In his 1967 book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, Martin Luther King, Jr. laid out a vision of a country where poverty was abolished—not incrementally, but with sweeping finality. Guaranteeing jobs wouldn’t be enough, he argued: The government would have to guarantee an annual income.
More than 50 years later, the concept of a universal basic income has grown as closely associated with job-killing robots as civil rights. But the need to explore regular, unconditional cash payments as a means of achieving racial and economic justice is more urgent than ever, says Mayor Michael Tubbs, who is leading one of the first major U.S. basic income experiments in his hometown of Stockton, California. Since February 2019, Tubbs has been working with researchers to disburse $500 a month to 125 residents.
