“No other social or economic policy solution today would be of sufficient scale to eradicate the profound and systematic economic inequities affecting black communities.”

The latest backer of the “universal basic income” concept is the Black Lives Matter movement.

A strong endorsement is included in a wide-ranging policy platform released this week by more than 50 organizations affiliated with the movement, in a section about reparations for “past and continuing harms.”

“No other social or economic policy solution today would be of sufficient scale to eradicate the profound and systematic economic inequities affecting black communities,” the platform states.

The groups endorse a basic income for everyone, noting that patterns and norms of “work” (quotations are in the document) are changing.

The Movement for Black Lives points out, correctly, that people of color and other disadvantaged populations will “bear the brunt of whatever economic insecurity and volatility results” from a new economy powered by automation. This is already happening. Black people already work disproportionately in low-paid and minimum-wage fields like retail and service work, and these are some of the professions that are at greatest risk for automation.

The platform gets concrete about how to fund such a massive program for all Americans, suggesting tax increases on the wealthy, taxes on CO2 emissions or particular industries, and a program modeled on the Alaska Permanent Oil Fund, which distributes revenues from state-owned oil resources to all Alaska residents. And the extra funds that would go to black people as reparations could come from money saved by divesting from criminal justice institutions, another one of their suggestions.