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However hard they work, a growing proportion of those in relative poverty and economic insecurity will be unable to escape. Tax credits and statutory minimum wages that have been enlarged steadily have failed to arrest the upward trend. It is the income distribution system that has broken down.

Two general principles should be applied to any social policy, especially those pitched as alternatives to an unconditional basic income. The first is:

The Paternalism Test Principle. A social policy is unjust if it imposes controls on some groups that are not imposed on the most free groups i…

[...] His personal technical contribution built on a stream of inventions and ideas of others, yet he has gained most of the income attributable to those inventions and ideas as well as his own. And that income in turn is based on the lengthy monopoly he enjoys on Microsoft software and other produ…

The standard objection to the social dividend rationale for a basic income is that no individual has a right to a share of inherited social wealth because they have done nothing to 'deserve' it. In that case, following the same logic, private inheritance should also be abolished. If private inherit…

Latterly, the idea has been taken up by Silicon Valley luminaries and venture capitalists, some putting up money for the cause, as we shall see. They include Robin Chase, co-founder of Zipcar, Sam Altman, head of the start-up incubator Y Combinator, Albert Wenger, prominent venture capitalist, Chri…