This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

People all over the world are flirting with an idea called basic income.

Basic income. Basic income. Basic income for all.

The idea behind the basic income is that each citizen receives a payment every month

as a right without conditions and paid individually.

Basic income. Also known as universal basic income or unconditional basic income or UBI.

That's producer Avery Trouffleman.

Very, very roughly defined universal basic income is this idea that a government would pay all their citizens.

And everyone would get a flat sum of money every month to cover their basic needs, whether or not they have a job.

And this money would be no strings attached with no conditions and this would hopefully remove any stigma from receiving it.

It's free money, basically. It's free money.

The logic behind it is this. A lot of jobs don't pay enough money for people to even make rent or buy groceries.

You can work full time and still be below the poverty line.

So it's easy to understand why people on the left would advocate for a guaranteed income.

But also a version of this concept is popular in libertarian circles.

They see basic income as a way to shrink the welfare state.

For example, you could take away food stamps, Medicare and housing subsidies and replace all of it with one flat sum.

People in tech are also interested in the concept of basic income and they feel a certain urgency about it.

Robots are coming for our jobs, they say.

And basic income is the best way for humans to maintain a decent lifestyle when our labor is increasingly obsolete.

Our generation is going to have to deal with tens of millions of jobs replaced by automation like self-driving cars and trucks.

But we have the potential to do so much more than that.

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