Universal Basic Income Is Not a Magic Bullet

On this week's episode of my podcast, I Have to Ask, I spoke to Annie Lowrey, a contributing editor at the Atlantic and the author of the new book Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World. It's about universal basic income--the idea that the government would give all its citizens checks every month. Versions of this proposal have caught on with people on the left as well as tech leaders in Silicon Valley and even some hardcore libertarians. Lowrey has written for many years now about economics, but Give People Money is both a reported work--she travels to Kenya, South Korea, and India to view their economic experiments--and a policy brief on what she believes can help alleviate some of the social and political discontent that has arisen from economic change and dislocation. Below is an edited excerpt from the show. In it, we discuss the benefits and drawbacks of UBI, whether or not we should be skeptical that so many Silicon Valley titans have embraced the idea, and how to make the safety net less vulnerable to political attacks.