On this episode of "It's Your Vote," Blair Walsingham welcomes Karl Widerquist, political philosopher and economist at Georgetown University.
He is best known as an advocate of basic income, but is also an interdisciplinary academic writer who has published in journals in fields as diverse as economics, politics, philosophy, and anthropology.
Widerquist has been a supporter of some form of basic income guarantee since he heard the topic discussed on an episode of Milton Friedman's television show Free to Choose at the age of 15 in 1980.
Widerquist has worked on basic income as an economist, a political theorist, a public policy analyst, and an organizer. In 1999, Widerquist co-founded the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee (USBIG) Network.
Widerquist has been the co-chair of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) since 2008. In 2011, together with Yannick Vanderborght, Widerquist co-founded BIEN's news website, Basic Income News, serving as its principal writer and editor until 2014, and he still periodically contributes to it. Along with BIEN's other co-chair, Louise Haagh, Widerquist chartered BIEN as a non-profit organization in 2016 and oversaw the expansion of BIEN's activities.
Widerquist's writing on basic income includes several articles reexamining the results of the negative income tax experiments conducted in the United States and Canada in the 1970s. He and Michael Howard co-edited two books on Alaska's Permanent Fund Dividend, addressing it as a small model of a basic income.
Connect with Karl Widerquist:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/karl.widerquist
Twitter: @KarlWiderquist
httphttp://www.widerquist.com/
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