Martin Luther King Jr - Minister, Civil Rights Activist

“I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income."

Jeremy Rifkin - Economic and social theorist, writer, public speaker, political advisor, and activist.

“Basic income is not a Utopia, it's a practical business plan for the next step of the human journey."

Michael Bohmeyer - Head of the German initiative ‘Mein Grundeinkommen’ (‘My Basic Income’)

“Basic income is about power, about letting it go… It’s about trusting people. It gives them the freedom to say no and ask the question, ‘how do I really want to live’?"

Erik Brynjolfsson - Director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy and author of "The Second Machine Age."

“We already do this for some kinds of people today. Just consider social security, Medicare, and welfare — these are types of basic income. As automation makes society richer — unevenly — then there’s scope for a more generous social safety net."

Douglas Rushkoff - Author and Institute for the Future fellow

“The marketplace in which most commerce takes place today is not a pre-existing condition of the universe. It’s not nature. It’s a game, with very particular rules, set in motion by real people with real purposes."

Ray Kurzweil - Author, computer scientist, inventor and futurist.

“Adopting a universal basic income for all people can help society think creatively with new ideas, develop new industries — and free-up people to work on important future projects."

Rutger Bregman - Journalist and author of Utopia for Realists: The Case for a Universal Basic Income

“Basic income would give people the most important freedom: the freedom of deciding for themselves what they want to do with their lives."

Stephen Hawking - Theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author and Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge.

“Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."

Erich Fromm - Social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist.

“Guaranteed income would not only establish freedom as a reality rather than a slogan, it would also establish a principle deeply rooted in Western religious and humanist tradition. Man has the right to live, regardless!"

Friedrich Hayek - Economist and philosopher

“The assurance of a certain minimum income for everyone, or a sort of floor below which nobody need fall even when he is unable to provide for himself, appears not only to be a wholly legitimate protection against a risk common to all, but a necessary part of the Great Society in which the individual no longer has specific claims on the members of the particular small group into which he was born."

Buckminster Fuller - Futurist architect, designer and inventor.

“We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in 10 thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest."