New results are in for a landmark experiment in basic income.

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a social policy in which all citizens of a country or community receive a fixed amount of money each month. UBI payments are funded by taxpayer dollars and provided unconditionally and in addition to any income, a person receives from work or investments.

A universal basic income would be cheaper than many expect, Andrew Yang said in an interview Friday. The entrepreneur is running for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in the 2020 election, pushing for a policy that would give every American a $1,000 per month “Freedom Dividend.” “It gets much, much cheaper, very, very quickly, and the reason it does is that about half of Americans are already receiving government income support in some fashion,” Yang told CBS News.

As global economies become more unequal, and as the incomes of working people have stagnated to the point of barely affording them a decent livelihood, a small groundswell of support has developed for one revolutionary solution for evening out wealth and opportunity: a universal basic income (UBI), which is a flat payment delivered to all members of a community, regardless of means or employment status.

In recent years, the concept of a universal basic income (UBI)—governments providing every single citizen with a cash transfer sufficient to ensure a minimum standard of living—has gained a diverse following in countries around the world. The concept is particularly popular among those concerned about the effects of technology and automation on employment. In fact, Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley start-up incubator, is currently funding a randomized, controlled trial of a UBI in two states.

For the last two years the Finnish government has been giving 2000 unemployed people a guaranteed, no-strings-attached payment each month. It is the world’s most robust test of universal basic income, and the preliminary results, released this morning, seem to dispel some of the doubts about the policy’s negative impacts.

inland has completed a major trial into the effects of a basic income, and the preliminary results are positive. Recipients felt happier, less stressed, trusted politicians more, and even felt more comfortable on the same levels of income as people that did not receive a basic income. “The findings are broadly positive, but there are still a lot of unanswered questions,” Luke Martinelli, a research associate from the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Bath, tells Inverse.

Finland has just completed a major basic income experiment where 2,000 unemployed people were given €560 (£490) a month for two years, instead of their unemployment benefit. The basic income was paid with no strings attached. Recipients weren't required to seek or accept jobs but still received the payment if they found a job. The Finnish government wanted to see if this financial incentive encouraged people to get jobs or start businesses.

Agricultural distress and joblessness are not new issues in India, but they often hog the limelight prior to elections. This year is no different. After toying with several policies ranging from farm loan waiver to hiking minimum support prices (MSP) for farm produce and reservation for the not so well off among higher castes, the government seems to be running out of piecemeal alternatives. It now needs to do something more radical if it is serious about 'wiping every tear from every eye'.

Some of the biggest and most promising experiments were plagued by delays and shutdowns. The idea is that all citizens receive a set amount of money from the government to cover food, housing, and clothing, without regard to income or employment status. This minimum stipend can be supplemented with wages from work. Advocates say it will help fight poverty by giving people the flexibility to find work and strengthen their safety net, or that it offers a way to support people who might be negatively affected by automation.

Basic income is going to be tested in Germany. The setup of the experiment will be similar to the one now ending in Finland, which means there will be an unconditional cash transfer to 250 randomly selected people among those already receiving benefits (250 others will act as the control group), and evaluate the impact in terms of labor market behavior, health and social relations.

When it comes to poverty alleviation in the developing world, cash transfer schemes have been at the center of a difficult debate. For years, donor agencies and governments were urged to integrate the poor into their economies by providing them with a basic amount of cash. Yet those programs have been dogged by controversies, with critics arguing they encourage dependency, negatively impact labor, and pit community members against each other.

Another Silicon Valley mogul has come out in favor of universal basic income — and this one is actually putting his money where his mouth is to fund a study to see how it works, which makes his optimism on the subject all the more encouraging. Sam Altman is the 32-year-old president of Y Combinator, which has helped fund the likes of Airbnb, Reddit, and Dropbox.

Americans believe in the importance of a good day’s work. And so it’s understandable that the prospect of a universal basic income (UBI), in which the government would issue checks to cover the basic costs of living, rubs some people the wrong way. Writing in The Week in 2014, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry envisions a UBI dystopia in which “millions of people” are “listing away in socially destructive idleness,” with “the consequences of this lost productivity reverberating throughout the society in lower growth and, probably, lower employment.”

Entrepreneur Andrew Yang is running for U.S. president, and he's made the robot revolution a central pillar of his election campaign for the 2020 race. Yang is the founder of Venture for America, a nonprofit that helps entrepreneurs create jobs, and he was previously the CEO of education firm Manhattan Prep. A Democrat, he has said the rise of automation and artificial intelligence will soon render millions of American jobs obsolete. To prevent widespread unemployment, he's proposing monthly stipends of $1,000 for all citizens aged 18 to 64, no strings attached.

Sherry Mendowegan feels very lucky that she already paid her tuition and bought books for the upcoming school year. The mother-of-two in Thunder Bay was using money from Ontario's basic income pilot project to help cover the costs of going back to school. In July, the new Progressive Conservative government announced it would "wind down" the program two years early, without warning participants.

Some years ago, I had a colleague who would frequently complain that he didn’t have enough to do. He’d mention how much free time he had to our team, ask for more tasks from our boss, and bring it up at after-work drinks. He was right, of course, about the situation: Although we were hardly idle, even the most productive among us couldn’t claim to be toiling for eight (or even five, sometimes three) full hours a day.

Ontario's new conservative government announced Tuesday it is ending an unusual experiment in which a basic minimum income with no strings attached is being provided 4,000 people in three communities. Social Services Minister Lisa MacLeod said the government is scrapping the "basic income" project of the previous Liberal government. It was designed to evaluate whether providing more money to people on public assistance or low incomes would make a significant difference in their lives. It was being closely watched by social scientists, economists and policymakers in Canada and around the world.

On this week’s episode of my podcast, I Have to Ask, I spoke to Annie Lowrey, a contributing editor at the Atlantic and the author of the new book Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World. It’s about universal basic income—the idea that the government would give all its citizens checks every month. Versions of this proposal have caught on with people on the left as well as tech leaders in Silicon Valley and even some hardcore libertarians. Lowrey has written for many years now about economics...