Universal Basic Income: The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series

by Karl Widerquist, Stephen R. Thorne (Narrator)

The growing movement for universal basic income (UBI) has been gaining attention from politics and the media with the audacious idea of a regular, unconditional cash grant for everyone as a right of citizenship. This volume in the Essential Knowledge series presents the first short, solid UBI introduction that is neither academic nor polemic. It takes a position in favor of UBI, but its primary goal remains the provision of essential knowledge by answering the fundamental questions about What is UBI? How does it work? What are the arguments for and against it? What is the evidence?

Karl Widerquist discusses how UBI functions, showing how it differs from other redistributional approaches. He summarizes the common arguments for and against UBI and presents the reasons for believing it is a tremendously important reform. The book briefly discusses the likely cost of UBI; options for paying for it; the existing evidence on the probable effects of UBI; and the history of UBI from its inception more than two hundred years ago to today. Now more than ever, conditions in much of the world are ripe for such enthusiasm to keep growing, and there are good reasons to believe that this current wave of support will eventually lead to the adoption of UBI in several countries around the world-making this volume an especially timely and necessary listen.

Audible Audio

Published June 4, 2024

About the author

Karl Widerquist is a Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University-Qatar. He specializes in distributive justice: the ethics of who has what. He is an interdisciplinary scholar who holds two doctorates, one in Normative Political Theory (Oxford University 2006) and one in Economics (the City University of New York 1996). His writing and research cross the disciplines of philosophy, politics, economics, anthropology, and the philosophy of social science. He has published dozens of scholarly articles and eleven books including Universal Basic Income: Essential Knowledge, the Problem of Property, the Prehistory of Private Property, A Critical Analysis of Basic Income Experiments; Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy; and Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income: A Theory of Freedom as the Power to Say No. Much of his writing is about Universal Basic Income. He was a founding editor of the journal Basic Income Studies, cofounder of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network, and cochair of the Basic Income Earth Network. The Atlantic Monthly called him “a leader of the worldwide Basic Income movement.”
Website: www.widerquist.com
Twitter: @KarlWiderquist
Email: Karl@widerquist.com