By Ibrahima Dramé

In recent years, Universal Basic Income (UBI) has gained the spotlight in public discourse and, with new trial runs planned in at least 11 major American cities for 2021, it is very likely that it will stay on the policy making agenda for years to come. The idea of course is not new, as it traces its intellectual lineage from the work of Thomas Paine and was advocated a century later by America’s Gilded Age economist and social reformer, Henry George who called it the citizen dividend.