A day in your life in the not-too-distant future: you wake up, go for a walk in the sun. Come home, do some drawing. Spend the afternoon writing, then play some video games, go to a gig. And after this hard day's work, £100 has been deposited in your account.

That is the idea behind the "universal basic income" (UBI). Some radical economists think we should give every single person an unconditional regular payment.

The term "UBI" is a bit muddy. Some see UBI as a small income injection: useful to have but not enough to live on in itself. The "full-fat" UBI, in contrast, would be enough for someone to live on without having a job.

But why would we give people money for free? Many campaigners think UBI is necessary because of modern technology.

They argue that computers, and especially AIA computer programme that has been designed to think. , are going to cause mass unemployment, as more and more jobs can be done by intelligent computer programmes. That will cause untold misery and probably violent unrest.¹

But if people have a UBI, advocates say, being laid off will be a good thing, giving them more free time without plunging them into hardship.

And it would allow companies to phase out human work instead of dumping it all at once. People could work part-time, or for just a few hours each day, without any loss of income.

And they say if they are not forced to work all the time to keep themselves alive, people will devote themselves to art, science and knowledge.

They point to Wikipedia as an example of this. Almost a million users make edits to the online encyclopaedia every year without getting a penny for their work.²

Others see it as a way of alleviatingLessen or relieve. Make suffering less bad. poverty. Rather than building things for poorer people, they say, let them spend the money themselves. They often come up with better ideas than the donors.³

Critics of the proposal point out it could only be funded through tax hikes. They claim it is unfair to make some people pay to keep others idle.

They say technological progress will not cause mass unemployment. When much manual labour was mechanised in the Industrial RevolutionA period of sudden, rapid industrialisation that transforms a country from an agricultural to an industrial economy., they point out, this eliminated some jobs but also created new ones. They think the AI revolution will do the same.⁴

Should there be a universal basic income?

Yes: A UBI will unleash human creativity, long chained by the demands of 9-5 jobs that kill people's minds and crush their spirits. It would create a new century of human flourishing.

No: Some people may be innately creative, but most are not. They would simply waste all of their newfound free time at the expense of other people.

Or... The world is becoming an ever more unstable place as technology disrupts the way we work. If we do not find a way of easing the transition, people who lose out from this revolution may turn to violence.