For more than two years, Andrew Yang traveled the country as a presidential candidate trying to convince voters that a crisis was coming. The economy was going to evolve, he warned, jobs would be automated away in droves and many Americans were going to find themselves at home without a paycheck.

“And now,” Mr. Yang observed from inside his family’s weekend home in upstate New York, “we’ve all been sent home at once.”

To be sure, fear of an impending global pandemic resulting from a novel coronavirus was not the reason Mr. Yang spent months insisting the federal government provide American adults with a universal basic income of $1,000 per month. But a global pandemic has arrived. And the fallout from the outbreak has plunged the country into a grim and uncertain reality.

So only now — with millions of Americans facing the prospect of no work and wondering how they will pay the bills — have proposals similar to Mr. Yang’s signature policy prescription gained wide, bipartisan approval. In the sort of political turnabout that may only be possible when society faces dire need, giving free money to Americans suddenly appears not only rational but critically necessary to many Democrats and key Republicans.

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