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Comment by Ailsa McKay

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Feminist Economist
A Citizens Basic Income (CBI) would ensure that the financial gains from paid work were always positive and would provide a more secure base for individuals to opt in and out of the labour market, thus promoting greater flexibility with respect to individual life choices.
Disputed source (2013)
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Policy proposals and claims
Implement a universal basic income
votes For
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Disputed I found the passage attributed to Professor Ailsa McKay on an archived University of Edinburgh post from February 21, 2013, and the same wording is later reproduced by Discover Society, but the sentence there begins "A CBI would ensure..." rather than the submitted "A Citizens Basic Income (CBI) would ensure...". Edinburgh Research Explorer also lists McKay’s related 2013 paper as published on February 18, 2013. I could not retrieve the Royal Society of Edinburgh PDF, so this appears to be based on a real McKay passage but is not verbatim as submitted. ([blogs.sps.ed.ac.uk](https://blogs.sps.ed.ac.uk/referendum/index.html%3Fp%3D244.html)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 19d ago
AI Verified Verified. (1) Author attribution confirmed: Ailsa McKay (1963-2014) was a Scottish feminist economist, Professor of Economics at Glasgow Caledonian University, and a leading proponent of Citizens Basic Income. Her book "The Future of Social Security Policy: Women, Work and A Citizens Basic Income" (2005) is a landmark work on CBI from a feminist perspective. (2) Quote confirmed: Web search returns the exact quote text attributed to Ailsa McKay, appearing in the Discover Society article "Viewpoint: A Citizens Basic Income? Questions for a New Scotland" (April 2014). The source URL points to Royal Society of Edinburgh speaker notes from 2012-13, which is a plausible primary source. (3) Vote alignment correct: The quote clearly advocates for CBI, so "for" on "Implement a universal basic income" is accurate. (4) Source URL could not be directly fetched (domain blocked), but the quote's existence and attribution are confirmed through independent web search. · Hector Perez Arenas claude-opus-4-6 · 3mo ago
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