I had a special opportunity to interview the amazing Kevin Zeese, senior advisor to Jill Stein in her recent 2016 campaign. I’d bumped into him at protests for open debates and an elaborate ambush of the Democratic Party headquarters. I had many questions for him but I was most excited to ask him about Universal Basic Income.

Matt: You mentioned Trump won because of economics. Because people are struggling…becoming more an more economically insecure, that’s the trend, and so sticking with the status quo, that is not a safe bet. It will just continue the decline, people realize that, and they’re desperate enough to even try Trump.

It seems to me that is something that unites all parties. The left, the right…Everybody has the threat of economic insecurity. And I have the impression that a Universal Basic Income —

Kevin: Oh I’m a big fan of that.

Matt: [Universal Basic Income] is something that can unite everybody…Why doesn’t one of the parties bring this up…?

Kevin: Back in 1972 the Universal Basic Income was a central debate in the presidential race between Richard Nixon and George McGovern. Both candidates supported a basic income. They just both went about it in a different way. That’s how much we’ve moved. From both parties supporting it to neither party talking about it.

And a lot of it is the ideology that giveaways are bad. But it’s such a non-thinking perspective. Universal Basic Income is basically a plan that would allow every person in the United States to get a certain amount of money each month for basic living expenses. And that would immediately eliminate poverty, and all the poverty programs…people could afford their rent. So you immediately get rid of a whole lot of bureaucracy, and you uplift people so they can actually eat and sleep in a building, you know have a home! So it’s a major improvement.

And it would be a massive stimulus to the economy to have an economy built from the bottom up. We have 2 parties now, who both believe in the wealthy getting wealthier and the money trickling down. That was Obama’s ideology and that was Reagan’s ideology. And you can see it in the results of the GDP under both. But if we built an economy from the bottom up, provided a strong foundation for the economy to build on, it’s much more sensible, and much more solid.

You have none of these risky derivative bets. All this money going to the top to put into high risk stuff that doesn’t produce anything. Instead you have people who are buying what’s needed. So communities then would have money. Local businesses would have customers. You could really build community based economics and people would feel secure.

And it would provide those who have a job…the freedom to explore their skills, to put their time into other activities, and we wouldn’t have to have a 40 hr workweek. So everything could change in so many positive ways with a Universal Basic Income…