Is your job under threat from AI? Here’s what we know now
USA TODAY’s money reporter Rachel Barber looks at how AI is impacting the U.S. job market.
As Americans struggle with the high cost of living, old ideas are being given a new look.
In dozens of pilot programs across the country, policymakers and researchers are studying what would happen if Americans received regular, reliable cash payments without strings attached. This concept is sometimes referred to as universal basic income (UBI) or guaranteed income. It’s been around for a while, but has benefited from notable proponents and recent real-world testing. And as the affordability crisis drags on and AI penetrates the job market, it is likely to grow in popularity.
Michael Tubbs, who was mayor of Stockton, California, a city with a predominantly low-income population from 2017 to 2021, said in an interview with USA TODAY that he decided to create a UBI program in Stockton because he recognized that “much of the government’s job was to solve problems caused by poverty. But we are not doing enough to solve poverty itself.”
Tubbs and his administration were inspired by the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who began advocating for such policies in 1967. “If poverty is first eradicated,” Dr. King wrote, “we will find that the problems of housing and education are themselves affected, not preceded by the eradication of poverty.”
“I thought Stockton had to be ground zero for the solution,” Tubbs said. The city has a high poverty rate, a diverse population, and received national attention several years ago when it filed for municipal bankruptcy.
“It’s also personal to me because I grew up in poverty, with a mother who worked incredibly hard and still had to figure out how to pay the bills every month,” he said. “We felt that the way to honor that experience was to say, how can we make sure that no other mother, father, or child ever experiences that kind of poverty again?”
Stockton’s program provided 125 residents with $500 monthly cash payments from February 2019 to January 2021. Recipients had to live in an area with a median household income of $46,033 or less in the city, and could use the money for anything they needed.
The researchers compared the participants’ lives to the lives of 200 other city residents who were not receiving payments. The researchers found that participants had “lower income volatility, lower psychological distress, improved energy and physical function, greater independence in exploring new opportunities related to employment and caregiving, and a better ability to weather the economic upheaval associated with the pandemic.”
Thomas Vargas was born and raised in Stockton and currently resides there with his wife and two children. When the couple heard about the program on the evening news, they laughed. Even after being selected to participate, Vargas was so wary of the idea of continued income that she saved the check as a windfall.
But once he and his family felt good about the extra income, Vargas told USA TODAY it gave him confidence. He was working part-time in a warehouse and wanted to look for work elsewhere, but was reluctant to take time away from his job. He is now in the nonprofit sector and his wife has also returned to work.
“It really gave me financial stability and strengthened my control over my finances,” he said. Even better, these life changes improved his marital and family relationships. “My mindset as a father and husband has changed and I’ve become more involved with my family.”
Will universal basic income work?
Leah Hamilton, principal investigator at Appalachian State University’s Family Economic Policy Lab, said UBI proponents often feel pressured to show that a UBI provides quick and quantifiable results, such as seeing participants “immediately return to school or start businesses.”
Hamilton said that happens from time to time, but often the results aren’t that dramatic. Extensive research has shown that it takes literally decades of “nothing goes wrong” to get out of poverty, she explained. “These small emergencies can really break your heart. If your car needs major repairs and you can’t fix it, you lose your job. And if you lose your job, you lose your home.”
Being able to rely on a basic income not only provides opportunity but also stability for people teetering on the brink of poverty, Hamilton said. “I have people who say they can’t imagine what my life would be like now without this. It helps them overcome small challenges.”
Many UBI supporters believe that the government stimulus checks issued during the coronavirus pandemic to cushion the immediate unemployment shock for millions of Americans are proof of concept for the idea.
Scott Santens, founder and CEO of the Income to Support All (ITSA) Foundation, said that while there was some debate about the details of such a program, “it was like a complete agreement to get cash to people.” Many advocates say the lockdown was a reminder that difficult times can happen to anyone, and that tailored income protection programs can help address such situations.
Santens also likes to point to a completely different program, casino revenue distributed to members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee in North Carolina, as another example of effectiveness.
Starting in 1997, tribal-operated casinos began distributing payments of about $4,000 per person to members twice a year. Hundreds of tribal children have already been enrolled in a long-term study sponsored by Duke University that compared the mental health of rural white youth with that of Native American children. Income distributed to Indigenous children rather than white children provided an organic experiment in how universal basic income would affect health and other outcomes.
Studies have shown that children whose families received casino payments attended more school, completed more years of education, and had better interactions with their parents. Crime among both teens and adults is also reported to have decreased.
“I think the many positive impacts[of casino dividends]say a lot not only about UBI, but how important it is to start early, because studies have shown that children who started receiving it at birth had a greater impact than children who started receiving it at age eight, for example,” Santens said.
What does the future hold for universal basic income?
Santens believes that the very real possibility of huge job losses across the economy due to the advent of AI and the automation of many jobs traditionally performed by humans is a strong case for widespread support for guaranteed income. Entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who ran for president in 2020, advocated a form of UBI in his campaign. More recently, tech giants like OpenAI’s Sam Altman have started supporting the idea.
Hamilton said UBI proponents are currently considering whether some kind of program could replace some of the existing welfare safety net. But the implementation debate is more substantive. “Can we create a system in the world’s richest country that ensures that millions of people are not left behind by these economic changes?” she said.
