A radical form of wealth distribution is gaining ground — here's where 5 major US politicians stand

Bernie Sanders Hillary Clinton

A radical form of wealth distribution that's been gaining popularity over the past couple years.

It's known as universal basic income, and it involves paying every citizen a standard amount of money just for being alive.

Advocates claim the system could help reduce poverty and stave off the threat of widespread unemployment due to job automation. Skeptics claim the idea would cause people to stop working, producing a lazy society that lacks community or drive.

Basic income is still a niche idea, but a handful of politicians have weighed in. Here's how the conversation is taking shape.

Hillary Clinton

Clinton has flip-flopped on basic income over the last year.

Last summer, in an interview with LinkedIn Executive Editor Daniel Roth, she criticized it as a form of "just giving up and saying, 'Okay, fine ... the rest of us who are producing income, we've got to ... distribute it and you don't really have to do anything anymore.'"

Following the release of her book "What Happened," however, Clinton told Vox that she'd considered a version of basic income for her presidential campaign. It was based on an Alaskan dividend fund that pays residents about $1,000 a year.

Ultimately, she scrapped the idea because it raised a host of questions that would be difficult to reconcile with other aspects of campaign.

Barack Obama

Last June, President Obama spoke with Bloomberg about the solutions America may need to consider if robots end up displacing huge swaths of the workforce.

"Because of automation, because of globalization, we're going to have to examine the social compact," Obama said. He hinted that basic income could be one possibility if enough people can't make a living on work alone.

Separating the rise of automation from the obligation to keep people healthy and financially stable would be a huge misstep, Obama said. "It's not an either-or situation. It's a both-and situation."

Joe Biden

The former vice president recently rejected basic income, recalling that his father taught him that a job is "about your dignity. It's about your self-respect. It's about your place in your community."

"The theory is that automation will result in so many lost jobs that the only plausible answer is some type of guaranteed government check with no strings attached," he wrote in a recent blog post. "I believe there is a better way forward. I believe we can – we must – build a future that puts work first."

See the rest of the story at Business Insider