Pope Francis has endorsed a universal basic income
The idea even got an unqualified plug from Pope Francis himself. In the recently published Let Us Dream, the pope endorsed an “unconditional lump-sum payment to all citizens” in the context of his regular calls for an economically and environmentally more equitable post-Covid world.
Francis’s version of U.B.I. suggests that it be paid for through taxation. But there are other ideas about how to fund U.B.I. in circulation.
But even as U.B.I. proposals gain traction, many Britons—watching Covid-19 mitigation costs escalate—are becoming anxious about the national debt, despite rarely understanding what it really represents. Reeling from years of Tory austerity policies that followed the banking crash of 2008, many worry massive tax increases will be levied to pay for new spending in response to the pandemic....