UBI is effectively just communism under another name. Why be a brain surgeon when you can be a street sweeper for the same money ?

If UBI is enough for a truly great lifestyle, where would be the incentive to work at all ? But if it is set at slightly under poverty level, there will be a lot of people who lose jobs due to automation who'll never work again, but have a miserable life just existing without luxuries, which would create a huge underclass.

The issue of how it could be afforded is a concern. Automated businesses would probably still be existing on the margin of profitability - globalism has killed most of the profit margin in once viable businesses. We'd be left with a few mega-corporations totally above the law and treating the few staff they needed like slaves.

So governments would fund UBI as they've always funded social programmes. With borrowing. Printing money. A huge ponzi scheme that works until something goes slightly wrong and the effect is amplified to bring the whole system crashing down. 2008 is a good example. A little bit of what was considered minor paperwork fraud, but the impact worked through like a butterfly effect. Tens of millions of people were impoverished, but not a single banker or government minister went to prison, and no lessons were learned.

I absolutely want UBI tried in my country. 
We have to have it.  Economies will fail if consumers have no income to consume with.

UBI doesn't have to be government funded.  Alaska has UBI funded by energy companies and Norway has royalties that energy companies have to pay... the concept being that the natural resources are owned by all the people in that country and not just whoever owns that specific bit of land.  I really like that concept.

I really liked the idea that (I think it was) Andrew Yang was proposing where tech companies have to pay us for all our data they are using.  UBI could be funded by tech companies. 

I see UBI as the people getting paid what they are entitled to.  At the moment corporations have convinced us they should get all our resources for free.

My guess is one of the Scandinavian countries 😃

I love the more utopian promise of UBI. It's a beautiful dream, as these things often are. The part I can't square in my mind is how it wouldn't cause inflation. If everyone gets free money, what's to stop corporation from just raising the prices of everything that much more, in effect kind of cancelling out everything. 

That said, I'd love to see it honestly tried at scale. Wages have been flat here for 30 years, and now with inflation going absolute nuts, people are rapidly falling behind. I'd love to see it tried here. 

HUGE FAN! I'm ready, bring it on. The shameless autocrats will of course just raise prices on everything with all the free money in the system, but I think it would start a virtuous cycle if people had 1) more security 2) more time of their own. Please one of you Scandanavian countries will be able to pull it off with your solid bankrolls and small populations. Look at Norway!

Who remembers who introduced this to hive years ago? Still going strong lol

A lot of the “UBI” experiments that have been done haven’t really been UBI in that they haven’t been *universal*. Most have been very localized and limited, almost always with some form of means-testing. At least in the USA, the closest we’ve come to truly universal UBI is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund">the Alaska Permanent Fund</a> but even there the amounts doled out have been rather small, never having exceeded $4,000 a year.

We did have a couple of Covid relief payments but they weren’t ongoing and they were means tested.

“Conservatives” in the U.S. may have whined about those payments being *socialist* but I don’t remember seeing a single story about anyone refusing the payouts as a matter of principle. Everybody seems to have accepted the money.

UBI would be great with a competent government that actually does what it's supposed to do.

I go back and forth on this. We do have, to some degree, a UBI. These are benefits the government gives out to the poor, elderly, or disabled. We don't see people rushing to be poor, old, or disabled. In this regard, it doesn't seem like an incentive. 

However, I don't know how this would manifest with able-bodied, skilled people. Naturally, many would want to earn more than the UBI allowance for whatever reasons. And many would be content to live off UBI. Imagine being able to backpack around the world knowing you'd be able to afford to eat wherever you go. Perhaps people will supplement their UBI by selling their data or participating in communities like Hive. 

As far as automation and AI are concerned, I think that these will take over repetitive jobs, hopefully a majority of bullshit jobs. But there are things that would still require people. For example, you'd still need a plumber to find and repair leaks, which are often in inconvenient places for machines to access. It's not unusual for a plumber to have to break concrete or open up walls, or dig and crawl under foundations.

For this reason I think the workforce might turn to the crafts where not everything is a cookie cutter job. AI and machines could help out in the field. For example, there are brick-laying machines that are great for long straight stretches (some can do corners and curved walls). But masons still need to work on custom jobs or repairs.

We don't see oil production automated even though oil companies have the capital to do it. 

Vocational and craft work are arts to some extent. In my opinion those jobs that require some degree of craftsmanship would be the ones to gain. We may see that without the boring jobs, people might actually level up to create more interesting works. And with a UBI, perhaps they would only take the jobs that interest them rather than have to take a job for the money. 

In reality, it's hard to say with human nature being unpredictable. 

You reminded me about [this UBI pilot project](https://autonomy.work/portfolio/basic-income-big-local/) which was [reported in the media](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jun/04/universal-basic-income-of-1600-pounds-a-month-to-be-trialled-in-england) just about two years ago (also, I found critiques of the idea [here - pros and cons](https://www.employment-studies.co.uk/news/universal-basic-income-pros-cons-and-evidence), [here - the dystopian truth](https://philmullan.com/the-dystopian-truth-about-a-universal-basic-income/) and further discussion [here - "money for nothing?"](https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jul/14/money-for-nothing-is-universal-basic-income-about-to-transform-society). I haven't been able to find any follow-up of this pilot, although [it looks like there is another proposal for a pilot in Manchester](https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/news-events/news/proposal-launched-for-groundbreaking-basic-income-pilot-in-greater-manchester/). I'll keep looking, maybe @revisesociology has come across something?

I like your idea about using UBI as a transitional arrangement for industries/companies which require re-structuring or even exiting. There was an article yesterday about the declining middle-ground market for bread. Two of the biggest companies have been operating at a loss for a while and are discussing a merger ([*Crumbs! How Britain fell out of love with the sliced loaf*](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/may/09/crumbs-how-britain-fell-out-of-love-with-the-sliced-loaf#:~:text=While%20total%20bread%20sales%20are,big%20brands%20is%20about%20price.)). UBI may be able to help with the restructuring involved in these kinds of situations.

I think there would be other savings as well: improved well-being would lead to lower costs in the NHS, both mental health services and the reducing the prevalence of long-term conditions, and social care. Some of the bigger local authorities here have been looking at moving some of their budgets from social care into economic development as creating secure income (however that is done) would decrease demand for benefits and services.

Great discussion topic, it's helped me with some things I'm thinking about at work, in fact, I came up with a proposal this morning as a consequence of thinking about your post (I may have got there eventually anyway, but much more slowly) 😂.

Who wouldn't want UBI to be tried? All poor citizens want it. Do the bosses want it? I don't really think it's possible. It should be made mandatory all over the world. Worldwide organizations should take on this and take the lead.

I wonder if robot owners will pay tax on the income their robots earn. Will private robots be paid for their work?