In Switzerland, activists have delivered enough signatures to the government to trigger a public referendum on an audacious proposal: The government would provide a monthly income to every citizen, no strings attached. As Annie Lowrey wrote in “Switzerland’s Proposal to Pay People for Being Alive” for The New York Times Magazine:
“Every month, every Swiss person would receive a check from the government, no matter how rich or poor, how hardworking or lazy, how old or young. Poverty would disappear. Economists, needless to say, are sharply divided on what would reappear in its place – and whether such a basic-income scheme might have some appeal for other, less socialist countries too.”
Other, less socialist countries – including the United States. She writes: “Certain wonks on the libertarian right and liberal left have come to a strange convergence around the idea – some prefer an unconditional ‘basic’ income that would go out to everyone, no strings attached; others a means-tested ‘minimum’ income to supplement the earnings of the poor up to a given level.”
It’s a system that some argue would work better and be more fair than the current “patchwork of benefits,” while streamlining government. “Hello, basic income; goodbye, HUD.”
Thus, the argument for this most liberal-sounding of solutions from Charles Murray of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, who “suggested guaranteeing $10,000 a year to anyone meeting the following conditions: Be American, be over 21, stay out of jail and – as he once quipped – ‘have a pulse.’ ”
Not that $10,000 a year would be enough for most families to live on, and that’s intentional: Most proposed “basic income” or “guaranteed income” programs are designed to supplement, not replace, a paycheck. When Canada tried offering a “Mincome” to anyone living below the poverty line in Dauphin, Manitoba, for four years in the 1970s, only two segments of Dauphin’s labor force worked less as a result of Mincome – new mothers and teenagers. Mothers wanted to stay at home longer with their babies. And teenagers worked less because they weren’t under as much pressure to support their families. According to The Dominion, the end result was that they spent more time at school and more teenagers graduated.
After reading Lowrey’s excellent analysis of the economic pros and cons to the various guaranteed income ideas, I set aside my own gut reaction – which involved the words “crazy” and “communist” and was scarcely a reasoned approach – to contemplate what a guaranteed income could mean for parents and for families.
Those new mothers who worked less in Manitoba didn’t have to worry as much about whether their employers offered paid family leave, or even whether their job would be waiting for them. Single parents would have a better cushion against a sudden job loss. In families with two parents, both might be able to be more flexible about work hours and sick days even without paid leave or employer-approved flexibility. Day care might become affordable, preschool an option.
But as I considered the ways our “choices” might look different, I began to imagine employers and politicians pointing to that minimum income to defend the choices they were making. Replacing paid family leave and sick days with a minimum income plan lets employers off the hook for policies that would most likely continue to disproportionately affect women in and out of the workplace.
If that minimum income could pay for preschool or day care, why consider expanding the reach of existing programs? Parents weighing using their minimum income for five years of day care so that they could go to work to earn money for better food and shelter, or applying it straight to the bare minimum for each, might question how much of a choice they were really being offered.
I was intrigued, and somewhat seduced, by my hour or so of contemplating the United States with an almost unimaginable guaranteed income program. (To truly consider it would be the work of a book, not a blog post).
Ultimately, I felt that the basic income scheme offered a distraction rather than a solution.
Contact KJ Dell-Antonia at:
kj.dellantonia@nytimes.com
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