Universal Basic Income: A Cure for Racism?
6/1/20
Can there be any doubt that America is stricken with a structural problem stemming from our original sin of racism? How many wakeup calls do we need? The killing of George Floyd was anything but unprecedented. It happened before, and no doubt, it’ll happen again — regretfully. The mass protests that have come in the aftermath, however, are a testament to a growing impatience with the status quo. Some concrete action needs to be taken to have any chance of turning a corner. It’s not sufficient to decry racism. America needs to put its money where its mouth is.
I was surprised and encouraged when I heard on an NPR interview that David Brooks (@DavidBrooks) had changed is views and now endorses reparations. I tend to think that this individual change of heart likely represents a broader shift of public opinion. Still, as justified as reparations may be, the prospect of enacting legislation referencing reparations seems to be slim to none. That said, a real, meaningful solution may be closer at hand, in that reasonable policies are currently in the public discourse.
Arguably, the most pernicious consequence of racism is that it has relegated black and brown people in our country to reduced opportunities and, as a consequence, reduced wealth and reduced incomes. These circumstances can be mitigated with a universal basic income program. Framed in this way, this program would serve to benefit Americans of any race, making it much more politically palatable; but such a program would concretely address what I see as an underlying problem that we can actually do something about: poverty. Reducing poverty will go a long toward alleviating the economic effects of racism, and there’s nothing like income to reduce poverty!
Although universal, a universal basic income program is actually needs based because the distributions would be taxable. Under a progressive tax structure, increasing portions of individual or household distributions would be clawed back at higher and higher income levels. Beyond that, universal income has the added benefit that it’s easy to implement, and it requires little or no bureaucratic infrastructure, making it cheap and efficient to administer.
A universal basic income program would be especially appropriate now, given the state of our economy, where our traditional safety net programs have fallen well short of what’s needed. Universal income turns out to be a two-fer: It addresses the economic fallout from both racism and the coronavirus. Universal basic income may not be an end-all for either, but it may very well be the best starting point for both.
