Pope Writes ‘This May Be the Time’ for Universal Basic Wage in Letter

The 🦠Coronavirus Outbreak continues to wreak havoc on the world economy and Pope Francis is proposing a solution.

The pope penned an Easter letter calling for a universal basic income for workers affected by the coronavirus including “street vendors, recyclers,
carnies, small farmers, construction workers, dressmakers, the different, kinds of caregivers.”

The pope addresses these groups directly, “You who are informal, working on your own or in the grassroots economy, you have no steady income to get you through this hard time…and the lockdowns are becoming unbearable,” the pope writes.

He explains why this time is especially critical and how a universal basic income would help alleviate the effects of the coronavirus.

“This may be the time to consider a universal basic wage which would acknowledge and dignify the noble, essential tasks you carry out,” the pope writes. “It would ensure and concretely achieve the ideal, at once so human and so Christian, of no worker without rights.”

The United States economy has been hit especially hard.

In the past three weeks, at least 16.8 million Americans have filed for unemployment, as IJR previously reported.

Experts continue to speculate when the economy will reopen and how fast it will bounce back when it does.