A/HRC/35/26 generated by the underlying intellectual property. 35 And a book by the former President of the Service Employees International Union, Andy Stern, also calls for a universal basic income to address a new economy characterized by high unemployment, stagnant wages, declining trade union power, and decreasing job security. 36 28. Van Parijs and Vanderborght acknowledge, however, that while Green parties in Europe and the United States are generally supportive of basic income, the concept does not draw strong support from socialist, Christian Democrat or liberal parties. 37 29. Perhaps the principal promoter of the concept has been the Basic Income Earth Network. This organization was founded in 1986 by researchers and trade unionists linked to the Catholic University of Louvain, in Belgium. It was originally the Basic Income European Network, but changed its name in 2004. It consists predominantly of scholars based in Europe and the United States. 30. Strong support has also come from technology entrepreneurs. According to media reports, the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, the web guru Tim O’Reilly, and “a cadre of other Silicon Valley denizens have expressed support for” basic income, calling it the “social vaccine of the twenty-first century”.38 Sam Altman, the president of Y Combinator, the largest start-up “accelerator” in Silicon Valley, is funding a basic income pilot scheme in Oakland, California.39 He believes that “people should be as free as possible to get ‘as rich as they … want’, so long as the people at the very bottom still have all their basic needs met”.40 GiveDirectly, funded in part by Google, also seeks to finance basic income experiments in East Africa.41 Comments made by many of these entrepreneurs suggest that basic income is seen as a way to sustain and legitimize a world in which employment opportunities will be drastically reduced and to reinforce consumer demand which would be greatly weakened without a broad-based minimum redistribution of income. D. Forms of basic income 31. While the present report has thus far addressed a more or less generic approach to basic income, the reality is that there are a great many variations on the theme and that trying to distinguish them from one another, and then from other social protection schemes, is a major challenge. Following the analysis of David Piachaud, it is helpful to divide the various proposals into four different types:42 (a) A bonus basic income is akin to a royalty scheme in which resource-based dividends are distributed directly to citizens annually. Funding comes directly from an external source, such as mineral royalties. Thus, the Alaska Permanent Fund annually distributes dividends from investment earning on mineral royalties to people who have lived in Alaska for at least a year and intend to remain there indefinitely. 43 Some commentators consider this to be a poor example of basic income, because it is 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 10 Robert Reich, “Why we’ll need a universal basic income,” 29 September 2016. Available from http://robertreich.org/post/151111696805. Stern, Raising the Floor. Van Parijs and Vanderborght, Basic Income, pp. 193-203. Jathan Sadowski, “Why Silicon Valley is embracing universal basic income,” The Guardian. Available from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/22/silicon-valley-universal-basicincome-y-combinator. Julie Carrie Wong, “‘Fund it, not run it’: big tech’s universal basic income project has its sceptics”, The Guardian. Available from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/20/y-combinatoroakland-universal-basic-income-pilot-project. Chris Weller, “The inside story of one man’s mission to give Americans unconditional free money”, Business Insider, 27 June 2016. Available from www.businessinsider.com/inside-y-combinatorsbasic-income-project-2016-6. “Launch a basic income” (GiveDirectly), available from www.givedirectly.org/basic-income. Piachaud, “Citizen’s income: rights and wrongs”, pp. 1-4. In 2016, the dividend was $1,022. Alaska Department of Revenue, Permanent Fund Dividend Division, Summary of Dividend Applications and Payments. See http://pfd.alaska.gov/DivisionInfo/Summary-of-Applications-and-Payments.