Universal Basic Income—the idea of a government paying every citizen an income which allows for his or her basic needs to be covered regardless of employment. It’s a thorny issue because it goes against the way that our society traditionally views the relationship between work and survival. That traditional view, of course, is that in order to live like a human, you need to do some sort of work to self-sustain and contribute to the community as a whole. Otherwise, you’re dead weight and deserve to die or live in squalor and want.

Unfortunately, with the current trends in industrial technology moving toward a system which needs fewer human workers—coupled with our overdependence on large corporations to provide the majority of the population with jobs—that traditional view is kicking us in our collective nads. With fewer employers in existence, in need of fewer workers per company…well, we’ve got a bunch of able-bodied people who have the skills, talents, and will to work but just can’t get their foot in the door! Not to mention all of those people who are working, but their pay is so low that they need the government to step in with extra income anyway just for them to meet basic needs like buying groceries, paying the rent, and keeping the lights on. Meanwhile, society keeps chastising both the unemployed and underemployed alike as a collection of unambitious, stupid, lazy layabouts who all need to “rub some dirt on it, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and start pulling their own weight.”

The only thing is that these people don’t have bootstraps—sometimes not even boots—and probably not even any dirt to rub on their wounds either. These are people who, no matter what they do or how hard they work, they just can’t get a foothold in the traditional economy because the rock-climbing wall at this adventure park has been replaced with a sheer, slippery glass wall covered in baby oil.

We need a better way. We need something that will allow people the financial cushion to become their own bosses instead of trying desperately to obtain and maintain employment under someone else because they have no other choice. We need something that will free us from the foolishness of trying to predict the “Jobs of the Future” and proceeding to attempt to drag as many of our kids as possible in that direction, whether they’re interested in those fields or not. We need a way that makes the serious study of less practical but still valuable fields like History, Music, Literature, Linguistics, Art, etc. not more-or-less a dead-end unless you want to be a teacher of these things. Universal Basic Income could very well be exactly what we need.

How We Do It Now

Now, I know that some of you might think it’s nuts to pay people pretty much just for existing but, hear me out. Currently, our system starts every new adult in our society out with a base income of $0 and whatever their families can afford to put into their pockets as seed money for beginning their lives. For young people from wealthy families, their parents might be able to afford to grant them a trust fund, a loan, or even a guaranteed position in the family business. For those from middle class and poor families, however, their parents have basically given them all they can afford to give already, so their only option is to take their $0 in seed money and try to scrounge up a job.

Unfortunately, even if you have an education and skill set which should be valuable to most employers, finding a job is harder than ever these days. Part of the reason for this is that large national and multi-national corporations now dominate most fields, having either absorbed smaller firms or pushed many of the local “mom-and-pop” outfits out of business. This creates fewer employment options for young people trying to get into the workforce.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that these large corporations now operate with fewer workers on their payrolls and offer fewer fulltime positions thanks to technologies which make operations cheaper and more efficient, and straight-up miserliness supported by low minimum wages and easily exploitable labor law loopholes. For young people fresh out of high school or college, this creates an environment where the world seems to have been rigged against them to be unwinnable by design: You need a job to survive, but either you can’t land one because the competition for every position is just to great or you can only ever find jobs that barely pay you enough for food and shelter, let alone utilities, transportation, or healthcare.

One way out of this trap is to try and start your own business venture. The only problem is that it’s risky, expensive, and you can’t even properly start a business without some seed money. What? Get a small business loan, you say? Most young people start out with no credit and nothing much of value to their names. Banks won’t grant you a small business loan unless you’ve got good credit and/or something of equal value to use as collateral. If you’ve got no high-value assets and no credit, you’re pretty much screwed unless you can get a relative or family friend with good credit to cosign with you. If you’re poor, chances are that you don’t know anyone who can cosign on that loan with you. If you’re middle class, chances are that all of your potential cosigners think it’s too much of a financial risk to put their very valuable good credit on the line to fund your “hair-brained scheme” (thanks to our society’s vicious devaluation of the intelligence and responsibility of the young) and turn you down flat. If you’re lucky enough to be able to afford a bank account you might be able to try crowdfunding, but you may have to provide something to sweeten the pot for your potential investors…which could also turn out to be expensive.

As a result of the difficulties of getting started in the modern world, we’re increasingly seeing the emergence of two factions of struggling youth. The first are often referred to as “Boomerang Children” or those experiencing “Failure to Launch.” These are young people who are unable to self-sustain, and therefore either move back in with mom and dad or never leave the nest because they just can’t afford to make it on their own and don’t want to end up living in their cars, on the streets, or in a shelter. The other is the young people who fall into desperation and despair and turn to illegal activities such as theft, the drug trade, or prostitution to try and pay their way in this world. These “Illicit Entrepreneurs” are not stupid or lazy, they just haven’t been given the opportunity to do better for themselves and contribute to society in more productive and positive ways.

The system we have now is just not built to support young entrepreneurs looking to make a living by working around the traditional job scramble instead of ramming their heads against a wall trying to participate in it. If we were to provide everyone with a basic income of $1,000 a month, however, that would provide the financial cushion and seed money needed to allow our young people to put their energy, creativity, and skills to good use as independent business people if they so choose.

How I Would Use My Universal Basic Income

Yes, I know that I’ve just talked a big game about how our current “work to live” system is failing our young people and often feels as if it’s been deliberately rigged against them. However, now you’re thinking, “That’s all well and good, Little Miss Smartypants, but give us an example of how your precious young people would use all of this free money.” O.K., I’ll use myself as an example.

After having to drop out of college for reasons of my own personal safety and spending six years looking for work and independently studying art through practice, books, and online tutorials because my family couldn’t afford to invest in a second try at college, I finished my first novel. I had done my research on getting published the traditional way and decided that it just wasn’t for me, so I opted for independent publishing instead. Still living with my parents and having basically no money to my name, however, I needed to borrow the money for my $35 copyright fee from my sister and have her act as my proofreader/editor. I also did my own cover artwork, since I had the skills to do it already and I couldn’t afford to pay for professional cover design services anyway.

Things seemed like they would work out alright for a change, but then I hit a wall…and that wall was made out of money. In order to generate sales, I needed to advertise. Unfortunately, I’ve only been able to take advantage of free advertising options such as social media and blogging. This hasn’t generated nearly enough sales for me to even receive $100 every three months in royalties (I sell so little that I have to wait for the annual time out to get my money). But the thing is, my books aren’t bad. They just aren’t being advertised as much as they should be.

This is where Universal Basic Income would be a lifesaver for me. With a guaranteed $1,000 a month, I could afford to pay for advertising online, do giveaways of physical copies of my books, save up a to get a booth at a convention or two, start up my own proprietary website, and possibly even branch out into merchandising like may web comics and web series creators have. $1,000 a month isn’t a lot of money. If I had just that much as seed money to invest in the business that I’m trying to grow, however, then I could eventually not only be making enough to support my basic needs, but also have enough disposable income to pay for things like new videogames, books, movie tickets, CD’s, nights out at casual dining restaurants and bars, a car, art classes to continue improving my skills, and all of those other nifty things that help make the economy go ’round. Being single and childless, that means that my income would only need to be boosted maybe a few hundred dollars to a grand a month at the minimum (that depends on the cost of living in each state) via investment in my business before the rest becomes disposable income. Plus, all of my earned income after a certain point will be taxable.

Yes, I did say “taxable.” You see, all of the unemployed young people and those whose business ventures are underperforming due to lack of investment capitol don’t (really, can’t) pay any taxes. That means that the state and federal governments are losing out on millions—probably more like billions—of dollars a year in income and sales tax revenue thanks to unemployment. More young entrepreneurs like myself bringing in taxable income, however, would fix that problem.

I don’t want to live off of my family or on SNAP, Section 8, or food pantry hand-outs. I want to be able to pay taxes, pay my own rent, buy my own food, pay for my own utilities, and have some cash on the side for savings and an entertainment budget. The only way that I’ll get there in this economic landscape is if my work starts selling better, but to do that I need money that no one around me is willing or able to chip in. Universal Basic Income would help me to get to a healthy adult level of self-sustainability by providing me with the seed money that I need to make things happen with my own two hands. That’s something I can get behind.

In Conclusion

The vast majority of Americans—especially young Americans like myself—don’t want to live on welfare and charity. All we want is the tools and opportunities which will allow us to provide for ourselves and live as independent beings. We’re not looking for a hand-out, we’re looking for a springboard, and Universal Basic Income has the potential to be that for us.

We’re sick of shacking up two or three at a time in one apartment because none of us can afford a place of our own. We’re sick of having to live with our parents or other family members just because we either don’t make enough to get by on our own or can’t even find a job flipping burgers at a fast food restaurant in this messed-up economy. We’re sick of having to put our lives in slow motion or totally on hold thanks to a contracting job market and a stagnant minimum wage. We want freedom. We want independence. We want justice.

We worked our asses off in school “paying our dues” by keeping our grades up through mountains of homework and hours of classes that taught us little that was useful or even interesting to us. We followed all the rules, jumped through all the hoops, and kissed all the asses that we were told to. $1,000 a month to start our journey into adulthood and make something of ourselves is the least we deserve for all of that effort.

Universal Basic Income is an investment in our young people, and in all of the awesome things that they can bring into being with all of their youthful energy and creativity. Our current system just lets all of that go to waste in dead-end jobs, parents’ basements, jail cells, the streets, and—most tragically of all—graveyards. The young people of America deserve much better. We deserve Universal Basic Income.

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For more on Universal Basic Income, visit the blog of Mr. Scott Santens at http://www.scottsantens.com/.