Paid Just for Existing: What Basic Income Promises

An Idea That Keeps Returning

When Anna, the Budapest marketing professional we met in the previous part, learned that four of her colleagues had been replaced by a piece of software, her first question was: "So what are they supposed to do now?" Her second was for herself: "If I'm let go too, what will I live on?"

To these questions, a growing number of people offer a single answer: a universal basic income (UBI). Every month the state pays a fixed sum to every citizen, no strings attached — whether as a cheque, a bank transfer or a tax credit. You do not have to work for it, you do not have to prove that you are poor, and there is no deadline hanging over your head. Simply because you exist.

The idea is not new. Thomas Paine, a hero of the American War of Independence, wrote as early as 1797 that every person on earth is entitled to a basic income, because natural resources are a shared inheritance. Martin Luther King put it this way in 1967: "the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income." But the idea has never been more timely than it is now, when machines are destroying jobs by the million.

How Would It Work?

The logic of a basic income is simple:

• Who gets it? Every adult citizen, automatically, with no conditions
• How much? A fixed sum that covers the essentials of living — housing, food, transport, utility bills
• Where does the money come from? From general tax rises, from the budgets of scrapped welfare programmes, from the so-called "robot tax" — a levy on the extra profit generated by AI and automation — or by the most time-honoured — and most destructive — route: creating money out of nothing (the monetisation of government debt). On the Austrian school's reading, this last is the "hidden tax": if the state hands out 14 trillion Hungarian forints a year (≈€39 billion, at roughly 360 forints to the euro) without that money having been earned, prices adjust — and the real value of the UBI is inflated away.
• Why is it a good thing? Supporters say it ends poverty, cuts red tape, frees people from working just to survive, and makes room for creativity, enterprise and self-education

Supporters insist a basic income is not "free money" but a social dividend. The extra wealth technology creates — captured by the rise in Revenue Per Employee (RPE) that we examined in our Altar of Efficiency series — is a shared inheritance to which everyone is entitled. If the machines take the work away, then the profit the machines make must support the people.

The International Experiments — What Does the Data Show?

In recent years, basic income has been trialled in a number of countries and cities. The results are mixed — and revealing.

Finland (2017–2018) — The Experiment That Divided the World

In 2017, Finland launched one of the largest basic-income experiments ever run. Two thousand randomly selected people, all originally unemployed, received €560 a month for two years, unconditionally. The control group continued to receive the standard unemployment benefit.

The upshot? According to the final report from Kela, the Finnish social-insurance institution, those receiving the basic income became slightly more likely to find work — the difference was statistically significant, though small. Their well-being, meanwhile, improved markedly: they felt more in control of their own lives, less stressed and more secure financially. The proportion living "comfortably" rose from 7% to 12%, while the proportion "finding it very difficult to get by" fell from 17% to 13%.

Critics, however, point out that the Finnish trial was not a true UBI: only the unemployed received it, and the sum (€560) came nowhere near covering the full cost of living. On top of that, other labour-market rules changed at the same time, making it hard to separate the effect of the basic income from everything else.

Sam Altman's "Open Research" Experiment (2020–2023) — The Tech Elite's Big Bet

Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, launched one of the largest basic-income experiments in American history back in 2020. Through his organisation Open Research, 1,000 residents of Texas and Illinois received $1,000 a month for three years, from 2020 to 2023, with no conditions attached. The control group consisted of 2,000 people who received $50 a month. Participants were low earners aged between 21 and 40.

The results appeared at the end of 2024 and split public opinion. The positives:

• Those receiving the basic income spent more time looking for work and applying for jobs
• They had more confidence that they could shape their own future
• They valued work more — not less, but more

The negatives:

• On average they worked 1.3 hours less per week — roughly eight working days a year
• Their likelihood of being in work at any given moment was 2% lower
• Much of the "free time" was spent not on self-education or starting a business, but on passive screen time

Altman's experiment laid bare a fundamental dilemma: a basic income really does help people survive, but it does not turn them overnight into innovative entrepreneurs. As our Altar of Efficiency series put it: "UBI became a tool for biological survival, but it failed to produce human flourishing. It is an expensive painkiller applied to an amputated limb."

Wales (2022–2024) — The Most Generous Experiment

In 2022, Wales launched the most generous basic-income experiment ever run. Care leavers (young people leaving foster or residential care at the age of 18) received £1,600 a month before tax for two years, from July 2022 to July 2024. That is a substantial share of the average British wage. The take-up rate was 97% — most of the eligible young people seized the opportunity.

An important methodological caveat: strictly speaking, the Welsh scheme cannot be considered a universal basic income — "universal" means what it says: everyone receives it. This is a targeted benefit for a particularly vulnerable group, and many experts warn that the Welsh results cannot be extrapolated to general UBI scenarios.

The evaluation of the experiment runs until 2027, but the first reports are already out. According to the participants' own accounts:

• They could focus better on their studies and training
• They felt less stress about money
• They moved out of care and into independent living with more confidence

At the same time, experts voiced concern about what happens when the two years are up and the young people suddenly lose this stable income. "Exiting" the scheme may prove every bit as traumatic as leaving care in the first place.

Kenya — The Long-Term Experiment

The charity GiveDirectly has been running basic-income experiments in Kenya and other African countries since 2017. Participants receive roughly $40 a month, a significant sum in local terms. The results:

• Household spending rose by 6–30% relative to the control group
• Investment (farming equipment, businesses) also rose
• The "economic multiplier" effect: every dollar spent generated $2.50 of economic activity in the local community (the fiscal multiplier — Egger et al., 2022, Econometrica)

The Dark Side of the American Experiments — What Do the 122 Pilots Show?

A March 2026 analysis by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) pulled together the American basic-income experiments. Between 2017 and 2025, 122 pilot programmes were launched across 33 states and Washington DC, worth $481.4 million in total, with 40,921 participants. The average monthly payment was $616, and the average duration 18.4 months.

But behind the numbers lies a serious problem: of the 122 experiments, only 52 have published results, and just 30 examined the effect on employment. Supporters often cite the full 122, yet the real evidence base is far thinner.

The 30 randomised experiments showed an average employment gain of 0.8 percentage points. But in the four largest, most reliable experiments — which together accounted for 55% of participants — the result was exactly the opposite: a 3.2-percentage-point fall in employment. In other words, the larger and more rigorous the study, the more clearly it showed that free money reduces people's willingness to work.

Hungary and Basic Income — Dream or Nightmare?

In Hungary, the idea of a basic income has never entered the political mainstream. No major party campaigned on it in the 2026 election — perhaps precisely because the fiscal realities are brutal.

According to PwC's 2026 figures, the statutory monthly minimum wage in Hungary is 322,800 forints (≈€900), the guaranteed minimum wage for skilled workers 373,200 forints (≈€1,040), and the average gross wage roughly 780,000 forints (≈€2,170). A basic income that genuinely covered basic living costs — enough that you neither go hungry nor go cold, but must still work if you want more — would sit somewhere between the minimum and the average wage.

According to a 2025 modelling exercise by a European research group, an adult in Hungary would need €10,324 a year in basic income (roughly 310,000 forints a month, at the 2026 exchange rate of about 360 forints to the euro) to reach a level comparable to the EU average. At that scale, the annual bill would be €90 billion (roughly 36 trillion forints) — around 40% of Hungary's entire GDP, two-fifths of everything the country produces in a year.

This is not a political promise; it is a hard budgetary fact. In a small provincial town, the monthly cost of basic subsistence — rent, utilities, food, transport — works out at around 130,000–150,000 forints, combining consumer-basket data from Hungary's Central Statistical Office (KSH) with rental-market statistics. In Budapest, the same figure is above 250,000 forints. If the state gave everyone a basic income at Budapest levels, it would cost more than 23 trillion forints (≈€64 billion) a year — two-thirds of Hungary's entire budget.

The Promise of Basic Income — Why Do They Still Want It?

If the numbers are this stark, why do more and more influential people still back a basic income? The answer has three strands:

1. Abolishing poverty — Supporters argue that a basic income would reliably lift people out of extreme poverty. There would no longer be an "unemployment benefit" that has to be claimed through humiliating procedures. Everyone would receive enough to live on.

2. Cutting red tape — Today's welfare systems maintain a vast apparatus: checking who is eligible, who is cheating and how much each person has worked. A basic income would simplify all of it: everyone gets it, full stop. That would mean administrative savings.

3. Freeing up creativity — The most romantic argument: if people no longer have to toil for survival, they will make art, start businesses, educate themselves. The "Greek aristocracy" model: free citizens create philosophy and art because they do not have to work.

But as our Altar of Efficiency series set out, the romantic argument has a dark side. The World Economic Forum in Davos often invokes the "Greek aristocracy" model — the free citizens of ancient Athens did not work, yet they created art and philosophy. But that is not what 21st-century humans were conditioned for. The education system we have had since the Industrial Revolution has drilled into us that human worth equals economic usefulness. Work gave us structure, hierarchy, prestige. If the state removes that and hands over a cheque instead, people do not suddenly become artists. They are more likely to lose their identity.

What Happens If the State Pays but the Machines Don't Produce Enough?

The basic-income experiments paint a mixed picture. In some places it helped people survive (Finland, Kenya); in others it reduced how much people worked (America's large experiments); and in others it simply did not run long enough for any real conclusions to be drawn (Wales).

But one thing is certain: a basic income is no panacea. It creates no jobs, raises no productivity and does nothing to curb inflation. It merely redistributes money that already exists — and someone, somewhere, still has to earn it in the first place.

In the next part, we turn to the critical side: what happens if a basic income is introduced but the machines do not produce as much as promised? What happens if the free money pushes prices up, and in the end everyone is poorer?

The question is not whether a basic income is good or bad. The question is whether it is sustainable — and at whose expense.