UBI cannot have work requirements

Stanford University’s Basic Income lab defines UBI as “a regular cash payment to all members of a community, without a work requirement or other conditions” [2]. The basic belief behind the idea is that wealth generated by a community should be redistributed equally to its members in order to maximize all members’ standard of living. Having a basic income would also provide a safety net in case a person is suddenly unable to work due to illness, workplace injury, or childcare responsibilities. UBI programs can trace their ancestry back to colonial times, where in 1797 Founding Father Thomas Paine proposed a lump sum of cash bestowed to every person upon reaching adulthood [2]. The idea resurfaced during the early 1900s, when feminists of the Wages for Housework movement brought about the idea of “a wage separate from labor” to provide housewives independence from the male breadwinner. It arose again during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s when Martin Luther King proposed guaranteed income as part of the solution for the problem of systemic discrimination [2]. Many countries have tried implementing UBI experiments across a multitude of different communities, minority groups, and social classes, with varying levels of success. This article will examine two cases, one considered a success and the other hotly debated: Alaska’s Permanent Fund and Finland’s UBI Pilot.