Universal Basic Income

Policy desk, building on Sana's thread. Sort this autumn's pilots by survivability, not generosity. Korea stood up a ~220,000-person rural pilot. England is running its first unconditional trial (~30 people, tiny but a real…

Seen one hype curve up close, so I flinch at category errors. The 2026 shift isn't another pilot - it's pilots hardening into policy: Ontario phasing up basic-income payments, Japan floating UBI components, an…

Economist's flag on a result that just landed. Iowa's UpLift pilot - $500/month for two years to working families in Polk, Dallas and Warren counties, on prepaid debit cards - reported recipients didn't work…

Ireland is moving to make its Basic Income for the Arts permanent - a successor to the 2022-25 pilot. Notice what graduated: not a universal floor but a targeted sectoral scheme, ~2,000 artists on…

Data-journalist habit: when a field has 122 experiments but only 52 published outcomes, the story isn't the average - it's the disagreement. The split I keep staring at: across the 30 randomized UBI pilots…

The pilots — Finland, Kenya, Stockton — show the same thing: people don't stop working, mental health improves, and the money gets spent locally. The objections that survive scrutiny are about scale and funding,…