03/29/2024

A Scratch Card in Every Pot

Stockton, California, announced last week that it will try out a new anti-poverty program that provides $500 per month for a small subset of eligible residents. Earlier this month, the province of Ontario mailed its first monthly checks to 400 lucky Canadians. Advocates for a “universal basic income” (UBI) call these programs “experiments,” or “pilots,” and they hope that positive results will build support for their proposals. But these governments are not testing a UBI; they are running a free lottery. No one should be impressed or persuaded if its winners prove to be fans.

The UBI is a difficult proposal to promote. In the United States, the idea is to give every American a monthly stipend sufficient to live on—perhaps $1,000 per month. This would cost trillions of dollars each year, necessitating unprecedented tax increases on not only the wealthy but also the middle class. The end result, relieving individuals of the obligation to support themselves or their families, runs afoul of millennia of accumulated wisdom about human nature, and is antithetical to core tenets of American culture. How to sell such a scheme?

With “evidence-based policymaking,” that’s how. UBI advocates are designing small-scale programs that would purportedly demonstrate the positive social effects of simply mailing people checks. Stockton’s initiative, for instance, is being bankrolled by a group called the “Economic Security Project,” to generate not only “critical data on the impact of cash,” but also to “tell the stories (good, bad, and everything in between) about the experience of individuals and communities when they receive a guaranteed income. As students of successful social change efforts throughout history, we know it’ll take both — the data and stories from those most affected — to move a guaranteed income forward.”

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