ABSTRACT
The concept of a Basic Income in the US goes back to Thomas Paine, one of the driving forces for independence and equality during the American Revolution. Support over the years has come from sources as diverse as Martin Luther King, who led an all-out attack on poverty, and Milton Friedman, who advocated a negative income tax that would subsidize low-earning taxpayers. One of the earliest experiments with guaranteed incomes was the Mincome program conducted in the town of Dauphin, Manitoba during the 1970s. Today in Canada, the mayors of two cities in right-leaning Alberta are considering a renewal of the guaranteed income concept. Numerous Native American communities have instituted guaranteed income programs, both in the form of shared benefits from casinos and as "land trusts", which recognize the common ownership of natural resources. Now Finland is readying a wide-scale guaranteed income program, and cities in the Netherlands are preparing similar experiments with such "basic income" payments.
