Basic Income News

A new universal basic income scheme is to be piloted in South Korea, where 170,000 young people (aged twenty-four) will be given the equivalent of $833 with very few conditions attached. The scheme also aims to boost local businesses.

For the last five months, Finland has been giving 2,000 citizens unconditional income. The country is already seeing benefits, with one being citizens are reporting decrease stress.

The Canadian province of Ontario is planning to pay a basic income of at least $1,320/month to its citizens. It will be launching a pilot project in a number of communities in the province by Spring 2017.

London - Chancellor George Osborne has announced an increase in the minimum wage? Clearly he doesn't know anything about economics, or maybe he does?

Washington - In his recent speech on the economy, Barack Obama made a number of good points, but his proposed solutions to the problems are a different matter.

All governments are obsessed with controlling inflation and creating full employment. Both these ideas are based on false conceptions of economics.

The Archbishops of York and Canterbury have recently spoken out on low pay and high interest rates. They mean well, but do they know what they're talking about?

Investment broker Peter Schiff and rap artist Chapter Jackson are an unlikely combination, but Chapter is an unlikely kind of Conservative.

Although the workhouse has been consigned to history, there are those who are intent on bringing it back. Fortunately, there is now fierce opposition to these insidious schemes.

"A coming wave of robots could redefine our jobs. Will that redefine us?" It can do if we use a little lateral thinking, and take on board the thoughts of Major Douglas.

Former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith has set about reforming the benefit system, but how can he truly ensure that work always pays?

In the run-up to the 2012 U.S. Presidential election, one of the candidates has been making noises about workfare. So have many other people, a long time before that.

Everyone agrees the benefit system in the UK is a total mess. The man appointed to sort it out thinks he has the answer, but Iain Duncan Smith doesn't even understand what is the real problem.

What would William Shakespeare be able to do workwise if he were alive today? Or Irving Berlin for that matter? And why are our masters so concerned about the chimera of full employment?

The free market economist Milton Friedman died November 16, 2006; he was awarded the 1976 Nobel Prize for Economics, but how do his ideas shape up today?

Yesterday, it was reported that the European Parliament was planning to curb the bonuses being paid to bank staff, while a guest on a BBC news programme explained how benefit claimants are stuck in the poverty trap.

The trade unions, the Opposition, and even the Coalition Government make a lot of noise about job protection and job creation, the reality is that Britain and all advanced nations need fewer jobs, not more.

The myth of the benefits culture is pushed by governments on both sides of the Atlantic because politicians and our over-paid economists are incapable of seeing the real problem.

Hull - A brief, partial review of two recent BBC Television programmes, and some comment on the issues raised therein relating to petty offenders, poverty and social exclusion.

An article about a forthcoming academic conference at the British Library Conference Centre which will discuss the welfare system in Britain: who benefits from it, and who doesn't.