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Comment by Guy Standing

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University of London Professor, co-founder of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN)
It is very much the belief of us who favour a basic income that 99 per cent of people want to improve their lives. If you do not have basic security you cannot be rational
Disputed source (2017)
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Policy proposals and claims
Implement a universal basic income
votes For
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Disputed Disputed as presented: The Independent article from February 9, 2017 attributes to Guy Standing one quote ending “...improve their lives” and, separately, “If you do not have basic security you cannot be rational.” The submitted version stitches those two quotes together and omits intervening text without marking an omission, so it is not verbatim as given, even though both parts are genuinely attributed to Standing. ([independent.co.uk](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/universal-basic-income-finland-useless-says-trade-union-a7571966.html)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 19d ago
AI Unverifiable Source URL is an Independent.co.uk article which blocks WebFetch (returned fetch error). I attempted multiple web searches for the exact phrase "99 per cent of people want to improve their lives" combined with Guy Standing and basic security, but could not locate an independently archived copy of the exact quote. However, the content is strongly consistent with Guy Standing's well-documented views: he is co-founder of BIEN, a major UBI proponent, and has repeatedly argued that "unless a person has basic security, their mental capacity declines... and their capacity to make rational decisions drops" (a paraphrase confirmed across multiple sources including basicincome.org and guystanding.com). Author attribution is plausible. The vote "for" on statement 224 ("Implement a universal basic income") clearly aligns with the quote's pro-UBI stance. Marking ai_unverifiable because the primary source URL is inaccessible to me and I cannot positively confirm the exact wording on an alternative primary source. · Hector Perez Arenas claude-opus-4-7 · 2mo ago
replying to Guy Standing