Third, an EITC for All increase together with raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour could be a powerful one-two punch in moving more workers and working families toward a true living wage. And while minimum-wage advocates often have to combat opponents who claim—largely incorrectly I believe—that minimum-wage increases will discourage hiring or encourage automation, those arguments cannot even be raised against an EITC increase, as the EITC does not impose any new costs on employers.

Fourth, while an EITC for All would not clearly go to all workers each year, it would have a far more universal reach over the course of the life-cycle of most workers. Research has found that as many as 50 percent of American taxpayers with children benefit from the EITC at some point over an 18-year period. Expanding the so-called childless worker provision would increase the share of Americans who would at key points in their life benefit from the EITC: For example, when they start out, when they face unemployment for part of the year, or if they for some reason must take a lower paying job in the later years of their work life. And while an expansion in the “childless” credit may not seem to help a lower-income single parent with children today, it could provide important economic help for that parent when her children are no longer dependent and she would otherwise lose all assistance from the CTC and EITC.

Under an EITC for All proposal, the credit for childless workers should be expanded so that it provides a 30 percent boost for the first $10,000 of income. The phase-out range for the benefit could be extended to ensure that workers were receiving $2,000 more up to $30,000 and relief of as much as $1,000 in the $40,000-$50,000 range and the minimum age of eligible workers would be lowered from today’s 25 to 21. While an EITC for All proposal of this magnitude would mean devoting resources for childless workers and families outside of the normal EITC income range, it would make the EITC an even more powerful and politically-secure tool for rewarding work and economic security by ensuring that it also helped not only the most low-income workers, but also many others facing the economic pressures of wage stagnation, downward mobility, and the disruptions of trade, globalization, and automation.

An EITC for All proposal could stand on its own or be part of a broader expansion of the EITC, as Representative Ro Khanna and Senator Sherrod Brown admirably proposed with the GAIN Act. Their plan would increase the maximum EITC for childless workers to $3,000, while roughly doubling the EITC for all workers with children, although the childless EITC would be fully phased out $37,000. The GAIN Act would dramatically boost incomes for millions of Americans at a total cost of $1.4 trillion over ten years. If that price tag proves to be a bridge too far—especially considering the competing priorities of healthcare, childcare, and infrastructure spending—this EITC for All proposal would come in at less than half that.