"Imagine getting $500 from the government, every month, deposited into your bank account. Once received, the money would be yours to do whatever you want with. You could buy groceries, pay for rent or childcare, save it, or blow it all in one big night out. How would a steady stream of income like that change your life? What if everybody in your society got it? How would it change our world? The idea you've just imagined has a name. Or, rather, it has several names. Some people call it a 'guaranteed income.' Others call it a 'basic income.' In this book, we'll adopt the most common label used today--a Universal Basic Income, or UBI for short. As we'll see in this book, the UBI is an idea that's been around for a long time--at least since the 18th century. But there has never been more interest in the idea than there is today. In 2016, Switzerland became the first country ever to hold a nationwide referendum on the UBI. The measure was defeated by a large margin, but this event would turn out to be just the beginning of a global wave of interest in the UBI. The Swiss referendum was followed quickly by pilot programs in Finland, the Netherlands, Scotland, and Ontario. In the United States, a UBI was the central policy proposal of Andrew Yang's 2020 presidential campaign. Yang's campaign attracted a horde of passionate followers-the 'Yang Gang' as they were called--and sparked a nationwide conversation about the merits of a UBI. Today, many of those individuals have gone on to push for a UBI or other forms of cash transfers in different venues. Some are working with the organization Yang founded--Humanity Forward--to advocate a permanent extension of the fully refundable child tax credit--a kind of 'UBI for kids.' Others are working with Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, an organization that is currently sponsoring more than 40 different pilot programs in cities across the United States, from Los Angeles, California, to Providence, Rhode Island"--Provided by publisher.
