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204. Tom Paine's Basic Income -- Alberto Tena-Camporesi

204. Tom Paine's Basic Income -- Alberto Tena-Camporesi
Thomas Paine depicted in 1792 as a bomber in the 1792 etching "The Friends of the People" by Isaac Cruikshank (1764–1811) (source: Wikipedia)

If money is just made up, can't we solve the problem of poverty by just giving people money? This radical idea feels new, but Thomas Paine proposed it as a revolutionary solution during both the US and French revolutions. Alberto Tena-Camporesi joins me to discuss Paine's radical idea, its relationship to current ideas about UBI, and why this idea just keeps coming up in radical (and right-wing) circles.


You can find Alberto's work here: https://scholar.google.es/citations?user=FMpnSa8AAAAJ&hl=en