Could a Guaranteed basic Income Save America?

Long, long ago (at least, it feels like a long time), in the ancient days of April 2016 when Donald Trump was merely one of several possible Republican presidential candidates and surely not the one Republicans would be dumb enough to pick, amirite? I wrote a post asking “Could a guaranteed basic income save America's free market economy?” 

Now, as our sick and battered country limps through the final hours of Trump's disastrous administration, I'll ask a shorter version of the question: could a guaranteed basic income save America?

Back in that last April of Obama's tenure I still thought much of Trump's popularity was because he appealed to the economically anxious. The Capitol riot on January 6 gave the lie to that – people who can afford to travel across the country during a pandemic obviously aren't having too many money problems – but even so, the economic issues I mentioned almost five years ago have only been exacerbated by the pandemic and the mass unemployment and financial losses stemming from it.

I suggested (and still support) abolishing the current patchwork social safety net of food stamps and housing vouchers and ever-shifting bureaucratic hoops to jump through, and replacing it all with a modest basic income of around $250 per week for all adult citizens regardless of income or net worth (though there would surely have to be some residency requirements), plus another 10 percent for each child under 18. This won't make you rich or even comfortably middle-class anywhere in contemporary America, but it will cover the barest necessities, and can make for a decent living when combined with whatever wages people earn in a free and functional economy (which we can't have until everyone's vaccinated against covid-19, anyway).

I know many who oppose this on the grounds that if people were guaranteed the bare basics of life without having to work for them, so many would be content to settle for that and nothing else, the economy would completely collapse. “I got all the basics plus my Xbox and my Netflix; why work for anything more?”

True; there probably will be a [relatively] few people like that. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see an uptick in young adults who try an updated 21st-century version of the old 1960s-hippie “tune in, turn on, drop out” mentality.

On the other hand, most of those hippies eventually got sick of the dirty-hippie aesthetic, so they got haircuts and jobs and eventually went on to vote for President Reagan. And if you mentioned a basic income guarantee back then, you'd hear many who oppose this on the grounds that if people were guaranteed the bare basics of life without having to work for them, too many will be content to settle for that and nothing else, with the result that the economy would collapse. “I got all the basics plus my Atari and my Betamax player; why work for anything more?”

And yeah, there were people back in 1983 who would have been perfectly content with the bare necessities plus their Atari, Betamax and a selection of tapes and game cartridges. They'd have been perfectly content to do nothing but get buzzed all day, play their Atari games or watch their magnetic-tape videos ... for a couple years, anyway, until newer and better options made those game and video-watching systems obsolete. The Atari/Betamax slackers might never be motivated to work for self-improvement or the betterment of humanity or other noble "Star Trek when Roddenberry still ran the show" ideals ... but there would come a time when they're motivated to work at least enough to upgrade to a Nintendo plus a VHS player and games and videos for both, and later still to a PlayStation or XBox plus a DVD player ... and of course, I haven't even mentioned all the upgrades this guy has made to his home music player and collection, compared to the vinyl records and stereo system to play them he had back in 1983, and the time he finally decided to join the growing number of American cell phone owners, which lasted until he decided to upgrade to a smartphone....

Ad infinitum. My point is, even if you oppose a minimal base income because you view humanity as inherently a bunch of lazy lotus-eaters who require the threat of hunger and homelessness to give them incentive to work – even if we posit that's true, we do not live in a world where “avoiding hunger and homelessness” are the only two possible rewards for holding a job. But we live in a world of amazing luxuries and wonderful things, with new ones being introduced – maybe not every day, but certainly every year or so, to the point where whatever material things made someone content back in 1983, it's a near-certainty that someone today has bought all kinds of cool new things which didn't even exist back then.

And if we did have a basic income ensuring everyone could at least afford the minimum requirements of life, then maybe the incoming Biden administration wouldn't be facing such Democratic criticism over the difference between a $1,400 and $2,000 pandemic relief check.