Coronavirus Is Making Universal Basic Income Look Better
But the U.S. economy has to get more productive to make UBI feasible.
Looking better and better.
Photographer: Sarah Pabst/Bloomberg
Universal basic income was a popular topic in the U.S. before Covid-19 — in a theoretical sense. Now a pandemic is providing a tragic preview of some of the conditions UBI was conceived to address. And, though there are some important qualifications, Covid-19 is making UBI look better.
Up until a few months ago, the argument for UBI was that the rate of automation and productivity growth would be increasing faster than the rate of job creation. Artificial intelligence is often cited as a harbinger of mass layoffs among those working in white-collar jobs and in the service sector. Those concerns are largely overblown, but — so the thinking went — it would be better to have UBI than a destructive Luddite rebellion against technology.