This article is part of an FT series on the economic cures for the coronavirus crisis, in which leading commentators and policymakers give their advice on how to alleviate a devastating global slowdown.

The writer is a fellow in economics at Balliol College, Oxford university, and the author of ‘A World Without Work’

The coronavirus crisis is a disaster for many workers. In the UK, for instance, we often forget that prosperity does not rest on a handful of well-regarded business titans and big-named companies — many of whom are now visibly lobbying the government for financial support.

It also depends on the nearly 5m self-employed workers and 6m small businesses that live a comparably hidden economic life, out of public sight, and with little influence over policy. The pandemic provides a dramatic reminder of their contribution. And it is they who are most threatened today.

But our traditional policy instruments cannot reach them. Changes in interest rates do not help self-employed workers who face disappearing incomes and no sick pay.

Financial stability packages do not bail out the vast number of restaurants, theatres, cafés, pubs and shops that will continue to see footfall collapse in the days to come. Big infrastructure investments do not support those small businesses — 99 per cent of all companies in the UK — whose pockets are not deep enough to survive the disruption of the coming months.

The time has come, then, for something completely different — a Universal Basic Income. A cash payment made to everyone, with no strings attached, can support these people and their families. Providing everyone in the UK with £1,000 per month would give a direct and instantaneous burst of financial relief to the millions who find themselves unable to make basic ends meet.

I approach the notion of a UBI from a position of scepticism. In recent years, the popularity of such a scheme has surged. Many have seen it as a necessary response to the threat of automation, a way to support displaced workers who might find themselves without a job, and an income, in the future.

But in my own work looking at the impact of technology on the labour market, I have tended to view it as an imperfect response to a challenge that we do not yet face. For now the problem is not a world without enough jobs, but one in which people lack the skills needed for the jobs that have to be done.

The arrival of coronavirus has changed my attitude. Robots may not have taken all the jobs just yet, but the pandemic is decimating the demand that those jobs rely upon. Andrew Yang, the Democratic US presidential candidate, who built his campaign upon the promise of a UBI, put it well on Twitter: “I should have been talking about a pandemic instead of automation.”

A UBI could be affordable. For instance, handing out £1,000 cash per person per month would cost the government about £66bn a month — a fraction of the nearly £500bn bailout the UK needed to stay afloat during the 2008 financial crisis. It would only be a temporary measure.

The government says the UK will see half of all coronavirus cases in a three to four-week period either side of the peak in infections; 95 per cent of cases over a nine to 10-week period. We can still hope this will be a short-term crisis, requiring only temporary, albeit extraordinary, measures.

It also would be politically feasible, and not just in the UK. A UBI is emerging as one of those rare policy proposals that makes the political spectrum bend back on itself, with people on opposite ends meeting in violent agreement.

Jason Furman, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under president Barack Obama, noted: “Congress should send you $1,000 — and another $500 for each of your children — as soon as possible”. And Steven Mnuchin, the US Treasury secretary, is now “looking at sending cheques to Americans immediately”.

While a UBI like this might sound a little basic, its simplicity is its strength. There is no need for complicated means-testing and monitoring, no requirement for clunky bureaucracy and administration. In Britain, everyone gets £1,000 — as simple as that. As a result, we can do this quickly; if the peak of the crisis is to come in weeks, that is a virtue not to be underestimated.

In 1942, amid the devastation of the second world war, William Beveridge published Social Insurance and Allied Service, transforming ordinary peoples’ lives at a time of great crisis by leading to the creation of the National Health Service and the expansion of National Insurance.

“A revolutionary moment in the world’s history”, he writes in the opening pages, “is a time for revolutions, not for patching”.

Our crisis is different. But like Beveridge, we must respond to it with imagination and open-mindedness. Tinkering and tweaking existing interventions is not enough. We must be far bolder.

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