Martin Luther King Jr. was ahead of his time in pushing for universal basic income

[marmar]

Martin Luther King Jr. was ahead of his time in pushing for universal basic income
Published: January 13, 2026 10:02am EST

Tarah Williams
Assistant Professor of Political Science, Allegheny College
Andrew Bloeser
Associate Professor of Political Science; Director, Center for Political Participation, Allegheny College


(The Conversation) Each year on the holiday that bears his name, Martin Luther King Jr. is remembered for his immense contributions to the struggle for racial equality. What is less often remembered but equally important is that King saw the fight for racial equality as deeply intertwined with economic justice.

To address inequality – and out of growing concern for how automation might displace workers – King became an early advocate for universal basic income. Under universal basic income, the government provides direct cash payments to all citizens to help them afford life’s expenses.

In recent years, more than a dozen U.S. cities have run universal basic income programs, often smaller or pilot programs that have offered guaranteed basic incomes to select groups of needy residents. As political scientists, we have followed these experiments closely.

....(snip)....

King’s intuition was that white people with lower incomes would support this type of policy because they could also benefit from it. In 1967, King argued, “It seems to me that the Civil Rights Movement must now begin to organize for the guaranteed annual income … which I believe will go a long, long way toward dealing with the Negro’s economic problem and the economic problem with many other poor people confronting our nation.”

But there is one notable group that does not support universal basic income: those with higher levels of racial resentment. Racial resentment is a scale that social scientists have used to describe and measure anti-Black prejudice since the 1980s. ...............................(more)

https://theconversation.com/martin-luther-king-jr-was-ahead-of-his-time-in-pushing-for-universal-basic-income-272963