The other day, I cam across this article on guaranteed income. It’s an idea that has been around for awhile and it’s starting to gain traction. The article is a look at near-poverty in America and one possible way to address the issue. It raises some interesting questions around the role of government, work, human dignity, and caring for each other. Some of these questions I’ve hit upon in previous entries, some I have not.
One of the things that I find so interesting about
guaranteed income programs is the strong opposition coming from
Republicans. Republican objection stems
from the notion that people will automatically quit their jobs if the
government is going to pay them instead.
There is this idea that $500 or $1000 a month would cause large swaths
of the American workforce to simply quit and then sit around all day being
unproductive. And so Republicans insist
on stringent work requirements in areas where they can’t kill the program
outright. The fact that Republicans
think their fellow human beings are lazy as a default setting is offensive and
patently absurd.
It is true that there are some who would do exactly as
Republicans fear. They would take the
free government money and do nothing.
But, that number would be a fairly small portion of the employable
population. The irony here is that
removing those individuals from the workforce might actually boost overall
productivity within the workforce. There
are any number of studies out there that show the bottom performing workers
drag down the performance of the entire team.
Might it be worth it to pay them to stay at home doing nothing?
The reality is most Americans use the funds to improve
themselves and become even more productive members of the American
economy. As the article notes, a review
of the Cambridge, MA program saw markedly better entry into full-time work for
people in the program vs those who weren’t (40% vs 28%). St Paul, MN saw its pilot program raise
employment from 49% to over 60% in just 18 months. There’s also the story of Taniquewa Brewster
in Austin who used her 12 months on the guaranteed income program to become a
notary and real-estate leasing agent – jobs that allowed the contract laborer
to no longer need the $1000/month stipend.
I love the quote from Tarren Bragdon, CEO of a conservative
think tank, critiquing guaranteed income.
“Policymakers should look for ways to expand opportunities for people to
find meaningful work, not create more reliance on government budgets.” That quote, for me, just underlines how far
conservative groups have buried their head in the sand when it comes to the
realities of work in America.
Too many Americans live in circumstances that do not allow
them to live life to its fullest. Many
of them fall into the ALICE gap. ALICE
(Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) covers a large portion of the
population. As the acronym suggests,
these are folks actively engaged in the workforce who still find it difficult
to afford the cost of living in their community. According to UnitedforALICE, 42% of American
households live below the ALICE threshold.
In other words, 42% of American households do not earn enough to afford
the basics of daily living. Their data
shows 13% of American households earning below the Federal Poverty Level and
another 29% in the ALICE gap (above the FPL, but still not enough to afford the
basics). I find it somewhat staggering
that our leaders tout how great this country is and how great our economy is
and ignore the reality that 4/10 American families don’t have enough money to
afford basic necessities.
This is where programs like guaranteed income come into
play. They aren’t necessarily meant to
be a permanent thing, although in some cases that will be the result. People on a guaranteed income program often
improve their circumstances to the point where the assistance is no longer
needed. As I mentioned above, there will
be those who take the money and sit at home, but maybe forcing them into the
workforce would actually weaken production.
Might it be better just to pay them to stay home?
Imagine if more cities and states introduced guaranteed
income programs aimed at the ALICE population.
Given the wide disparity in the minimum income necessary to survive,
these programs would be best administered at state or even county levels, but
there could be federal support in the form of block grants. Imagine what our economy would look like if
we went from 58% of households able to afford daily living expenses to 68% or
even 78%. How many more families would
be taking vacations or buying non-essential items? Sounds a lot like healthy economic growth to
me.
