Universal basic income in the United States
Universal basic income and
Older history (from Paine and Spence to 1900)
Arguably the first to propose a system with great similarities to a national
1900–1960
In the first half of the 20th century various people in the United States advocated some kind of basic income. There were for example the Louisiana Governor Huey Long who called it "Share Our Wealth" and also some followers of Henry George.
1960s and 1970s
In the 1960s and the 1970s the debate around, and support for, basic income and the related system negative income tax, rose substantially. This debate and interest was highly linked to general debate on poverty and how to deal with it. In 1968, James Tobin, Paul Samuelson, John Kenneth Galbraith and another 1,200 economists signed a document calling for the US Congress to introduce in that year a system of income guarantees and supplements.[2] Milton Friedman endorsed the negative income tax in 1962 and again in 1980,[3] and he connected his support for the negative income tax to support for basic income in an interview with Eduardo Suplicy in 2000.[4]
From 1968 to 1982, the US and Canadian governments conducted a total of five negative income tax experiments. They were the first major social science experiments in the world. The first experiment was the New Jersey Income Maintenance Experiment, proposed by MIT Economics graduate student Heather Ross in 1967 in a proposal to the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity.[10] The four experiments were in:[11]
- The New Jersey Income Maintenance Experiment: Trenton, Passaic, Paterson, and Jersey City, New Jersey with Scranton, Pennsylvania added to increase the number of white families, 1968–1972 (1357 families)[12]
- The Rural Income Maintenance Experiment: Rural areas in Iowa and North Carolina, 1969–1973 (809 families)
- Gary, Indiana, 1971–1974 (1800 families)
- Seattle (SIME) and Denver (DIME), 1971–1982 (4800 families)
- Manitoba, Canada ("Mincome"), 1974-1979
In general they found that workers would decrease labor supply (employment) by two to four weeks per year because of the guarantee of income equal to the poverty threshold.[13]
The 1980s, 1990s and early 2000
The Permanent Fund of Alaska
The Alaska Permanent Fund is often mentioned as one of the few existing basic income systems in the world. Since 1982, the Fund has paid a partial basic income to all (permanent) residents averaging approximately $1,600 annually per resident (adjusted to 2019 dollars) from the state's oil production revenues.[14] A prominent figure in the history of the fund is Jay Hammond. He was the Republican Governor of Alaska in the 1970s and as such he was concerned that the huge wealth generated by oil mining in Prudhoe Bay, the largest oilfield in North America, would only benefit the current population of the state. Therefore, he suggested setting up a fund to ensure that this wealth would be preserved, through investment of part of the revenue from oil.[15]
2010–2018
The Green Party of the United States since its 2010 platform advocates for a universal basic income to "every adult regardless of health, employment, or marital status, in order to minimize government bureaucracy and intrusiveness into people's lives."[16]
The debate about basic income, according to Guy Standing, has gone in two directions in the United States in recent years. On the one hand is the introduction of basic income as an alternative to existing social policies, paid from direct taxation, and on the other hand is a discussion about capital funds with basic income-style dividends.[17]
In July 2017, Hawaii State Rep. Chris Lee published a bill to investigate basic income for his state.[18]
American
In April 2021, a bill to send unconditional monthly cash payments of $1,000 to California residents passed committee, though with no funding mechanism.[19]
Andrew Yang and the emergency-basic income of 2020
Yang argues that
On March 5, 2020 Andrew Yang started the
See also
References
- ^ Marangos, John (January 2006). "Two arguments for Basic Income: Thomas Paine (1737-1809) and Thomas Spence (1750-1814)". History of Economic Ideas.
- ISBN 978-0-691-12714-9.
- ^ Frank, Robert H. "The Other Milton Friedman: A Conservative With a Social Welfare Program," The New York Times (23 November 2006).
- ^ Suplicy, Eduardo (June 2000). "Eduardo Suplicy's Interview With Milton Friedman". The U.S. Basic Income Guarantee NewsFlash.
- ^ Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? (New York: Harper & Row, 1967)
- ^ Jordan Weissmann (28 August 2013). Martin Luther King's Economic Dream: A Guaranteed Income for All Americans. The Atlantic. Retrieved 30 August 2014.
- ^ "Daniel Moynihan and President-elect Nixon: How charity didn't begin at home". archive.nytimes.com.
- ^ National Party Conventions: 1831-1996. Internet Archive. Washington D.C.: Congressional Quarterly. 1997. p. 19. ISBN 978-1-56802-280-2.
- ^ "How Mark stands on the issues" Archived December 26, 2007, at the Wayback Machine Gravel presidential campaign, 2008
- ^ "An Overview of Social Experimentation and the Digest". Urban.org. Archived from the original on 2011-11-30. Retrieved 2013-02-13.
- ^ "IRP Negative Income Tax Archive". University of Wisconsin–Madison, Institute for Research on Poverty. July 10, 2007. Archived from the original on 2009-12-06. Retrieved 2009-06-09.
- ^ Social Experimentation and Public Policymaking By David H. Greenberg, Donna Linksz, Marvin Mandell.
- JSTOR 145685.
- ^ DeMarban, Alex (2019-09-28). "This year's Alaska Permanent Fund dividend: $1,606". Anchorage Daily News. Retrieved 2020-09-24.
[See graphs] The annual check this year will be delivered to 631,000 Alaskans, most of the state population, and come largely from earnings of the state's $64 billion fund that for decades has been seeded with income from oil-production revenue. ... This year's dividend amount, similar to last year's, is in line with the average annual payment since they began at $1,000 in 1982 when inflation is taken into account, said Mouhcine Guettabi, an economist with the University of Alaska Anchorage Institute of Social and Economic Research.
- ^ "History of basic income | BIEN". BIEN. Archived from the original on 2008-06-21. Retrieved 2017-05-27.
- ^ "2010 Platform: Economic Justice & Sustainability". The Green Party of the United States. Archived from the original on 2011-06-19.
- ^ World Economic Forum (2019-01-18). "What has a year of experiments taught us about basic income?". The European Sting - Critical News & Insights on European Politics, Economy, Foreign Affairs, Business & Technology. Retrieved 2020-06-23.
- ^ Weller, Chris (2018-01-15). "Basic income experts predict an important milestone for free money in 2018". Business Insider. Retrieved 2020-06-23.
- ^ Nieves, Alexander (2021-04-26). "California Democrats advance universal basic income bill with no funding mechanism". POLITICO. Archived from the original on 2021-05-19. Retrieved 2022-07-01.
- ^ "Andrew Yang: Being the free-money guy won't hurt me". USA Today. September 19, 2019. Archived from the original on September 21, 2019. Retrieved September 21, 2019.
- ^ Karson, Kendall; Gehlen, Bobby; Szabo, Christine; Palaniappan, Sruthi; Kelsey, Adam (July 31, 2019). "Andrew Yang: Everything you need to know about the 2020 presidential candidate". ABC News. Archived from the original on June 29, 2019. Retrieved August 3, 2019.
- ^ Murphy, Jason Burke (July 16, 2018). "Interview: Presidential campaign brings 'new crowds' to basic income". Basic Income Network. Archived from the original on March 21, 2019. Retrieved March 15, 2019.
- ^ Lea, Brittany De (July 11, 2019). "You can't turn truck drivers into coders, Andrew Yang says of job retraining". FOXBusiness. Archived from the original on August 3, 2019. Retrieved August 3, 2019.
- ^ "Let's Move Humanity Forward". Humanity Forward. Retrieved 2020-06-23.
- ^ Lahut, Ben; Winck, Jake (March 5, 2020). "Andrew Yang announces new 'Move Humanity Forward' organization amid speculation that he'll run for NYC mayor". Business Insider. Retrieved 2020-06-23.
Further reading
- Yeung, Eddy S. F. (2022). "Can Conservatives Be Persuaded? Framing Effects on Support for Universal Basic Income in the US". Political Behavior: 1–27. PMID 36160122.
- Jordan, Soren; Ferguson, Grant; Haglin, Kathryn (2022). "Measuring and Framing Support for Universal Basic Income" (PDF). Social Policy & Administration. 56 (1): 138–147. S2CID 238705409.
- Hamilton, Leah (2020). Welfare doesn't work : the promises of basic income for a failed American safety net. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. OCLC 1140791855.
- Shafarman, Steven (2020). Our Future: The Basic Income Plan for Peace, Justice, Liberty, Democracy, and Personal Dignity. RealClear Publishing. ISBN 978-1645432166.
- Stern, Andy; Kravitz, Lee (2016). Raising the Floor: How a Universal Basic Income Can Renew Our Economy and Rebuild the American Dream. PublicAffairs. ISBN 978-1610396257.
- Yang, Andrew (3 April 2018). The war on normal people : the truth about America's disappearing jobs and why universal basic income is our future (First ed.). New York. OCLC 1029605633.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link