Ezra Klein at The NY Times.
...I suspect the real political problem for a guaranteed income isn’t the costs, but the benefits. A policy like this would give workers the power to make real choices. They could say no to a job they didn’t want, or quit one that exploited them. They could, and would, demand better wages, or take time off to attend school or simply to rest. When we spoke, Hamilton tried to sell it to me as a truer form of capitalism. “People can’t reap the returns of their effort without some baseline level of resources,” he said. “If you lack basic necessities with regards to economic well-being, you have no agency. You’re dictated to by others or live in a miserable state.”
But those in the economy with the power to do the dictating profit from the desperation of low-wage workers. One man’s misery is another man’s quick and affordable at-home lunch delivery. “It is a fact that when we pay workers less and don’t have social insurance programs that, say, cover Uber and Lyft drivers, we are able to consume goods and services at lower prices,” Hilary Hoynes, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley, where she also co-directs the Opportunity Lab, told me.
This is the conversation about poverty that we don’t like to have: We discuss the poor as a pity or a blight, but we rarely admit that America’s high rate of poverty is a policy choice, and there are reasons we choose it over and over again. We typically frame those reasons as questions of fairness (“Why should I have to pay for someone else’s laziness?”) or tough-minded paternalism (“Work is good for people, and if they can live on the dole, they would”). But there’s more to it than that.
Read The Whole Thing.
Wealth tax now.
Living wage now.
From comments on the essay:
Kebabullah
WA State
When I hear people who own small businesses say they can't afford to pay their workers $15/hr - - and I have owned several small businesses so I understand where they're coming from - - I say, if you are not charging enough for your product so that you can pay your employees a decent wage, then you are asking your employees to finance your business. Your employees should not be forced to finance your business model. If your market will not support prices that allow your employees a decent wage, then your business model must change or you need to go out of business. You need to raise your prices or change your business model. You cannot ask your employees to finance your company.