I'm a writer at heart and now increasingly an activist spending as much time and resources I have working to spread awareness for the idea of a unconditional basic income (UBI) - one whose time has come here in the 21st century where technology is now forcing our hand . Without an income platform set just above the poverty level as a bare minimum, I believe poverty and inequality will continue to grow, the middle classes will continue to shrink, and the livelihoods of all but the top fifth of society will continue to slip away. But it doesn't have to be that way. We're better than that. We can turn all of this on its head, and instead of things continuing to get worse, we can make things better than they've ever been. We can reduce risk and so propel innovation and creativity to new heights. We can reduce fears of unemployment and purposely eliminate low-skill jobs better performed by machines, freeing us to intrinsically do all the work that drives us. We can stop wasting so many resources on fighting the fires of our lives, and instead prevent them from ever catching fire in the first place. We need only make the choice. The path is ours to take.