Nearly 600 people have signed on to take part in a universal basic income (UBI) experiment in the northern Swiss town of Rheinau meaning researchers are close to hitting the number needed for the project to have any chance of going ahead. In the seven days since the enrolment process began, 588 residents of the town have agreed to take part in the project which would see participating adults receive a monthly universal basic income (UBI) of 2,500 francs ($2,570) for a year. This means the woman behind the experiment, Swiss filmmaker Rebecca Panian, has almost hit her target of at least 650 participants.

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.”

The federal minister responsible for reducing poverty says he is interested in the idea of a guaranteed income in Canada. Veteran economist Jean-Yves Duclos, who is Minister of Families, Children and Social Development, told The Globe and Mail the concept has merit as a policy to consider after the government implements more immediate reforms promised during the election campaign. “There are many different types of guaranteed minimum income.

What an interesting place and an interesting time it is for a visit. Earth’s most intelligent primates are busy creating technologies that allow them all to do less work, freeing themselves from millennia of senseless toil and drudgery. Strangely, however, they are using such technologies to force each other to work longer and harder. In one area called the United States, responsible for so much of the world’s technological...

Nearly half of Americans would have trouble finding $400 to pay for an emergency. I’m one of them.

57% of the world's jobs are at risk of being automated. Universal Basic Income may be our only way out. Here's why.

“I’m not sure what else one would do.” In addition to addressing issues at SpaceX, Elon Musk spent some time during a Friday CNBC interview addressing how automation will impact the job market. Musk’s Tesla Motors is leading the way to self-driving cars, while also pushing factories to new levels of automation. And he thinks that workers displaced by those and other forms of automation will need help permanently, and on a broad scale.

Finland will soon hand out cash to 2,000 jobless people, free of bureaucracy or limits on side earnings. The idea, universal basic income, is gaining traction worldwide.

The idea of a universal basic income has found growing support in Silicon Valley as robots threaten to radically change the nature of work. Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar is the latest tech bigwig to get behind the concept. His philanthropic investment firm, the Omidyar Network, announced Wednesday that it will give nearly half a billion dollars to a group testing the policy in Kenya.

Almost two centuries ago an idea was born with such explanatory power that it created shock waves across all of human society and whose aftershocks we’re still feeling to this day. It’s so simple and yet so powerful, that after all these years, it remains capable of making people question their very faith. The idea of which I speak is that through random mutation and natural selection, every living thing around us was created through millions and even billions of years of what is effectively trial and error, not designed by some intelligent creator. It is the process of evolution through natural selection.

Participants in the pilot, designed to test if a basic income is a better way to support people living in poverty than the current system, will be randomly chosen by mail in the test communities and begin as early as this summer.

Invisible Sheep, the Missing Right, and the Return of Common Wealth. In the opening of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, viewers are shown a historic moment in time where primitive man used the first tool. It was a bone, and used like a club, it allowed a physically weaker group to overpower a physically stronger group.

At the World Government Summit in Dubai, our real-world Tony Stark, Elon Musk, was throwing around some big and important ideas about the future of humanity. Musk says that Universal Basic Income — or an economic idea where everyone gets a paycheck from the government to spend how they wish — is one of the only solutions to the rise of robotic automation.

The district of Besós in Barcelona, Utrecht in the Netherlands and the Finnish city of Helsinki are all reportedly set to trial a universal basic income scheme. Residents will be given money for two years to lift them above the breadline as the scheme looks to investigate “innovative and creative solutions”. Each area will be been given €13m (£11m) from the European Union to fund the scheme, which will grant 1,000 randomly selected low-income households between €400 and €525 (£350 and £455) per month.

This month has shown that Hawaii may be the U.S.'s most forward-thinking state. Earlier in June, it became the first state to formally accept the provisions of the Paris Climate Accord, and now, the state congress has passed a bill that puts Hawaii on the path to universal basic income.

Finland has been giving 2,000 of its citizens an unconditional income for the last five months and some are already seeing the benefits, reporting decreased stress, greater incentives to find work and more time to pursue business ideas. The scheme is the first of its kind in Europe and sees participants receive €560 (£473) every month for two years. Recipients do not have to demonstrate that they are seeking employment and they are not required to regularly report to authorities to prove they still need the payment, as is the case with standard unemployment benefits. They can spend the money however they like.

Sooner rather than later, a robot is going to be able to do part or all of what you do for a living. In response to this and other pressures, the Canadian province of Ontario is gearing up to launch a basic income trial this summer. For a limited period of time, and in three regions across the province, the government will be giving people a living wage, for free and with no strings attached, and seeing how the hell it goes, eh?

The Facebook CEO remarked in a recent post that Alaska's approach to basic income "may be a lesson for the rest of the country as well."

At the beginning of this year, Finland launched a national experiment to determine the feasibility of universal basic income. However, due to problems with the trial and the country's economy, the results may not prove to be particularly useful.

With trials for self-driving commercial lorries to take place in the UK within the next twelve months, the work days of thousands of Britain’s long-haul drivers may soon be numbered. Of course, these are only preliminary tests – it may well be a decade or more before driverless deliveries and long-distance haulage are an everyday reality. However, with the beginnings already upon us, a boom in automated jobs is surely coming sooner rather than later.

The potential advantages and drawbacks of universal basic income have been debated fiercely in recent months, but a new study suggests that paying everyone an unconditional salary could have a welcomed side effect. According to US think tank The Roosevelt Institute, a system of universal basic income – or UBI – in the US, under which every citizen is given a basic government salary unconditionally could actually grow the economy on a permanent basis. But there is a catch.

Giving every adult in the United States a $1,000 cash handout per month would grow the economy by $2.5 trillion by 2025, according to a new study on universal basic income. The report was released in August by the left-leaning Roosevelt Institute. Roosevelt research director Marshall Steinbaum, Michalis Nikiforos at Bard College's Levy Institute, and Gennaro Zezza at the University of Cassino and Southern Lazio in Italy co-authored the study.

Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley technology startup-incubator that’s that offered early funding for Airbnb, Reddit, Genius, Twitch, and Dropbox, among others, has its eyes on a backing an even bigger potential disruption: basic income. This week, the company announced that its year-long feasibility study on basic income, using a few dozen people in Oakland, California, had come to an end. Its next logical step is altogether more ambitious...

Citizens receiving a basic monthly income as part of a radical Finnish pilot scheme have seen a reduction in their stress levels, an official leading the trial has said. The first of its kind in Europe, the scheme sees 2,000 people receive 560 euros (£473) every month for two years. Recipients do not have to report whether they are seeking employment or how they are spending the money, which is deducted from any benefits they are already receiving.

Universal basic income is, according to its many and various supporters, an idea whose time has come. The deceptively simple notion of offering every citizen a regular payment without means testing or requiring them to work for it has backers as disparate as Mark Zuckerberg, Stephen Hawking, Caroline Lucas and Richard Branson. Ed Miliband chose the concept to launch his ideas podcast Reasons to be Cheerful in the autumn.

A 12-year basic income experiment in Kenya is showing that people typically spend free cash on necessities, not vices like alcohol or gambling. Maurice Owiti is 47 years old and works as a caregiver in a rural Kenyan village. In a poor community such as his, Owiti is lucky to have a job. But until late 2016, spending even $20 a month on school fees for his son was a struggle.

The government should give £10,000 to every citizen under 55, a report suggests.

We should provide a guaranteed income of $500 a month for every working adult who makes less than $50,000, argues Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes

It’s a sign that the idea is moving from fringe to mainstream.

A Bipartisan Free Market Solution to Climate Change Through Atmospheric Justice. By Scott Santens.

As the march of the robots continues in the workplace and economic inequality rises, music ­legend Brian Eno sees an ­obvious solution. The ambient pioneer and former Roxy Music star is one of many big names backing calls to introduce Universal Basic Income. Under the scheme, ­everyone would get a set amount of cash every month.

“Fair Shot” author Chris Hughes is trying to convince America’s richest citizens to give money to working people — not education policy, not inspirational messages, not invocations to try harder. Cash. “Cash is the best thing you can do to improve health outcomes, education outcomes and lift people out of poverty,” Hughes said on the latest episode of Recode Decode, hosted by Kara Swisher.

Later this year, Stockton, a city in California with a 25% poverty rate, will conduct an unusual experiment: Roughly 100 of its citizens will receive $500 a month for 12-18 months, with no work requirements and no strings attached. Researchers likely will regularly assess the recipients’ health, childcare arrangements, education, and general well-being in order to measure how this kind of financial leg up affects quality of life.

Ray Kurzweil is Google’s director of engineering and believes UBI is inevitable.