Kanoodling with the Enemy

A UBI guy visits a Job Guarantee conference

A little while ago, I wrote an article warning progressive politicians and thinkers that their push for a Federal Job Guarantee (JG), specifically as an alternative to Universal Basic Income (UBI, basic income), was misguided and dangerous. My main points were that:

JG alone would be a bureaucratic boondoggle that hurt the progressive wing’s credibility for years. JG alone wouldn’t address the fundamental human right of choice and freedom that UBI does; a JG job, when the alternative is being evicted or going hungry, is still wage slavery just as much as a private labor market job. UBI is unconditional and enough to guard people against extreme poverty. The two policies would actually complement each other quite nicely, symbiotically enhancing their strengths and reducing their costs, boosting both economic productivity and human freedoms better than the sum of their parts. They shouldn’t be proposed as diametrically opposing ideas. If only one is put in place, UBI must have higher priority. UBI provides a human right in the ability to choose freely. JG enhances that right, but only if it’s already in place through a UBI, by providing more and better choices from which to choose.

I originally wrote the piece as a bit of policy counsel for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her campaign staff, but I decided that it would be a useful message for everyone to see and turned it into an open letter. I had been lucky enough to meet Alexandria early on in her campaign, before anybody knew who she was, when I had a random free night and agreed to one of those requests to do phone banking for a local candidate. After the calls, we talked at a local bar, and boy did she impress me then. When I brought up UBI, as I always do, she was well-considered on the subject as well as many others, and her vision for society aligned closely with my own. From then on, I was a staunch supporter of this bartender from the Bronx.

I was surprised, though, when her star began to rise in the political sky and her public messaging started falling more in line with the JG messaging of the day. She wasn’t mentioning UBI directly in public speaking, but rather only hinting at similar values here and there in her word choice. If Ocasio-Cortez, who had spoken so well on UBI in private, didn’t feel comfortable pushing for it publicly yet, it made me realize that we in the UBI movement still have quite a ways to go as advocates in making the ground fertile for politicians to tread.

I’m happy to acknowledge that now that the midterm elections have passed, progress seems to have been made in that vein, and Alexandria and others have started mentioning the policy by name occasionally, and it even appears as a potential policy option in the Green New Deal she and the new class of badass elected progressives are pushing. Here’s hoping it starts to take a more prominent role in their thinking and starts receiving more than just a mention.

The smart politicians like Ocasio-Cortez have been doing it right, leaving the door open to UBI despite the dismissive, sometimes dogmatic and misinformed, attitudes of some of the influential and oversure economists and policy wonks giving them counsel. Bernie, too, has remained sympathetic and open, even mentioning it here and there, but he is very understandably maintaining his focus and energy on Medicare for All.

Other politicians like Kamala Harris and Corey Booker have started promoting almost-UBI policies that totally miss the essence and undercut the power of the idea, essentially amounting to an expansion of current programs like EITC, but at least they’re starting to try. Obama has been coming around, too, bringing UBI up in his fantastic Nelson Mandela speech this year. Progressive powerhouse Nina Turner had a well-considered answer for me at a public panel when the idea had been new to her a year before. Hillary claimed in her new book that she had considered it seriously. I think it’s a shame she didn’t consider it a little harder.

Politicians across the board are starting to tiptoe around the issue, and addressing it in their own ways. Not all have been in favor. I love Joe Biden (he’s a good person and a true civil servant in my estimation, not to mention charming and downright adorable at times), but he lost me when he listened a bit too hard to his economic advisors and came out surprisingly uninformedly against UBI. He’s stuck on this idea of the dignity of labor, and that it can only be found in the work force. In his old school, paradoxical, and still quite common worldview, people can’t be given “money for nothing,” because then they won’t work, and so they’ll be deprived of their dignity.

Since when, I wonder, has dignity been something extrinsically bestowed rather than internally upheld? Where’s the dignity in working if there’s a gun to your head? Dignity, the way I see it, is found only in voluntary work, which can only exist in the labor market for those free from daily existential fear. I won’t say it’s impossible, but Mr. Biden will have to do some serious reconsidering and make a pretty big apology to get back on the train. I am appreciative of all he’s done, but I think it’s time for him to step out of the way of progress.

Speaking of progress, a new wave of economists, politicians, and philanthropic foundations, thanks to groundbreaking studies like those done by the charitable foundation GiveDirectly, are either excitedly or begrudgingly admitting that direct cash transfers are often the most effective form of aid, as opposed to in-kind assistance or services. It’s only a matter of time before these policy influencers are thinking more directly in terms of UBI as the primary mechanism for delivering that cash. Every day, more people are seeing the light.