This may seem like a dumb question, but perhaps it’s brilliant because it’s dumb: What happens if you just give struggling people money? Like on a regular basis? Have we ever studied that? Have we ever even tried it? We totally should.
(*Types question into internet machine.*)
Oh yes, we have indeed tried it, and it turns out it works spectacularly every fucking time. Like, every time.
Whether it’s an attempt to help with homelessness or joblessness or hunger or dropping out of school, guaranteed income always helps a lot — without fail — sometimes in ways we don’t even expect. Here are just a few examples.
A pilot program in New Mexico gave $500 monthly cash deposits to teenage students experiencing housing insecurity. The only stipulations were that they had to stay in school, do their homework and go to tutoring.
“Only 51 percent of the state’s homeless students had graduated the year before, but in the test cohort, 13 of 14 seniors graduated — a 93 percent rate.”
Oh, only 14 test subjects? That’s too small. Clearly the results don’t mean anything.
Well, what about Stockton, CA? They tried giving randomly selected residents (whose household incomes were below the median) $500 per month for two years without any stipulations. Did it help them?
“[It] reduced the month-to-month income fluctuations that households face, increased recipients’ full-time employment by 12 percentage points and decreased their measurable feelings of anxiety and depression…”
Basically, it benefited them in a gaggle of ways, including helping them achieve full-time employment. So if anyone tries to throw the “guaranteed income causes laziness” argument at you, punch ‘em in the junk. (Or politely tell them they’re wrong.)
How about Los Angeles? There they gave some of LA’s poorest families $1,000 a month for a year with no strings attached. Did those families begin lounging around all day, bathing in caviar between trips to the exotic pet store to get kangaroo meat for the pride of lions they keep in their servants’ quarters? Nope.
The recipients enjoyed a host of financial benefits. Plus,
“…the study found the initiative gave people the time and space to make deeper changes in their lives. That included landing better jobs, leaving unsafe living conditions and escaping abusive relationships.”
So let me see if I have this right. The guaranteed income studies show that not only does a small amount of money help the poorest people in America find employment, stay in school, and be happier, but it also helps them escape abuse and unsafe living conditions. Well, screw that. Why would we ever do such a thing? (I only feel good about my life and my situation if I know others are truly and utterly hating their existence.)
In Cambridge, MA, a study found everyone did better and found more secure employment. Denver tried it with the same result. Austin, TX gave it a go, and it worked. Vancouver, Canada greatly reduced homelessness with its test run. London and Wales both had studies with each working well. Then there are the trials in Iowa, New Jersey, Alabama, Louisiana, Washington, and New York. All went great.
You get the point. Guaranteed income for struggling people has been tried and tested and tried and tested and tried again, and every—single—fucking—time… it works. It works great. It works perfectly. It’s actually one of the few programs that works even better than proponents thought it might. They figured it would decrease financial stress, but they didn’t realize it would also allow desperate people to escape abusive relationships and parents to parent better. Holy shit.
So let’s make sure we never try it on the federal level. Hell, let’s make sure we don’t even try it on a statewide level. Let’s just keep testing it. It’s kinda like the Democrats’ plan for climate change. They’ll keep studying it and discussing it and testing solutions to it for the next 1,000 years. Chuck Schumer will be simply a pile of dusty bones rolled into the Climate Change Committee on a rickety wooden cart made out of the last remaining tree. An intern will lift up his radius and the ulna (arm bones) to show that he’s voting to continue to study possible solutions for what by then will be called “the fire everywhere issue.”
“But Lee, giving every American adult at or below the poverty line $500 a month would cost waaaaaay too much!”
Do you know how much it would cost? $153 billion a year. That’s the same amount of money that Elon Musk loses in a single bad day on Wall Street. (Not kidding.) It’s only 15% of the US military budget. It’s nothing. The US war machine could murder 15% fewer people and use the savings to fund the whole guaranteed income program.
Would guaranteed income fix everything? No. But it would help a lot of people in a lot of ways.