Evidence · Perspectives · Discussion
After wages, how do we make a living?
AI is changing work. How should income security respond? Explore research, costs and different perspectives on universal basic income. Check the sources, change the assumptions, and form your own judgment.
After Wage is a bilingual space for fair, evidence-led discussion of universal basic income (UBI): a regular cash payment made to every individual without conditions. We curate experimental evidence, examine costs and funding, and publish different perspectives. The platform takes no predetermined position for or against UBI; judgments rest on evidence and stated assumptions.
Examine a common claim
"Tax the AI companies to pay for it" is off by a factor of 882
It is the line UBI supporters reach for most, it sounds self-evidently fair, and it is wrong. The data-centre excise proposals recently discussed in Congress would raise $17.5–46.5 billion over ten years — $4.65 billion a year at the upper bound. Paying every American $1,000 a month costs $4.1 trillion a year.
Under these tax proposals and payment assumptions, this revenue alone cannot fund UBI. That does not establish that every UBI design is infeasible; funding, payment size and coverage need to be examined together.
Compute tax, annual ceiling
$4.65bn
Universal UBI, annual cost
$4,101bn
Sources: Tax Foundation, New Congressional Data Center Tax Proposals Threaten US AI Investment (2026) · ITIF, Taxing AI Compute Would Be a Mistake (2026)
The AI Employment Pressure Index
An employment gap for young workers. Its causes remain under study.
Stanford’s August 2026 revision reports that, as of June, employment of workers aged 22–25 in highly AI-exposed occupations was about 19% below a counterfactual tracking less-exposed peers. Adjustment appears mainly through reduced hiring. These are descriptive patterns, not causal estimates of AI’s effects or evidence of economy-wide mass displacement.
−19%
Employment gap, ages 22–25, high-exposure occupations
$1.8tn
US fiscal space (this one cuts against us)
Three things you can actually run
Plenty of people argue about UBI. Few have costed it. These three turn the shouting match into arithmetic.
01
Does this actually hit me?
Pick your occupation, see the measured numbers, work out your own cushion.
02
The fiscal sandbox
Drag the sliders and finish the "who pays" question yourself. If the gap does not close, it says so.
03
The evidence wall
Results from 8 experiments worldwide, including the 2 that cut against UBI.
The evidence wall: experiments already run
UBI has been tried
We list 8 experiments: 3 support UBI, 3 are mixed, 2 cut clearly against it. The two most damaging — the OpenResearch three-year trial and SIME/DIME — sit at the top of the evidence wall, not the bottom.
Latest writing
All writing →Sign: put this on the table
This is not a pledge to implement UBI tomorrow. It is a lower and harder-to-refuse ask: while AI visibly reshapes employment, governments owe the public a costed, published, debated income-security plan.