Universal basic income in the United States

Arguably the first to propose a system with great similarities to a national basic income in the United States was Thomas Paine, in Agrarian Justice, 1796/1797. His idea was that a few "basic incomes" to young people, in their 20s, financed by tax on heritage, was highly needed and also a matter of justice. Shortly after that, in 1797, Thomas Spence outlined a complete basic income proposal.[1]

In the first half of the 20th century various people in the United States advocated some kind of basic income. There were for example the Louisiana Governor Huey Long who called it "Share Our Wealth" and also some followers of Henry George.

In the 1960s and the 1970s the debate around, and support for, basic income and the related system negative income tax, rose substantially. This debate and interest was highly linked to general debate on poverty and how to deal with it. In 1968, James Tobin, Paul Samuelson, John Kenneth Galbraith and another 1,200 economists signed a document calling for the US Congress to introduce in that year a system of income guarantees and supplements.[2] Milton Friedman endorsed the negative income tax in 1962 and again in 1980,[3] and he connected his support for the negative income tax to support for basic income in an interview with Eduardo Suplicy in 2000.[4]

Martin Luther King, a famous civil rights activist and politician, also gave his support for the idea in his book Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, published in 1967.[5][6] In 1969, Richard Nixon proposed a "Family Assistance Program" which resembled guaranteed income, in that benefits did not rapidly taper with additional earnings by the beneficiaries. Nixon's proposal only applied to families, but extended previous welfare by benefiting more than those without a 'father'.[7] Other advocates from the 1960s and 1970s include Senator George McGovern who called for a 'demogrant' that was similar to a basic income, although a plank calling for a guaranteed income of $6,500 was defeated at the 1972 Democratic National Convention.[8][9]

From 1968 to 1982, the US and Canadian governments conducted a total of five negative income tax experiments. They were the first major social science experiments in the world. The first experiment was the New Jersey Income Maintenance Experiment, proposed by MIT Economics graduate student Heather Ross in 1967 in a proposal to the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity.[10] The four experiments were in:[11]

1. The New Jersey Income Maintenance Experiment: Trenton, Passaic, Paterson, and Jersey City, New Jersey with Scranton, Pennsylvania added to increase the number of white families, 1968–1972 (1357 families)[12]
2. The Rural Income Maintenance Experiment: Rural areas in Iowa and North Carolina, 1969–1973 (809 families)
3. Gary, Indiana, 1971–1974 (1800 families)
4. Seattle (SIME) and Denver (DIME), 1971–1982 (4800 families)
5. Manitoba, Canada ("Mincome"), 1974-1979

In general they found that workers would decrease labor supply (employment) by two to four weeks per year because of the guarantee of income equal to the poverty threshold.[13]

The Green Party of the United States since its 2010 platform advocates for a universal basic income to "every adult regardless of health, employment, or marital status, in order to minimize government bureaucracy and intrusiveness into people's lives."[16]

The debate about basic income, according to Guy Standing, has gone in two directions in the United States in recent years. On the one hand is the introduction of basic income as an alternative to existing social policies, paid from direct taxation, and on the other hand is a discussion about capital funds with basic income-style dividends.[17]

In July 2017, Hawaii State Rep. Chris Lee published a bill to investigate basic income for his state.[18]

American Democratic Politician John Moser ran on a Universal Citizens Dividend as the core focus of his 2018 Congressional campaign.

In April 2021, a bill to send unconditional monthly cash payments of $1,000 to California residents passed committee, though with no funding mechanism.[19]

Andrew Yang was a presidential candidate for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries. He was running against more well-known candidates such as Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren to get the Democratic Party-ticket to run against the Republican candidate in 2020. His flagship proposal was a basic income, which he labels "Freedom Dividend" of 1000 dollars per month to each American citizen over the age of 18. He also had several other proposals, regarding democracy, health and medicine, international affairs and so on, but the focal point of his campaign was basic income. That, in turn, is a proposal which he outlines with the background of the fourth industrial revolution. In other words, the development of automation and artificial intelligence, and how these factors change the job market. According to Yang, the Freedom Dividend's benefits include "healthier people, less stressed-out people, better-educated people, stronger communities, more volunteerism, [and] more civic participation. There's zero bureaucracy associated with it [because there is no] need to verify whether [people's] circumstances change."[20]

Yang argues that automation-driven job displacement was the main reason Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, saying that based on data, "There's a straight line up between the adoption of industrial robots in a community and the movement towards Donald Trump."[21] Yang has said that he became a UBI advocate after reading American futurist Martin Ford's book Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future, which deals with the impact of automation and artificial intelligence on the job market and economy.[22] He believes UBI is a more viable policy than job retraining programs, citing studies that job retraining of displaced manufacturing workers in the Midwest had success rates of 0–15%.[23]

On March 5, 2020 Andrew Yang started the Humanity Forward[24] movement, a non-profit with the goal of introducing the core ideas that Yang ran on during his 2020 presidential campaign such as Universal Basic Income, human-centered capitalism, and data as a property right. Andrew Yang has already received three million dollars[25] in donations for use in this organization. Humanity Forward will endorse and provide resources to political candidates who champion Universal Basic Income, human-centered capitalism and similar policies. HF will help launch and support projects to display the power and practicality of UBI in real life. Yang intends to push these ideas to the mainstream through podcasts, traditional media, and high-impact events.

• 2020 CARES Act unemployment benefits

• Yeung, Eddy S. F. (2022). "Can Conservatives Be Persuaded? Framing Effects on Support for Universal Basic Income in the US". Political Behavior: 1–27. doi:10.1007/s11109-022-09824-z. PMC 9484344. PMID 36160122.
• Jordan, Soren; Ferguson, Grant; Haglin, Kathryn (2022). "Measuring and Framing Support for Universal Basic Income". Social Policy & Administration. 56 (1): 138–147. doi:10.1111/spol.12760. S2CID 238705409.
• Hamilton, Leah (2020). Welfare doesn't work : the promises of basic income for a failed American safety net. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-3-030-37121-0. OCLC 1140791855.
• Shafarman, Steven (2020). Our Future: The Basic Income Plan for Peace, Justice, Liberty, Democracy, and Personal Dignity. RealClear Publishing. ISBN 978-1645432166.
• Stern, Andy; Kravitz, Lee (2016). Raising the Floor: How a Universal Basic Income Can Renew Our Economy and Rebuild the American Dream. PublicAffairs. ISBN 978-1610396257.
• Yang, Andrew (3 April 2018). The war on normal people : the truth about America's disappearing jobs and why universal basic income is our future (First ed.). New York. ISBN 978-0-316-41424-1. OCLC 1029605633.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)