How Scott Santens Proposes Paying for Universal Basic Income

Scott Santens treats funding as a design question rather than an objection, and he has set out his answer in two main places: his book Let There Be Money, described on the site as being about UBI and how to pay for it, and his blog posts, including a recent piece arguing that a "Pigovian automation tax" could finance a 4-day, 32-hour workweek and universal healthcare. These are the author's own proposals and arguments, not enacted policy or costed legislation, so they should be read as a framework for debate rather than a fiscal plan you can check line by line.

What the site actually offers on funding

The homepage identifies Santens as an author and unconditional UBI specialist who has researched and advocated the idea since 2013. It points new readers to two starting points: the UBI FAQ and his evidence threads on Bluesky and X. The funding discussion is spread across those materials rather than collected in one calculator-style page.

The automation-tax argument in outline

The recent post starts from an economics paper about companies caught in an "automation arms race"—firms automating because competitors are, rather than because it clearly pays. Santens uses that framing to argue the productivity gains from AI can be redirected: tax the automation, and use the revenue for a shorter working week and universal healthcare.

The logic to evaluate is the "Pigovian" label itself. A Pigovian tax is meant to price a cost that the market otherwise ignores. So the proposal rests on a claim that automation imposes a social cost not captured in firms' decisions—displacement, concentration of gains, or the arms-race dynamic above. If you accept that premise, the tax has a rationale beyond raising money. If you don't, the same tax looks like a levy on investment, and the funding case weakens. That is the hinge to test when reading the full post.

How to use the site to judge the proposals

1. Start with the UBI FAQ, which the site recommends for newcomers and which addresses the questions asked most often, funding included.
2. Read the automation-tax post in full for the mechanism, then check whether it supplies a rate, a base, and a revenue estimate. The excerpt does not, so the article itself is where to look.
3. For the book-length treatment, Let There Be Money is available on Amazon or as a free listen on podcast platforms, according to the site.
4. Cross-check claims against the evidence threads Santens maintains on Bluesky and X, which the site presents as a starting point for UBI evidence.

A practical test when you reach the numbers: a funding proposal is assessable only when it states what is taxed, at what rate, on what base, and what revenue that yields against a defined benefit level. Where those four elements are absent, treat the argument as a direction of travel rather than a budget.

What to keep in mind

Santens writes as an advocate, and the site says so: he has lived on a basic income floor via Patreon since 2015, founded the Income To Support All (ITSA) Foundation, hosts The Basic Income Show, and sits on the board of the Gerald Huff Fund for Humanity. That background shapes the framing. The value of the site for a funding question is the argument and the linked evidence, not an independent costing—and the automation-tax piece is explicitly a proposal about how AI gains could be converted into shorter hours and healthcare, not a description of what any government has adopted.