“I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income,”
— Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his 1967 book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? Only a year later, King was assassinated.
Amazingly, the U.S. had been on the verge of passing a form of universal basic income in 1969 under President Richard Nixon, but the initiative fell apart after squabbles in congress. The hopes of instituting UBI haven’t gone away, however, and were brought into the mainstream by 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang.
At Anatha, we’ve taken another path to bring universal basic income to reality: creating a regenerative economy with decentralized finance that distributes wealth to all participants. The Anatha network creates a bottom-up UBI that is working to end global poverty.
So why UBI? Let these famous people explain:
“A host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic security. The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life and in his own hands, when he has the assurance that his income is stable and certain, and when he knows that he has the means to seek self-improvement. Personal conflicts between husband, wife and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on a scale of dollars is eliminated.”
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his 1967 book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?
“It is the practice of what has unjustly obtained the name of civilization (and the practice merits not to be called either charity or policy) to make some provision for persons becoming poor and wretched, only at the time they become so. Would it not, even as a matter of economy, be far better, to devise means to prevent their becoming poor. This can best be done, by making every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, an inheritor of something to begin with. The rugged face of society, chequered with the extremes of affluence and of want, proves that some extraordinary violence has been committed upon it, and calls on justice for redress.”
— Thomas Paine in his 1797 pamphlet, Agrarian Justice
“[UBI] makes us much harder to push around, because right now there are these people that would leave their job in a heartbeat if they knew they could meet their basic needs. I’m talking about everyone from the waitress in the diner, whose boss is harassing them, to someone who just isn’t being presented with the opportunities that they want, or have another dream that they’d like to pursue. … We all know that if you had $2,000 a month coming in — that you didn’t have to worry about — then you would start to think bigger about the kind of work that you want to do.”
— Former Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang in a podcast interview with Dan Schawbel
“National progress needs to help 100% of people, not just 10%. More than ever, we need basic income to limit everyone’s downside, and better education to give everyone an upside.”
— Andrew Ng, co-founder of Coursera and former head of Baidu AI Group/Google Brain, in a 2016 tweet
“Changes in our economy and society in recent decades have shattered the myth of linear economic progress for the average American. A narrow few have benefited from advances in automation and globalization and changes in our tax code, while the vast majority of Americans have languished in a 30-year period of economic stagnation. … The new economy that churns out Facebook and iPhones has not created mass prosperity: median incomes have stagnated and household debt levels have risen. Three quarters of Americans, a record number, now believe the next generation will not be better off than theirs. … A potent idea that would quickly and effectively jumpstart the economy sits in plain sight: cash for all.”
— Chris Hughes, author and co-founder of Facebook, in a Medium post
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