On June 5, Swiss voters will go to the polls to decide whether to eliminate many of the nation’s social-welfare programs and replace them with a guaranteed national income for all citizens. Not long after the Swiss vote, Finland will embark on a similar though partial experiment, replacing welfare benefits with a guaranteed income for both national and regional sample populations. In the Netherlands, at least four cities, Utrecht, Tilberg, Groningen, and Wageningen, are in the process of designing their own experiments. And in Canada, the latest provincial budget in Ontario promised to work with researchers this year to come up with a design for a pilot program. Great Britain is also actively debating the concept.



Most conservatives and libertarians in the United States would dismiss the idea of a guaranteed national income (GNI) out of hand. Typical European socialism, would be the reaction. The fevered brainchild of Bernie Sanders.
Actually, though, free-market thinkers from F. A. Hayek and Robert Nozick to Milton Friedman and Charles Murray have long been open to some form of GNI.