Yanis Varoufakis

“Our societies must embrace the rise of machines, but ensure that they contribute to shared prosperity by granting every citizen property rights over them, yielding a [Universal Basic Dividend]”

Yanis Varoufakis is a Greek economist and politician, formerly serving as Greece’s Minister of Finance. Since 2018, he has been Secretary-General of DiEM25 (Democracy in Europe Movement 2025), a left-wing pan-European political party he co-founded in 2016. Previously, he was an elected member of the SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left – Progressive Alliance) political party in Greece and later of MeRA25 (European Realistic Disobedience Front).

Yanis has been a vocal advocate for universal basic income/dividends and solutions to address inequality, housing, job automation, and modern technofeudalism.

Watch his interview with Big Think on UBI and read his article ‘The Universal Right to Capital Income’.