Universal basic income (UBI)

Experiments are showing that, at least in some cases, the simplest and most effective solution to poverty is… giving people money.

More than twenty pilot programs are taking place across the country. Many other programs attempt to help poor people: food stamps, welfare, Section 8 housing vouchers (“which often have stringent rules and leave many poor families ineligible.“) Perhaps we could combine all these programs into one simpler, less expensive program.

The pilot is testing whether giving poor families a financial cushion can have a demonstrable impact on their physical and psychological health, job prospects and communities…

While Leo used a few bucks from Compton Pledge for a fried rice dinner, the rest of it went to more pressing causes: a $250 car diagnostic tool enabling him to take on more mechanic jobs, a college textbook for his 23-year-old stepdaughter Lesley, a few hundred dollars sent to his ailing mother in Guatemala, and payments towards a $3,000 payday loan that has accrued nearly $1,000 in interest fees in less than two years.

September 2021: Inside the Nation’s Largest Guaranteed Income Experiment. https://time.com/6097523/compton-universal-basic-income. (3,700 words.)

And:

Zohna Everett choked up as she described the immediate impact the payments had on her life. She quit driving for DoorDash, which gave her the time to find a job as a factory worker at Tesla’s plant in Fremont, 60 miles from Stockton. She was able to escape a dysfunctional marriage and move into her own home. “For me, it was a steppingstone. It got me to where I was okay by myself,” she says. “It was right on time. Everything in me was just like, ‘Oh, thank you so much, Lord.’”

…A mountain of evidence shows how tightly income inequality correlates with crime rates, education levels, drug abuse, incarceration, intimate-partner violence, and physical and mental health, which together cost billions upon billions of tax dollars.

October 2022: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tested Repeatedly. It Works. https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/10/24/universal-basic-income/. (5,900 words, long but very good.)