Experimenting with a universal basic income in Nairobi

2016-04-19T14:56:00-04:00

In the old days of policymaking by aphorism—give a man a fish, feed him for a day!—simply handing money to the poor was considered an obviously bad idea. How naïve—you can’t just give people money. They’ll stop trying! They’ll just get drunk! The underlying assumption was that the poor weren’t good at making decisions for themselves: Experts had to make the decisions for them. As it turns out, that assumption was wrong.

"[...] GiveDirectly, has decided to try to permanently end extreme poverty across dozens of villages and thousands of people in Kenya by guaranteeing them an ongoing income high enough to meet their basic needs—a universal basic income, or basic income guarantee."

[Update: according to GiveDirectly, while their pilot project will likely be in East Africa, near their current projects, it will not be in Nairobi.]

For more on the growing conversation around universal basic incomes, check out past Archinect coverage:

Archinect - News

Experimenting with a universal basic income in Nairobi