Medium, June 9, 2016
LAST SUNDAY, Swiss voters defeated a ballot initiative that would have required their government to pay every Swiss citizen $2,500 a month, no questions asked. That electoral setback is far from a death knell for basic income in Europe, however. In Finland, the center-right government is testing a plan that could pay all Finns about $870 a month. In Britain, the Netherlands and elsewhere, politicians are discussing similar schemes, and popular interest is spreading.
But America isn’t Europe, and whatever the odds of basic income taking hold there, they’re a lot lower here. Most European countries already have generous welfare states, with no shame or stigma attached to them. There, basic income is viewed as a way to simplify, not expand, the existing welfare state. Cut out the bureaucrats and the qualifying tests, and just give everyone cash to use as they wish.
The situation is quite different in the United States. Here, efforts over the years to build a welfare state have consistently been thwarted by America’s preference for individual self-reliance, distaste for government, and racism. The result is a safety net so stingy and hard to navigate that many who are eligible don’t even bother. To shift from that to a basic income for everyone would be an extraordinary leap, the mere thought of which pushes two potent American hot buttons: (1) fear that our work ethic will be undermined, and (2) dread that our taxes will soar.
I’M A BUSINESSMAN. I believe society should reward successful initiative with profit. At the same time, I know that profit-seeking activities have unhealthy side effects. They cause pollution, waste, inequality, anxiety, and no small amount of confusion about the purpose of life.
The Washington Monthly, October 1983
SEVEN years ago, at the age of 34, I decided to become a socialist entrepreneur. It seemed like a logical calling to pursue. As a journalist, I’d flung my share of arrows at the big corporations. But if the left rejected corporate capitalism, we had to show there are some workable alternatives.
The New Republic, March 15, 1975
PEOPLE HAVE two main complaints about jobs these days: there aren’t enough of them, and most of those that do exist are pretty unsatisfying.
The New Republic, July 6,1974
ANTITRUST is a criminologist’s approach to economics: it seeks to punish unwanted behavior. In addition to that, we need public competitors to giant corporations.
Business and Society Review, Winter 1974
WEALTHY PERSONS in America enjoy security, privilege, power, and freedom from demeaning chores. Some of these benefits derive from wealth itself, others from its unequal distribution. It is the latter that are properly the concern of the non-wealthy.
The New Republic, November 10,1973
WHEN THE TENNESSEE Valley Authority was created by Congress in 1933, it was conceived of not only as an effort to revitalize an impoverished region, but also as an experiment in public enterprise. Forty years later the returns on TVA are pretty much in.
The New Republic, October 13, 1973
THREE of the four provinces in western Canada — Manitoba, Saskatchewan and British Columbia — are governed by socialist parties. With the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile, these are now the only democratic socialist governments in the Western Hemisphere.
The New Republic, September 8, 1973
BOOKS BY POLITICIANS tend to be boring, staff-produced efforts designed to display The Boss as a thoughtful public servant. What sets Fred Harris’ apart is his unique angle of vision. He is the only major politician who says publicly and indeed vociferously that American capitalism is a shuck.
The New Republic, March 31, 1973
Our economy is controlled by an extremely small, largely unaccountable set of elites operating on behalf of a wealth-owning minority. To alter this pattern of ownership and control is politically unfeasible at the moment, but so are many things until enough people decide they want them.
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