only flow to the top. As AI grows GDP even further, it's even more important to start distributing this dividend immediately and no one should see it as charity or in any way undeserved.

1) The Promises of Elusive Maharanis, and No-Strings-Attached Money by Abhijit Banerjee

My favorite article of the year is this one by Nobel prize-winning economist Abhijit Banerjee for the Times of India. What I love about it so much is how he turns the tables on the all-too-common fear that people will waste UBI on alcohol. He begins his article with a tale from his youth when he was 6 or 7 at a New Year's Eve party. You know, those parties where pretty much everyone drinks alcohol. He was told that some royalty would be at the party, and his guess was a woman who asked for "another gin and tonic."

He makes sure to summarize the first results from the ongoing 12-year UBI experiment that he's working on.

"We now have some results from this study, from exactly the point where the two-year intervention ends. And the results do not disappoint. For one, there is no evidence that getting UBI makes people lazy. They work more overall, not less, though the difference is small. They do cut back on working for others but instead are working more on their own projects. The number of non-farming businesses (think shops, eating places) associated with these villages is almost a third higher than the villages where no intervention happened, and the number of farming businesses (think poultry, goat-herding) goes up too. As a result, earnings are about 20% higher than in the control villages. The fact that the 12-year UBI money is there for the foreseeable future seems to have made the villagers better able or more willing to take on something new. They also eat better, are less depressed and more likely to say that they are happy."

What truly uplifts this article to my number one of 2024 is how he ends it:

"As an economist, my first instinct is to resist the question of whether they are wasting the money, say on drinks or cigarettes. After all, I am answerable to no one when I buy myself a bottle of wine. Indeed, it might even be seen as cool, as evidence that I know the good life. So why should poor people be asked that question? But the world wants that answer (and I guess with anything addictive there are real risks as well) so we collected data on various measures of alcohol consumption. The evidence at one level is clear — the fraction of villagers who say they drink every day goes down and significantly so with the 12-year UBI. The question is whether they are just saying it to make us happy. To get around that, we also asked if others in the village were drinking too much and creating an issue for them, so that they have the option of staying “pure”. Again, what we see in the data is good news — problem drinking goes down. On the other hand, sales at the local liquor stores are up. But that might be because people are buying fancier forms of alcohol rather than getting drunk on home-brew. This being a new year, I will make the more optimistic assumption and head out to buy a few bottles for our party.

He concludes with a photo and recipe for a cucumber mint cocktail he enjoys.

I love that so much. I think it's brilliant how he began his article with a story about New Year's Eve and potential royalty drinking alcohol, and ends with a cocktail recipe, and uses that to sandwich some data. Yes, drinking and drug use tends to go down with UBI, but also, anyone claiming to care about that is a hypocrite if they also personally enjoy drinking a nice glass of wine or a cocktail.

As for me, I enjoy a nice martini made using Barr Hill gin, shaken, and served up with two olives.

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