Basic Income, Practical Not Partisan.

Universal Basic Income, Guaranteed Minimum Income, Social Security For All, whatever you want to call it, basic income programs have been demonized as a leftist socialist fantasy that would make people become lazy and drain the government dry.

Yet basic income programs have been proven to be not only successful but also to produce better results and be more efficient than other federal aid programs.

In 1968, over 1,200 economists wrote a letter to Congress arguing that all Americans have access to a guaranteed income. Around the same time, famed economist Milton Friedman released a plan for what he called a Negative Income Tax.

This plan was simultaneously so simple and powerful that President Richard Nixon was eager to replace all of America’s welfare programs with a negative income tax program which he called the Family Assistance Plan in 1969. That plan would have given low-income Americans up to $1600 for a family of four, which is almost $14,000 today.

Unthinkable by today’s rhetoric, Nixon introduced this plan not just because it was a better overall plan than existing programs but because he wanted an aid program that conservatives would be more likely to accept compared to traditional welfare.

Why did the Family Assistance Plan end up defeated, and why do Americans think of basic income programs as some form of unrealistic evil socialism today?

Politics, misinformation, and special interests. The same reasons that every other good program goes nowhere.

Social safety nets are important. Besides being morally just, they also benefit society. When proper programs are in place, crime, poverty, hunger, and reliance on the government decrease while education, job skills, health, and self-reliance improve.

When you realize what a good program can do, it is easy to see that what America is currently doing simply isn’t working: 

• Almost 38 million Americans live in poverty. 

• 41 million Americans receive government food assistance. 

• No state has a minimum wage that is a living wage.

• The middle class has eroded away as income inequality has skyrocketed.

Our nation fears significant, meaningful change. Washington views major policy overhauls as taking too long, involving too much partisan obstruction, and simply being too much work. Instead, small patchwork solutions are rushed through long after they are needed and then quickly abandoned, losing their effectiveness over time.

America is taking an approach that is like trying to patch up a crumbling dam. Every time a patch is put in place, two more holes open up. So much time is spent patching these new holes that the original fixes fall apart and begin leaking again. At the end of the day, it would have been cheaper, faster, and more effective to have committed to rebuilding the dam the right way in the first place.

We must do that now: look at what works, how to achieve it, and then implement it. That starts with removing the partisan lens and seeing a program for what it is, not for who supports it.

A negative income tax simply means that above a certain income threshold you pay taxes, below a certain threshold you get paid by the government. Typically both are progressive. Just as you get into higher tax brackets, the more you make, you also get more from the government the less you make. And that is what makes a negative income tax a basic income program.

Even that makes it sound more complicated than it is, so let’s look at an actual proposal.

• Every Adult American citizen is guaranteed an income of at least $12,000 per year.

• For every $2 earned, you lose $1 of benefit.

• This means someone who has 0 income will receive $12,000 from the government. Someone who made $12,000 will still receive $6,000 from the government. And someone who earned $24,000 will receive $0 from the government.

• The $12,000 benefit would automatically adjust with inflation to make sure that the program stays effective for decades to come

That’s it. That’s the program. 

Here’s the best part. Right now, the US government spends $522 billion per year on aid programs, excluding healthcare and Social Security. Using the $12,000 guaranteed minimum income program to replace all of those aid programs would cost ~$380 billion. It would cost our nation far less to guarantee a basic income than to have a dozen different complex aid programs. 

What about the effectiveness of a guaranteed minimum income?

While the program didn’t become law back in 1969, Congress did fund trial runs in different areas across the country. The results were everything you could hope for. There are currently over 100 different basic income programs enacted or being tested across the US today. Again, the results are amazing and consistent.

• Improve children’s lives

• Improve parenting ability

• Improve food and housing security

• Reduce poverty

• Increase education

• Improve employment

• Increase wages

• Improve health and medical care

Nothing achieves the level of results that basic income programs do, and no other program is as simple and efficient.

Instead of fighting about culture wars, complaining about problems we never fix, and being afraid of tackling meaningful change, let’s do something substantial.

Let’s end hunger, reduce poverty, improve lives, and save money all at the same time. Let’s show the world that America is still capable of being an innovator and a leader.