How Universal Basic Income Will Save the Economy

Until recently, the idea lived on the political margins. Then the pandemic changed everything

 
HOW YOU FEEL about the idea of the government giving people free money depends a lot on where you sit on the political spectrum. For some, a universal basic income (UBI) is a sensible way to fight poverty and share prosperity while, for others, it’s an invitation to sloth and moral decay. But, until this year, it was mostly an idea that lived on the margins of the political mainstream, debated and discussed in academic circles and overlooked by almost everyone else. Then, as with so many other things, COVID-19 changed everything.

Now, in the span of just a few weeks, the idea of a UBI has moved to the front lines in the increasingly urgent effort to support economies that have been waylaid by the measures being taken to fight COVID-19. And, while it has traditionally been the exclusive territory of wonkish economists and progressive politicians, it is now supported—and in some cases championed—by high-profile conservatives who would have shunned it just a few months ago. In mid-March, Utah senator Mitt Romney publicly endorsed the concept, and a few days later, a version of it found its way into Donald Trump’s $2 trillion (US) economic stimulus package, which will provide each American adult with a $1,200 “recovery rebate.” In the United Kingdom, prime minister Boris Johnson indicated that he was willing to consider the idea, and on April 3, the editorial board of the Financial Times, one of the most unabashedly procapitalist publications in the world, wrote that “policies until recently considered eccentric, such as basic income and wealth taxes, will have to be in the mix.”

Here in Canada, it’s a former adviser to Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper who has most vocally (and effectively) made the case for a $2,000-per-month cash payment to all Canadians. “While it pains me as a conservative to suggest this,” Ken Boessenkool wrote in a Globe and Mail op-ed, “the government should consider adding another $27-billion dollar expenditure for a Crisis Basic Income as a supplement to what has been announced.” He’s not alone. On April 2, the Business Council of Alberta, an organization that was founded last year by heavyweights like former pipeline executive Hal Kvisle and TransAlta CEO Dawn Farrell, endorsed an even more generous temporary payment of $2,500 a month.

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Πηγή: thewalrus.ca