As Americans struggle with the high cost of living, an old idea is getting a fresh look.
In dozens of pilot programs around the country, policymakers and researchers are exploring what happens when Americans receive regular, dependable cash payments with no strings attached. The concept is often called universal basic income (UBI), and sometimes guaranteed income. It’s been around for a while, but has benefitted from some high-profile advocates and recent real-life tests. And as the affordability crisis drags on and AI penetrates the job market, it may gain in popularity.
Michael Tubbs, mayor of the mostly low-income city of Stockton, California from 2017 to 2021, decided to create a UBI program there after realizing that “so much of the job of government was solving for the problems caused by poverty. But we weren’t doing enough to solve for poverty itself,” he said in an interview with USA TODAY.
Tubbs and his administration were inspired by research by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who began to advocate for such a policy in 1967. “We are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished,” King wrote…