
Give People Money
How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $15.75
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Annie Lowrey
-
By:
-
Annie Lowrey
About this listen
New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
Short-listed for the 2018 FT & McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award
A brilliantly reported, global look at universal basic income - a stipend given to every citizen - and why it might be necessary in an age of rising inequality, persistent poverty, and dazzling technology.
Imagine if every month the government deposited $1,000 into your bank account, with nothing expected in return. It sounds crazy. But it has become one of the most influential and hotly debated policy ideas of our time. Futurists, radicals, libertarians, socialists, union representatives, feminists, conservatives, Bernie supporters, development economists, childcare workers, welfare recipients, and politicians from India to Finland to Canada to Mexico - all are talking about UBI.
In this sparkling and provocative book, economics writer Annie Lowrey examines the UBI movement from many angles. She travels to Kenya to see how a UBI is lifting the poorest people on earth out of destitution, India to see how inefficient government programs are failing the poor, South Korea to interrogate UBI’s intellectual pedigree, and Silicon Valley to meet the tech titans financing UBI pilots in expectation of a world with advanced artificial intelligence and little need for human labor.
Lowrey explores the potential of such a sweeping policy and the challenges the movement faces, among them contradictory aims, uncomfortable costs, and, most powerfully, the entrenched belief that no one should get something for nothing. In the end, she shows how this arcane policy has the potential to solve some of our most intractable economic problems while offering a new vision of citizenship and a firmer foundation for our society in this age of turbulence and marvels.
©2018 Annie Lowrey (P)2018 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
Poverty, by America
- By: Matthew Desmond
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?
-
-
A testimonial based on facts and witness
- By Alonzo Nightjar on 03-27-23
By: Matthew Desmond
-
Utopia for Realists
- How We Can Build the Ideal World
- By: Rutger Bregman
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Utopia for Realists is one of those rare books that takes you by surprise and challenges what you think can happen. From a Canadian city that once completely eradicated poverty to Richard Nixon's near implementation of a basic income for millions of Americans, Bregman takes us on a journey through history and beyond the traditional left-right divides as he champions ideas whose time has come.
-
-
Doesn't address the real question
- By Jen on 07-06-19
By: Rutger Bregman
-
Why We're Polarized
- By: Ezra Klein
- Narrated by: Ezra Klein
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Why We’re Polarized, Klein reveals the structural and psychological forces behind America’s descent into division and dysfunction. Neither a polemic nor a lament, this book offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump’s rise to the Democratic Party’s leftward shift to the politicization of everyday culture. America is polarized, first and foremost, by identity. Everyone engaged in American politics is engaged, at some level, in identity politics.
-
-
Good as an intro, skip if you’re a wonk
- By Tony on 01-29-20
By: Ezra Klein
-
Determined
- A Science of Life Without Free Will
- By: Robert M. Sapolsky
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Robert Sapolsky’s Behave, his now classic account of why humans do good and why they do bad, pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: We may not grasp the precise marriage of nature and nurture that creates the physics and chemistry at the base of human behavior, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Now, in Determined, Sapolsky takes his argument all the way, mounting a brilliant (and in his inimitable way, delightful) full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there is some separate self telling our biology what to do.
-
-
Abridged - no Appendix!
- By Amazon Customer on 11-02-23
-
Evicted
- Poverty and Profit in the American City
- By: Matthew Desmond
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Evicted, Princeton sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they each struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Hailed as “wrenching and revelatory” (The Nation), “vivid and unsettling” (New York Review of Books), Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of twenty-first-century America’s most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible.
-
-
Former Property Manager
- By Charla on 05-18-16
By: Matthew Desmond
-
Recoding America
- Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better
- By: Jennifer Pahlka
- Narrated by: Jennifer Pahlka
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A bold call to reexamine how our government operates—and sometimes fails to—from President Obama’s former deputy chief technology officer and the founder of Code for America.
-
-
Very good, minimally partisan.
- By 95Rb35 on 11-25-23
By: Jennifer Pahlka
-
Poverty, by America
- By: Matthew Desmond
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?
-
-
A testimonial based on facts and witness
- By Alonzo Nightjar on 03-27-23
By: Matthew Desmond
-
Utopia for Realists
- How We Can Build the Ideal World
- By: Rutger Bregman
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Utopia for Realists is one of those rare books that takes you by surprise and challenges what you think can happen. From a Canadian city that once completely eradicated poverty to Richard Nixon's near implementation of a basic income for millions of Americans, Bregman takes us on a journey through history and beyond the traditional left-right divides as he champions ideas whose time has come.
-
-
Doesn't address the real question
- By Jen on 07-06-19
By: Rutger Bregman
-
Why We're Polarized
- By: Ezra Klein
- Narrated by: Ezra Klein
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Why We’re Polarized, Klein reveals the structural and psychological forces behind America’s descent into division and dysfunction. Neither a polemic nor a lament, this book offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump’s rise to the Democratic Party’s leftward shift to the politicization of everyday culture. America is polarized, first and foremost, by identity. Everyone engaged in American politics is engaged, at some level, in identity politics.
-
-
Good as an intro, skip if you’re a wonk
- By Tony on 01-29-20
By: Ezra Klein
-
Determined
- A Science of Life Without Free Will
- By: Robert M. Sapolsky
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Robert Sapolsky’s Behave, his now classic account of why humans do good and why they do bad, pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: We may not grasp the precise marriage of nature and nurture that creates the physics and chemistry at the base of human behavior, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Now, in Determined, Sapolsky takes his argument all the way, mounting a brilliant (and in his inimitable way, delightful) full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there is some separate self telling our biology what to do.
-
-
Abridged - no Appendix!
- By Amazon Customer on 11-02-23
-
Evicted
- Poverty and Profit in the American City
- By: Matthew Desmond
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Evicted, Princeton sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they each struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Hailed as “wrenching and revelatory” (The Nation), “vivid and unsettling” (New York Review of Books), Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of twenty-first-century America’s most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible.
-
-
Former Property Manager
- By Charla on 05-18-16
By: Matthew Desmond
-
Recoding America
- Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better
- By: Jennifer Pahlka
- Narrated by: Jennifer Pahlka
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A bold call to reexamine how our government operates—and sometimes fails to—from President Obama’s former deputy chief technology officer and the founder of Code for America.
-
-
Very good, minimally partisan.
- By 95Rb35 on 11-25-23
By: Jennifer Pahlka
-
What's Our Problem?
- A Self-Help Book for Societies
- By: Tim Urban
- Narrated by: Tim Urban
- Length: 13 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the creator of the wildly popular blog Wait but Why, a fun and fascinating deep dive into what the hell is going on in our strange, unprecedented modern times.
-
-
Good for a while but then goes hard off the rails
- By g27c on 04-20-23
By: Tim Urban
-
It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism
- By: Senator Bernie Sanders, John Nichols
- Narrated by: Senator Bernie Sanders
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s OK to be angry about capitalism. Reflecting on our turbulent times, Senator Bernie Sanders takes on the billionaire class and speaks blunt truths about our country’s failure to address the destructive nature of a system that is fueled by uncontrolled greed and rigidly committed to prioritizing corporate profits over the needs of ordinary Americans.
-
-
A true and unbiased understanding of politics today
- By Sassy monster on 02-21-23
By: Senator Bernie Sanders, and others
-
The War on Normal People
- By: Andrew Yang
- Narrated by: Andrew Yang
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The shift toward automation is about to create a tsunami of unemployment. Not in the distant future - now. One recent estimate predicts 13 million American workers will lose their jobs within the next seven years - jobs that won't be replaced. In a future marked by restlessness and chronic unemployment, what will happen to American society? In The War on Normal People, Andrew Yang paints a dire portrait of the American economy. Rapidly advancing technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation software are making millions of Americans' livelihoods irrelevant.
-
-
I Would Vote For Him
- By Tommie Sexton on 07-09-18
By: Andrew Yang
-
Black Skin, White Masks
- By: Frantz Fanon, Richard Philcox - translator
- Narrated by: Terrence Kidd
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Few modern voices have had as profound an impact on the black identity and critical race theory as Frantz Fanon, and Black Skin, White Masks represents some of his most important work. Fanon's masterwork is now available in a new translation that updates its language for a new generation of listeners. A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the world, Black Skin, White Masks is the unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world.
-
-
thinking for a better world
- By Anonymous User on 02-17-25
By: Frantz Fanon, and others
-
Why Nations Fail
- The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
- By: Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 17 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine?
-
-
Pros and Cons of "Why Nations Fail"
- By Joshua Kim on 05-01-12
By: Daron Acemoglu, and others
-
The Injustice of Place
- Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America
- By: Kathryn J. Edin, H. Luke Shaefer, Timothy J. Nelson
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Three of the nation’s top scholars – known for tackling key mysteries about poverty in America – turn their attention from the country’s poorest people to its poorest places. Based on a fresh, data-driven approach, they discover that America’s most disadvantaged communities are not the big cities that get the most notice. Instead, nearly all are rural. Little if any attention has been paid to these places or to the people who make their lives there.
By: Kathryn J. Edin, and others
-
Good Economics for Hard Times
- Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems
- By: Abhijit V. Banerjee, Esther Duflo
- Narrated by: James Lurie
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this revolutionary book, renowned MIT economists Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo take on this challenge, building on cutting-edge research in economics explained with lucidity and grace. Original, provocative, and urgent, Good Economics for Hard Times makes a persuasive case for an intelligent interventionism and a society built on compassion and respect. It is an extraordinary achievement, one that shines a light to help us appreciate and understand our precariously balanced world.
-
-
audio is not The best format for a book like this
- By CB on 12-08-19
By: Abhijit V. Banerjee, and others
-
Forward
- Notes on the Future of Our Democracy
- By: Andrew Yang
- Narrated by: Andrew Yang
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Despite being written off by the media, Andrew Yang’s shoestring 2020 presidential campaign—powered by his proposal for a universal basic income of $1,000 a month for all Americans—jolted the political establishment, growing into a massive, diverse movement. Now, in Forward, Yang reveals that UBI and the threat of job automation are only the beginning, diagnosing how a series of cascading problems within our antiquated systems keeps us stuck in the past—imperiling our democracy at every level.
-
-
MAGA reviews Yang
- By S on 10-05-21
By: Andrew Yang
-
The World Until Yesterday
- What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?
- By: Jared Diamond
- Narrated by: Jay Snyder
- Length: 18 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Most of us take for granted the features of our modern society, from air travel and telecommunications to literacy and obesity. Yet for nearly all of its six million years of existence, human society had none of these things. While the gulf that divides us from our primitive ancestors may seem unbridgeably wide, we can glimpse much of our former lifestyle in those largely traditional societies still or recently in existence.
-
-
A visit with our ancient ancestors
- By BRB on 01-30-13
By: Jared Diamond
-
Money
- The True Story of a Made-Up Thing
- By: Jacob Goldstein
- Narrated by: Jacob Goldstein
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The cohost of the popular NPR podcast Planet Money provides a well-researched, entertaining, somewhat irreverent look at how money is a made-up thing that has evolved over time to suit humanity's changing needs.
-
-
well researched and written but,
- By C&S on 09-29-20
By: Jacob Goldstein
-
A World of Three Zeros
- The New Economics of Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, and Zero Net Carbon Emissions
- By: Muhammad Yunus
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In A World of Three Zeros, Yunus describes the new civilization emerging from the economic experiments his work has helped to inspire. He explains how global companies like McCain, Renault, Essilor, and Danone got involved with this new economic model through their own social action groups, describes the ingenious new financial tools now funding social businesses, and sketches the legal and regulatory changes needed to jumpstart the next wave of socially driven innovations.
-
-
Amazing concept
- By A. C. on 11-02-17
By: Muhammad Yunus
-
Consequences of Capitalism
- Manufacturing Discontent and Resistance
- By: Noam Chomsky, Marv Waterstone
- Narrated by: Donald Corren
- Length: 14 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How do politics shape our world, our lives, and our perceptions? How much of “common sense” is actually driven by the ruling class’ needs and interests? And how are we to challenge the capitalist structures that now threaten all life on the planet? Consequences of Capitalism exposes the deep, often unseen, connections between neoliberal “common sense” and structural power. In making these linkages, we see how the current hegemony keeps social justice movements divided and marginalized. And, most importantly, we see how we can fight to overcome these divisions.
-
-
Everyone must read this book.
- By Lydia M. Prado on 02-03-21
By: Noam Chomsky, and others
Critic reviews
“Lowrey, a journalist who covers economic policy for The Atlantic, musters considerable research to make the case for a universal basic income - a government-funded cash handout for all.” (New York Times Book Review)
“Lowrey is a policy person. She is interested in working from the concept down.... Her conscientiously reported book assesses the widespread effects that money and a bit of hope could buy.” (The New Yorker)
“Annie Lowery has given basic income a wonderful upgrade…[bringing] first-hand accounts of struggling workers all over the world…. A must-read as basic income becomes a more mainstream idea.” (Forbes)
Editorial Review
Minimum income for all Universal Basic Income ("UBI") will probably be a hot topic in the next election cycle. Annie Lowrey’s audiobook—she’s a proponent of UBI, as the title implies—feels less like a political argument and more like a "what if" conversation with a well-informed friend. Lowrey surveys places where UBI is working or has been tried, and takes into account possible objections to a minimum income plan for the US She invites listeners to contemplate an "ethos" of UBI, a society that is inclusive, simple, and humane. How would $1,000 each month, no strings attached, change your life? —Christina H., Audible Editor
What listeners say about Give People Money
Highly rated for:
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Joel
- 12-19-18
Great ideas, good book, okay reading.
Author is obviously intelligent and the book is well-researched. She writes with passion on the subject but spends a great deal of time waxing poetic about the human stories. I get the relevance but she goes on. Her reading of the book reflects this. Her upward inflections and tired droning sometimes drag the material down. Contrast that with the actual philosophic parts of the book and she is excited and reading as much from her own personal philosophy as from the page.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Pablo Lema
- 10-23-18
Missed Opportunity
The author misses an opportunity for a substantive discussion of UBI, instead indulging in her own elaboration of Soacialism and a canned analysis of society at large.
I consider myself left of center and I do believe in social nets, but the author indulges in her own little view from the Ivory Tower without any substantive or technical discussion of UBI.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- NMwritergal
- 07-28-18
An intriguing idea
I first heard of the Universal Basic Income (UBI) about a year ago and wished there was a book that discussed it. And here it is. The studies the author cites are quite interesting, though they are generally not studies from Western countries. I did read about a study in Canada in another book. Oh, if only we could have such a thing. It seems unrealistic, but maybe one day. Talking about it, writing about it is the first step to getting the idea out there.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Patrick M.
- 06-09-19
Well written and orated.
I agree with the author and feel that it should be implemented. Of course it's not enough for the wealthy to rise above. They are not satisfied unless the other 98% are held back. They will fight this tooth and nail to maintain the status quo.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Bridget Hadley
- 06-17-19
Interesting
Overall, I enjoyed the book. However, I was hoping for more data on how UBI will change society.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Louis Ridgway
- 08-05-18
A pinch of Ethos, add Logos for flavor
The author does a superb job at voicing her written work, which itself is a great, and (imo) fair look at the concepts, arguments for and against, and real evidences related to UBI. My favorite thing about her wiring style inherent is the adept use of universal (worldwide) anecdote combined with simple, but not simplified, explanations of the research that currently exists. I would even like to pick up a physical copy for the bibliography section!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
7 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Philip Savva
- 04-27-20
Give People Money
Tip of the iceberg. I am so happy this knowledge came to me. The future is faster than you think, by Steve Kotler tells me the paradigm shift Lowrey explains beautifully is here. Human bodies across America are Owners, not renters. It is what it is.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Red Redington
- 01-25-22
Surprisingly not Communism.
What is work anyway? Take a chance on this book if you think there might be a better way to conduct out economy.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 08-01-18
Love it
This book will scared you open your eyes make you think and piss you off.
Good job This a great Book and an even better argument for UBI
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Carolyn H. Prentice
- 07-11-23
UBI
Idea has been discussed in a limited manner. This book explores the depth and possibilities of this proposal.
The author speaks with common sense offering such a simple solution and sharing trials around the globe that were successful.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!