Knight, Peter T (2022) “Why We Are Moving Toward a Federal Universal Basic Income in the United States.” Paper prepared for the Basic Income Earth Network 2022 Congress held in Brisbane, Australia, 26-28 September 2022.
Polling data shows that public support for UBI has been increasing since 2011. This paper examines five factors that seem to be contributing to this rise in support: concern for technologically induced unemployment, Andrew Yang’s political campaigns, direct cash payments during the COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic itself, and a rapidly increasing number of guaranteed income pilot programs. No research directly links polling results to these factors – that depends on future polls testing these hypotheses.
