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  • The Other Epidemic: Deaths of Despair

    Anne Case and Angus Deaton provide a compelling account of the problem, but anemic solutions. The epidemic of deaths of despair will continue unless we attempt bolder solutions like universal basic income to address it.

    By Mark Pancer

    As I write this review, the world is in the throes of the worst pandemic it has seen in a century. Globally, hundreds of thousands have had their lives cut short by the COVID-19 virus, millions have been infected and the end of the pandemic is nowhere in sight. The United States has been hit a body blow by the virus, experiencing more deaths and infections than any other country in the world. As of May 12 of 2020, the virus had claimed more than 80,000 American lives, some 29 per cent of the world’s total.

    But this is not the only epidemic that the United States is currently experiencing.

    According to Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton in their book Deaths of Despair, America was already in the midst of an epidemic – one that has shortened the lives of many more people than COVID-19 – before the novel coronavirus even reared its head.

    The term deaths of despair is one that Case and Deaton began to use after discovering that thousands of Americans were dying of three interrelated causes, all rooted in feelings of despair: opioid overdoses, suicide and alcohol-related diseases such as cirrhosis of the liver.

    So many lives have been lost to these causes that over the last few years the United States, unlike any other country in the developed world, has experienced a decrease in longevity – the first such decrease in a century.

    In a groundbreaking study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2015, Case and Deaton discovered that deaths of despair were hitting one segment of the American population much more than any other: middle-aged white, non-Hispanic men and women.

    In subsequent research, they found that the epidemic was even more concentrated; its primary effects were among middle-aged white Americans without a college education.

    Their book provides an in-depth account of their exploration into why this group of Americans has suffered from deaths of despair so much more than any other, including black and Hispanic Americans, who, on average, have even lower incomes than this group does.

    Up until about 1999, mortality rates followed the same downward trajectory among midlife whites (aged 45 to 54) in the United States as they did in almost all wealthy countries. This trend reversed itself around 1999, when mortality rates for American whites started increasing, while those of other countries continued their decline. Case and Deaton determined that if the trend of decreasing mortality rates had continued in the United States, there would have been more than 600,000 fewer deaths among midlife Americans. These numbers indicate an epidemic that, to date, surpasses COVID-19 in terms of its destruction of life.

    The despair experienced by midlife, less educated white Americans is evident in many aspects of their lives. According to national health surveys, by a ratio of nearly 3 to 1, individuals in this group are more likely than those with a degree to rate their health as poor or only fair. They are also more likely to experience symptoms of severe mental distress, such as feelings of sadness, hopelessness and lack of self-worth. Differences between less and more educated whites are evident in their physical capabilities as well.

    Those without a bachelor’s degree report more difficulty in going about everyday activities, such as climbing stairs, going out to shop or walking short distances.

    In 2017, 13 per cent of midlife whites without a college degree reported that they were unable to work, compared to fewer than 2 per cent of those with a degree.

    Underlying many of these complaints is the experience of physical pain. Reports of being in pain have been increasing steadily in middle-aged Americans, to the extent that those in midlife report more pain than do older Americans. According to Gallup polling, in which Americans were asked if they had experienced significant pain “yesterday” – that is, the day before they were asked the survey questions – nearly 30 per cent of whites indicated that they had. Once again, however, there were substantial differences between those with a college degree and those without, with much higher proportions of less educated white Americans indicating that they had experienced significant pain the previous day. In looking at the distribution of “pain yesterday” across the country, Case and Deacon found that pain was more prevalent in areas with lower levels of education, such as Appalachia, than in areas with higher levels of education, such as the Bay Area of California.

    Interestingly, those areas with high proportions of individuals reporting pain were more likely to have a majority voting for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

    According to the authors, physical pain, mental distress and death are fueling the despair that is felt by white Americans without a college degree.

    But what has caused the suffering and despair that has increased so precipitously over the last 20 years for this segment of the U.S. population?

    Poverty is one possible answer, but Case and Deaton argue that poverty is a “false trail” in the pursuit of an explanation for the phenomenon. For one thing, the timing and direction of changes in poverty levels and deaths of despair do not match up. Poverty rates declined in the years following the Great Recession of 2008–09, while deaths of despair increased. Also, less educated whites had higher incomes than blacks over this period, but blacks, even though they were poorer, were not experiencing nearly as many deaths of despair, and their mortality rates were not increasing. If poverty had had a straightforward causal effect on deaths of despair, one would have thought that the Great Recession would have resulted in a huge jump in deaths.This did not happen, even in countries like Greece and Spain, where incomes fell as unemployment rates more than doubled over the course of the recession.

    Another possible explanation for the growing divide between white Americans with and without a college degree has to do with the kinds of work that these two groups do.

    In addition to providing wages, work gives meaning, status and a sense of identity to people’s lives. It also provides the resources necessary to marry and have children.

    Case and Deaton talk about two escalators related to work – one for the educated and one for the relatively uneducated. After 1970, the escalator for those with a college degree started moving faster than it ever had before; salaries and living standards increased rapidly. The escalator for those without a degree “was stalled or hardly moving at all.” These individuals experienced deteriorating living standards and very few prospects for the future.

    The result was steadily increasing income inequality, and even increased physical separation, between the educated and uneducated groups.

    In contrast, black Americans, though they earned less than whites, saw their incomes increase over time, and so they did not experience the same kind of “stalled elevator” phenomenon that less educated whites did.

    Case and Deaton talk about a “college premium” – the additional income that individuals with a college degree earn compared to those without a degree. That premium has increased substantially over time. It has occurred not only because those with a college degree earn substantially higher incomes, but because those without a degree have experienced a reduction in their earnings.

    But more important than the declining incomes experienced by whites with less education is the kind of work they were now doing.

    As well-paid, unionized jobs in manufacturing disappeared with automation or were outsourced to other countries, those who could find work moved to nonunionized, lower-paid and lower-status jobs. They ended up working for companies that supply cheap labour to corporations such as Google or Facebook, without even benefiting from any status that they might have derived from being employed by a high-profile corporation.

    The personal consequences of this degradation of employment for the less educated have been dramatic. Whites without a college education have been increasingly less likely to get married, belong to churches or clubs or have stable families.

    Deprived of the social capital that these connections provide, they succumb to despair.

    The proportion of less educated midlife whites who, in national surveys, reported being unhappy with their lives has increased steadily since the late 1990s, while it has remained constant (and much lower) among those with a college degree.

    The longer title of Case and Deaton’s book is Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism (emphasis added). The last few chapters of the book form a section entitled “Why is Capitalism Failing So Many?” Like others who have decried the “crony capitalism” that has become increasingly prevalent in the United States, Case and Deaton lay the blame for much of the pain experienced by less educated whites on an economic system that has been manipulated by the wealthy and powerful to reward an educated elite at the expense of less educated working Americans. These wealthy individuals and corporations have used their considerable resources to induce legislators to enact policies and regulations that protect them from competition and allow them to reap huge profits by keeping down the wages and benefits of less powerful groups such as whites without a college education.

    According to Case and Deaton, nowhere is this process more evident than in the American health care system, which they describe as “a leading example of an institution that, under political protection, redistributes income upward to hospitals, physicians, device makers, and pharmaceutical companies while delivering among the worst health outcomes of any rich country.”

    The cost of this system is enormous – nearly 20 per cent of the country’s GDP in 2017, considerably more than any other country spends on its health care.

    At the same time, the outcomes of these expenditures are much worse than the outcomes experienced by other wealthy countries.

    For example, countries such as Canada, the U.K., Australia and Switzerland spend thousands less per capita on their health care systems, but citizens of these countries can expect to live years longer than Americans can. Case and Deaton determined that if Americans spent as much on health care as Canadians did, they would save $1.4 trillion, equivalent to $11,000 per household.

    The difference in costs between the United States and other wealthy countries comes from higher salaries for health care providers, higher costs of drugs, medical procedures and administration, and more extensive (and unnecessary) use of expensive diagnostic procedures, among other things.

    Case and Deaton suggest that the health care industry, which spent more than $500 million on lobbying in 2018, is a “protection racket” – one of the largest “forces redistributing power from labor to capital, and from workers and consumers to corporations and wealthy professionals.”

    In the last chapter, the authors address themselves to the question of what can be done to lessen despair among less educated whites and the destruction of quality and length of life that it produces.

    They consider a number of possible ways in which this might be accomplished. Given their complaints about the health care system, one of their major recommendations is to provide universal health insurance, with cost controls, in the way that other wealthy countries do. Another of their recommendations is to increase the minimum wage substantially (from $7.25 per hour at the time of writing the book to $15).

    They consider, and reject as a potential solution, the provision of a universal basic income to those whose incomes are below the poverty line, because they claim that it might keep people from seeking employment.

    This, they surmise, would result in more people not working, and therefore foregoing the economic, social and status benefits that being employed can provide. They also reject increasing taxes on the wealthy; rather, they would ensure that rich individuals and corporations cannot use their power to enrich themselves by exploiting the less educated. This would be accomplished through stricter enforcement of antitrust laws and putting a stop to “rent-seeking” – using political means to unfairly advantage wealthy and powerful individuals and corporations so as to maintain or increase their profits.

    Deaths of Despair is an important book. It clearly and compellingly tells the story of how the lives of whites without a college education have been degraded to the extent that thousands are destroying themselves through suicide, opioid overdose and alcohol abuse.

    And they are not only destroying themselves. They have become a political force that helped elect a president whose failings have wreaked havoc on the American economic and political system, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The authors also provide a compelling account of the profound way in which the health care system in the United States has harmed rather than helped the economic and physical health of its citizens, particularly its less educated citizens.

    The strategies that Case and Deaton offer for dealing with this epidemic of deaths of despair, unfortunately, are rather anemic. While they at times indicate that some of their suggested strategies might provoke opposition from the wealthy and powerful, they seem not to acknowledge that substantial political force would need to be applied to counteract this opposition.

    And some of the strategies that they dismiss as ineffectual may be much more effective than they think. They suggest, for example, that a universal basic income might reduce the incentive to seek employment, even though recent research suggests that such a policy not only does not reduce job-seeking, but in addition gives people the opportunity to further their education, gain new skills or contribute to their communities in other ways, rather than just through their jobs. Indeed, President Richard Nixon came very close to enacting a universal basic income in the United States more than 50 years ago. Imagine how much easier it would have been to support people through the economic disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic if such a policy had been in place today.

    Indeed, when the COVID-19 pandemic is over, the epidemic of deaths of despair will continue unless we attempt bolder solutions like universal basic income to address it, rather than merely tinkering with things like the minimum wage or the enforcement of antitrust laws.

    _____

    Mark Pancer is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, and author of The Psychology of Citizenship and Civic Engagement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). Read More

    To see original article please visit: https://inroadsjournal.ca/the-other-epidemic-deaths-of-despair/

    The post The Other Epidemic: Deaths of Despair appeared first on Basic Income Today.

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  • Basic income could prevent people from choosing medically-assisted death in response to the downstream effects of poverty

    If medically assisted death becomes more accessible for Canadians, we have a moral obligation to make living well — through housing, mental health supports — accessible too.

    Opinion by Naheed Dosani

    At the start of the year, the Canadian Senate made it a priority to discuss Bill C-7 on Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID), which proposes to make MAID more accessible for people, even if they don’t have a limited prognosis.

    I was asked to testify — to share my perspective as a palliative care physician who provides street-based care for people with serious illnesses who also experience structural vulnerabilities like homelessness, poverty, and systemic racism.

    Why is this perspective integral to the discussion about Bill C-7?

    I work in a world where it is possible to successfully arrange for MAID in two weeks in an organized and efficient fashion.

    Yet, it takes years to get the people I care for into housing, months to get them income supports, and weeks to get mental health and harm reduction treatment essential to a good quality of life.

    I find this morally distressing.

    If we are making it easier for people to get MAID, we also have a moral obligation to ensure that people don’t pursue MAID because they want to escape a society that doesn’t adequately support their needs.

    I think of the people I have cared for over the years, like “Bob,” a man in his 50s with multiple sclerosis and complex wounds. He was referred to our palliative care team for management of complex pain. Despite optimizing his pain and providing expert wound care, he pursued MAID. Why? Because his progressive disease and its complications on his mental health led to an alcohol use disorder, which led to him losing his housing, which led to him losing his family and, ultimately, being alone.

    Conversely, I have witnessed how treating the social determinants of health for the people I care for, can make a tremendous difference as to whether-or-not someone pursues MAID. “Mary,” a woman in her 30s, is an example. She was on the streets living with untreated HIV, dealing with a substance use disorder and no health care team to meet her needs. Mary wanted to die through MAID. However, after addressing her emotional and physical pain, supporting her with housing, income, harm reduction services and providing the kind of psychosocial supports that all Canadians deserve, she changed her mind because she now has a better quality of life.

    When discussing Bill C-7 & MAID, it is crucial to recognize that all people across Canada do not access palliative care equally.

    Further, people who experience structural vulnerabilities like poverty, homelessness and systemic racism face even more barriers to accessing palliative care.

    Although it has historically suffered from an identity crisis because of its association with death, palliative care addresses a person’s suffering throughout serious illness — regardless of prognosis.

    It considers the whole person — their physical, psychological, social, spiritual, and practical needs. It is an active treatment that focuses on living and can prolong life in some cases.

    For several years, experts across Canada have expressed the need to implement a palliative approach to care, as outlined in The Way Forward, and How to improve Palliative Care in Canada. These reports highlight several high-quality and cost-effective approaches to help Canadians with life-threatening illnesses live as fully as possible. Aside from the 2018 release of the Health Canada Framework on Palliative Care in Canada, few recommendations have been fully implemented.

    While we have a long way to go to improve access to palliative care services for most Canadians, we have an even longer way to go for those who experience barriers to palliative care due to marginalization.

    In 2014, I joined a research team led by Dr. Kelli Stajduhar at the University of Victoria to answer the question: What are the barriers that people on the margins of our society experience in accessing palliative care?

    The research study and the report that followed called ‘Too Little Too Late’ tells a damning story.

    Through 300 hours of observational research, our team followed 25 homeless and vulnerably housed people with life-limiting disease, their support persons and service providers.

    What did we find?

    That dying participants bore the brunt of all the commonly experienced injustices lived routinely by people who are structurally vulnerable. That palliative care is harder to access when you are marginalized.

    For those who live on the streets:

    ● The need to survive prevails over discussions about palliative care.

    ● Death is 2.3-4x more likely, so palliative care is harder to access and initiate.

    ● Amidst the overdose death crisis, access to palliative care through a trauma-informed harm reduction lens, is difficult to find.

    To make palliative care more equitably accessible, we must scale up programs that support people who experience marginalization. We now have many promising practices, including mobile services, harm reduction approaches and trauma-informed care models in cities like Victoria, Edmonton, Calgary and Toronto, that work. Regarding MAID, we need to ask ourselves if we have conducted enough research to reflect the experiences of those who live on the margins. I fear we don’t know enough about these perspectives.

    I also worry that Bill C-7 will have a disproportionate impact on working-class disabled people, people who experience homelessness, poverty, and structural marginalization — people who cannot afford their basic needs like food and shelter and medication.

    Without investments to end the structures that create these situations, MAID may not be a fair choice for everyone.

    With 35,000 Canadians experiencing homelessness every night, it should be reasonable to expect that the same energy put into passing MAID will also be put into addressing the upstream factors that lead to poor health like a national housing strategy, improving harm reduction services, implementing basic income strategies and pharmacare.

    We must do better. It’s a matter of quality of life and death.

    _____

    Dr. Naheed Dosani is a palliative care physician and health justice advocate who serves as a lecturer at the University of Toronto and an assistant clinical professor at McMaster University. Follow him on Twitter @NaheedD.

    To see original article please visit: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2021/02/11/if-medically-assisted-death-becomes-more-accessible-for-canadians-we-have-a-moral-obligation-to-make-living-well-through-housing-mental-health-supports-accessible-too.html

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  • Santa Clara County Pilot Program Providing UBI to Foster Youth May Be Expanded to All of California

    Sen. Dave Cortese proposes statewide basic income pilot; a pilot that includes foster care youth as they leave the child welfare system.

    By Laurence Du Sault

    Borrowing from a Santa Clara County program he proposed, state Sen. Dave Cortese has introduced legislation to provide $1,000 monthly cash payments for California’s foster care youth as they leave the child welfare system.

    “I can’t think of a more urgent time to roll out this kind of assistance,” Cortese said during an online press conference Monday. “Especially as they enter the adult world during an economic decline caused by COVID-19.”

    The bill — SB 739 — would create a pilot basic income program offering the roughly 2,500 California youth transitioning out of the foster care system this year at age 21 unconditional direct monthly payments for three years. Cortese, D-San Jose, estimates that would cost the state approximately $30 million. It’s not clear whether the money would come from the state’s general fund. Cortese said his team is still determining “where the best bucket is” in terms of state funding.

    “There’s a hole in our social safety net relative to transitioning foster youth, and I believe it’s one of many,” said Cortese, who added that basic income programs like this one could prove a “lifeline” for California’s most vulnerable populations.

    The pandemic recession has boosted interest in basic income programs throughout the state, with Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf pledging to start that city’s own guaranteed income pilot program based on former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs’ experiment.

    Only about half of California’s young people in foster care graduate high school, and 40 percent experience homelessness within a year and a half of leaving the system, according to the California Court Appointed Special Advocates.

    Cortese said a significant number are children and youth of color.

    “Children in our foster care system are the responsibility of the state and we should take care of their basic needs,” said Sharon M. Lawrence, CEO of CASA in an emailed statement, adding that she is looking forward to seeing more details of Cortese’s proposal. The bill is awaiting referral to a committee and a first hearing date.

    The proposal mirrors a first-in-the-nation pilot program spearheaded last year by Cortese when he was a Santa Clara County supervisor.

    That program provided the county’s 72 young adults transitioning out of the child welfare system in 2020 with similar thousand-dollar payments. It is set to expire in May.

    Results from quarterly evaluations of the Santa Clara experiment have yet to be reported. It’s unclear whether the board of supervisors will choose to extend it, but Cortese said he was “extremely confident”and that county administrators are working on proposals to expand the program.

    _____

    To see original article please visit: https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/02/22/santa-clara-county-is-model-for-plan-to-give-1000-a-month-to-california-foster-youth/

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  • Some families could get more than $14,000 in new Covid relief. It’s looking more and more like universal basic income

    By Lorie Konish

    KEY POINTS

    • A new coronavirus relief bill is in the works and it could mean a big payday for some families.
    • New $1,400 stimulus checks plus a more generous child tax credit could give a family of four earning under $150,000 more than $14,000.
    • The initiatives show that the country is opening up to the idea of universal basic income, one political analyst says. The question is: How long will it last?

    As Congress works to finalize its latest coronavirus relief bill, some American families are poised to receive a financial windfall.

    Between new $1,400 stimulus checks and an enhanced child tax credit, that could add up to more than $14,000 for some families.

    “All of the focus has been on the $1,400 when, in reality, for a family of four, they should be focused on the $14,000,” said Ed Mills, Washington policy analyst at Raymond James.

    Mills wrote about the potential income boost this week.

    The new stimulus checks would provide $1,400 per person, including child and adult dependents.

    Like the previous direct payments, they would be based on certain income thresholds. So married couples who file jointly with up to $150,000 in income would be eligible for the full amount.

    For a family of four with under $150,000 in income, that would amount to $5,600 in new stimulus check money on top of the $2,400 they received in January ($600 per person), for $8,000 total.

    Provided the bill moves as scheduled, that deposit could come in late March, according to Mills.

    Then, the expanded child tax credit could provide an additional $6,000 to $7,200 per family.

    Currently, families receive $2,000 per child under 17, so long as their income is under $200,000 for individuals or $400,000 per married couple.

    The new proposal calls for raising those sums to $3,600 per child up to age 6, and $3,000 for those ages 6 to 17, for married couples with under $150,000 in income.

    The new plan would also enable families to receive the child tax credit payments monthly. Starting in July, they could receive up to $300 per month for children up to age 6 and $250 per month for children 6 through 17.

    Altogether, that would add up to more than $14,000 for a family of four. This excludes enhanced federal unemployment benefits, if they qualify. The new coronavirus package aims to provide an additional $400 per week to jobless workers. That’s compared to the $600 per week Congress authorized a year ago, and the extra $300 per week that expires in March.

    The additional financial help is aimed at helping individuals and families get through the Covid-19 pandemic.

    But it is also reconfiguring the social safety net, according to Mills.

    “A test of universal basic income has arrived in the United States,” he wrote this week.

    Universal basic income gives people a stipend to live on. The concept began getting more attention in 2019 when Andrew Yang, then a Democratic candidate for president, called for sending people $1,000 per month.

    The proposal brought universal basic income into the mainstream conversation and away from the fringe.

    “There was a clear constituency there for this,” Mills said.

    Then, when the Covid-19 pandemic set in, providing additional income through stimulus checks, unemployment insurance and now the child tax credit became one of the tools that were used.

    “In the financial crisis, Democrats felt as if they ultimately did too little,” Mills said. “Here they’ve decided they want to err on the side of doing too much.”

    That’s not necessarily true of Republicans, who questioned the extra unemployment benefits, which represented the first part of an experiment with universal basic income last March, Mills said.In the financial crisis, Democrats felt as if they ultimately did too little … Here they’ve decided they want to err on the side of doing too much.”

    The party’s stance was complicated by support from former President Donald Trump, a Republican, for providing families with additional income through jobless benefits and stimulus checks.

    “I do expect to see going forward Congressional Republicans having a more traditional Republican view on some of these programs and being less supportive,” Mills said.

    One exception is Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney’s child tax credit proposal, which also calls for providing families with monthly income.

    Now that the experiments have been put in place, one looming question is how long the financial support will last.

    “What we see in D.C. is that, once the toolkit has been expanded, once a federal benefit has been established, it’s very difficult to walk that back,” Mills said.

    One provision most likely to get extended could be the child tax credit, according to Mills. Democrats’ current plan would expand that for just one year.

    “This has all the workings of trying to be a test run for something more permanent,” Mills said. 

    _____

    To see original article please visit: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/25/how-some-families-could-get-more-than-14000-in-new-covid-relief.html

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  • Canadian Green Party leader urges feds to consider universal basic income beyond pandemic

    The Green Party is proposing a basic income model that would give every Canadian a basic revenue source that could cover necessities such as clothing, food and housing.

    By Yasmine Ghania

    Green Party leader Annamie Paul is calling on the federal government to launch discussions on creating a national guaranteed livable income.

    “A guaranteed livable income is almost inevitably going to have to be part of the solution if we’re going to ensure that everyone has a social safety net beneath them,” Paul said at a roundtable discussion Monday with Independent Sen. Kim Pate and co-founder of Revenu de base Québec Jonathan Brun.

    Paul says the pandemic has shed light on the high number of people who would have been struggling to make ends meet — had it not been for emergency benefits.

    There have been almost 10 million Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB) applications since its launch in late September, costing the government $9.88 billion, according to the Canada Revenue Agency, plus millions more applications from its predecessor, the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), as well as other benefits.

    So far, the government has indicated it isn’t itching for a basic income program.

    “It’s not something that we see a path to moving forward with right now,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told a virtual town hall last December.

    Data suggests employment gains made in the fall have been wiped, with the unemployment rate rising to 9.4 per cent — its highest rate since last summer, according to Statistics Canada.

    As the pandemic rages on, Trudeau announced last week that the CRB and the Canada Recovery Caregiving Benefit will be extended by 12 weeks and that Canadians will be able to claim an additional 24 weeks of employment insurance.

    The beefed-up benefits are a “sigh of relief” for Paul, but still not enough. “Now is the time to begin to talk about what is going to replace it,” Paul said.

    For Pate, a basic income is necessary since not everyone is actually eligible for the pandemic supports, leaving some people to still fall through the cracks.

    “They (the federal government) missed about one in seven or one in 10 Canadians,” Pate said. “As well, people who did apply for it but may have been on social assistance or on disability now find themselves being dumped off the system.”

    The Green Party is proposing a basic income model that would give every Canadian a basic revenue source that could cover necessities such as clothing, food and housing.

    Brun says the government should look at basic income as an “investment” that will churn out benefits in the long run.

    “There’s no doubt there will be economic activity, cost savings in terms of criminal justice, health care and other issues,” Brun said.

    Pressure for a basic income program has been mounting for several months. Last April, more than 50 senators signed a letter asking the CERB be turned into a guaranteed basic income program.

    P.E.I. lawmakers are currently eyeing a pilot on the Island, with three senators representing P.E.I. sending a letter to the prime minister and P.E.I. Premier Dennis King last month calling for a pilot project, as well as for the program to be expanded to the entire country in the future.

    Ontario began a pilot program in 2017, however it was scrapped early when Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative Party came into power. Meanwhile, B.C. has said it “would welcome” consultations with the federal government on the matter.

    However, not everyone agrees with this solution. A panel of economists appointed by the B.C. government found that basic income for all Canadians cannot tackle the deeper systematic issues that cause people to be in financial hardship.

    _____

    To see original article please visit: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2021/02/23/green-party-leader-urges-feds-to-consider-universal-basic-income-as-safety-net-beyond-pandemic.html

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  • Worrying about money can have a lasting impact on our mental health

    For so many people, financial insecurity is a constant in their lives, curtailing their life chances and causing chronic stress. As I have argued before, universal basic income could be one way to lift people out of this situation, especially during these days of COVID-19.

    By Matthew Smith Ph.D.

    I have recently been leading a Scottish Universities Insight Institute project to explore universal basic income’s potential to improve mental health. You can learn more about the project here. We’ve run some workshops where we’ve encouraged our participants to talk about how financial insecurity has impacted their mental health. Some of the stories are incredibly powerful and I hope to share them with you soon. But the experience also spurred me to think about times in my life when financial insecurity or other types of insecurity have had an impact on me.

    I didn’t grow up in poverty. But there was a period during my childhood when my dad left a steady job to start a new career, which relied on commission. This was during the mid-1980s, when the economy in Alberta, where I grew up, wasn’t so good. While my dad waited for his new career to take off (which it eventually did), there was a period of a few years where my parents had very little money and had to spend all their savings (including the pension from the steady job my dad had left) in order to stay afloat.  

    My folks did a pretty good job of hiding this from me and my younger sister. But there were signs. 

    For example, I remember always having patches on my jeans. Not just one or two, but up to six on each pair of jeans—patches layered over patches, usually on the knees. I thought this was pretty cool at the time. Looking back, however, I realize that patches were a lot cheaper than a new pair of jeans.

    Probably the most obvious example of our financial problems came in the spring of 1984, when my beloved Edmonton Oilers made it to the Stanley Cup Finals against the dreaded New York Islanders. The week before the series started, one of my sister’s friends was over and accidentally bumped into the back of our television. It fell to the floor and the screen smashed into a million pieces. I begged and begged for a new television so that I could watch the playoffs, but we simply didn’t have the money. I listened to the series on the radio, until the final game when I convinced my parents to let me go over to a neighbor’s to watch (we won, in case you didn’t know!).

    There was another hockey-related clue, too. In western Canada, everyone plays hockey. Even the “nerdy” kids that I hung out with played until they were 11 or 12. Everyone, that is, except me. It was simply too expensive to get me kitted out in pads and skates and drive me around the province. I don’t regret much about my childhood, but I can’t lie that I still wished I’d had the chance to play Canada’s game.  

    And then there were the arguments my parents had. They didn’t happen often, but when they did, they were always about money. Still married after 50 years, I doubt they have had a serious argument since the mid-80s, when our financial situation was so perilous. 

    So, what impact did all this have on my mental health? Not too much, I am glad to say. 

    But it did make me very averse to financial risk, to the point that—when I had the opportunity to change my career by coming to the U.K. and undertaking a Ph.D., I was unwilling to do so if it meant taking on any kind of debt. 

    Luckily I received a studentship and haven’t looked back. But whenever we have had to negotiate our immigrant status here in the U.K., that deep feeling of dread—of everything potentially falling out from under you─returns with a vengeance. It’s not a nice feeling.

    And yet, for so many people, financial insecurity isn’t just a few years in their childhood that they don’t really remember. 

    It is a constant in their lives, curtailing their life chances and causing chronic stress. As I have argued before, universal basic income could be one way to lift people out of this situation, especially during these days of COVID-19.

    At the very least, we should be more honest about the role financial insecurity plays in affecting our mental health.

    _____

    Matthew Smith, Ph.D. is a lecturer Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.

    To see original article please visit: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/short-history-mental-health/202102/stories-financial-insecurity-and-mental-health

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  • Americans still need a lifeline despite trillions in coronavirus aid

    We are public opinion scholars at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. We conducted a survey to try to understand how the first round of aid had affected American families in need. What we found shocked us.

    Article via The Conversation

    As Congress prepares another injection of COVID-19 aid for businesses and individuals, there’s been debate about whether it’s necessary on top of the US$3.5 trillion spent so far.

    President Joe Biden had initially hoped to get bipartisan support for his $1.9 trillion proposal, but the only counteroffer from Republicans was a $600 billion bill, with many in the GOP suggesting more money wasn’t needed. And some economists have expressed concern that giving Americans too much right now could overheat the economy.

    We are public opinion scholars at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. In cooperation with our partners at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and National Public Radio, we conducted a survey in July and August of last year to try to understand how the first round of aid had affected American families in need. What we found shocked us then and feels relevant now as the government negotiates its next steps.

    Despite trillions of dollars in government assistance, about two-thirds of families that suffered job losses or reduced wages during the pandemic still reported facing serious financial hardship.

    Many people were struggling – and still are – just to pay for basic necessities, like food and rent.

    The first round of pandemic aid

    Congress passed most of the initial relief in March, including direct payments to qualifying families, expanded unemployment benefits and loans to small businesses that turned into grants if they kept workers on their payroll.

    By July 1, when we began our survey, most Americans entitled to a direct check should have received it, and unemployed adults were still receiving supplemental aid of $600 a week on top of state benefits.

    We wanted to understand the financial burdens experienced by American families that were economically harmed by the coronavirus pandemic. And we wanted to see whether the government aid was helping the people who needed it most.

    Using a nationally representative, randomized survey design, we contacted 3,454 adults and asked them about the financial problems facing their households.

    We focused on the 46% who said they or other adults in their household either lost a job, had to close a business, were furloughed or had their wages or hours reduced since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. We published our findings in the economic affairs journal Challenge in January.

    Serious financial problems

    While it seems like a no-brainer that Americans weren’t ready for the unexpected employment disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, it was surprising to us that federal aid and charitable assistance seemed to be doing so little to support the people it was intended to help.

    We found that the aid didn’t put much of a dent in the financial problems faced by families earning less than $100,000, whether because relief was delayed or wasn’t spent, the amount wasn’t adequate or the funds never made it to the intended recipients.

    Among households with employment or wage losses during the pandemic, 87% of those earning less than $30,000 a year and 68% of those earning $30,000 to $99,999 told us they were still facing serious financial problems. And more than half of households in these income brackets reported they had already used up all or most of their savings – or they didn’t have savings to begin with. That share jumped to over three-quarters for people with incomes under $30,000.

    Savings take years or decades to accumulate, so it’s likely these households are in even worse trouble now. What’s more, significantly less aid has been provided from the federal government since we conducted our survey.

    Chart: The Conversation, CC-BY-ND Source: Mary G. Findling, Robert J. Blendon and John M. Benson. Get the data

    Many Americans still need a lifeboat

    Our findings suggest there is a definite need for further government aid on a large scale for tens of millions of families.

    A useful way to think about this is how the government provides relief after a natural disaster.

    In disasters, cash payments are often sent directly to those in need, like lifeboats launched to rescue people at risk of drowning.

    And in fact, the pandemic has been an economic disaster for some – particularly low-income and Black and Latino households – more than others. They still need a lifeboat to get them through the storm.

    _____

    To see original article please visit: https://theconversation.com/americans-still-need-a-lifeline-despite-trillions-in-coronavirus-aid-155106

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  • A bill has been introduced in Canada to establish national strategy for a guaranteed basic income

    Bill C-273 is focused on framing, testing and validating different models of UBI implementation to get to real answers and data.

    By Roderick Benns 

    Julie Dzerowicz, Member of Parliament for Davenport, has introduced legislation in the House of Commons that would enable a national strategy for a guaranteed basic income in Canada. 

    This is the first time a bill has been introduced in the House of Commons on guaranteed basic income.    

    If passed, this bill would enable the federal government to establish pilot projects in one or more provinces to test models of implementation of a guaranteed basic income program; create a framework of national standards to guide the implementation of a guaranteed basic income program in any province, and collect data on the impact on government (including responsiveness, cost and reducing the complexity of and/or replacing existing social programs), on recipients, and on recipient communities (including entrepreneurship, job creation and civic action).

    Canada’s current social welfare system was created in the 1970s. No matter how many times it is adjusted still too many people fall through the cracks, says a media release.

    “Canada needs a robust social welfare system that meets the needs of the 21st century worker, that is more flexible and adaptive while being less complex and better at tackling inequality,” says Dzerowicz.

    “It is also important to provide Canadians stability with full and equal access to opportunities so they can be more innovative. I believe that guaranteed basic income could be the key tool that helps deliver on all that and this bill enables us to test it,” she adds.

    The world of work is under constant change with many shifting to the gig economy of temporary and short-term contracts and others are being impacted by the effect of automation and AI. It is important for our social welfare system to better reflect the needs of Canadians for today and tomorrow and to be much more flexible at managing labour changes, disruptions and transitions. Bill C-273 proposes that guaranteed basic income is tested as a model that may deliver more flexibility for the new world of workers.

    Sheila Regehr, Chair, Basic Income Canada Network, says “This bill takes the building blocks of better income security for all Canadians—the experience, evidence, expertise and know-how we possess—and puts the gears in motion to make it happen.”

    BICN is a non-partisan organization that has been working with all parties. This bill, calling for a national strategy, is in line with recommendations in BICN’s brief to the 2021 Pre-Budget Consultations.

    Floyd Marinescu, Executive Director, UBI Works, says “Basic Income could create 300,000-600,000 jobs and add $80B/yr to Canada’s GDP while ensuring we have abolished working poverty.

    “In this period of rapid disruption of work and declining social mobility, basic income defends equality of opportunity and unlocks our ability to take risks: a key factor for improving Canada’s innovation and labour market productivity.”

    As Canada moves its way through this pandemic, it is planning for post- COVID with the intention to spend $70-$100 billion over three years to jumpstart the Canadian economy, it’s the perfect time to fix structural issues, to test innovative ideas, and to build our economic and social foundations back better.

    Canada has been criticized for lagging on innovation and productivity. Strong policies, mechanisms and programs are needed to fully focus on improving our innovative potential including ensuring Canadians have the stability they need in order to innovate and take risks, which guaranteed basic income can provide.

    Basic income experts, academics and thought leaders have made it clear that there is already strong existing information that supports the effectiveness of guaranteed basic income but less so on the best ways or models to implement and deliver it.

    Bill C-273 is focused on enabling the capacity to frame, test and validate different models of implementation to get to those answers and that data.

    This legislation comes as provinces like Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island consider their own basic income pilots.

    “A Guaranteed Basic Income has been bandied about for years and this Bill could provide for the implementation of pilot projects that would allow the collection of data; therefore, decisions could be made on real facts rather than assumptions. I would welcome such a pilot for PEI,” says Wayne Easter, Member of Parliament, Malpeque, Prince Edward Island.

    _____

    To see original article please visit: https://www.basicincomecanada.org/mp_julie_dzerowicz_introduces_private_members_bill_to_establish_national_strategy_for_a_guaranteed_basic_income

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  • Durham Council Member Says City Residents Who Were Formerly Incarcerated Should Receive Guaranteed Incomes

    Durham’s proposal to experiment with a type of universal basic income is moving forward.

    By Thomasi McDonald

    Councilman Mark-Anthony Middleton recently announced a plan to implement a pilot program that will give select residents a guaranteed monthly income. The pilot could include providing 55 formerly incarcerated residents with a guaranteed income of at least $500 a month until the pandemic ends and the city’s economy recovers.

    “After consulting with Durham community stakeholders, other American cities that have embarked on guaranteed income pilots, academic thought leaders, consultants, and city staff, we have made a determination to submit a proposal focusing on individuals that have been justice-involved and are returning to their community post incarceration,” Middleton wrote in an email to the INDY last week.

    “These sisters and brothers very often face dual challenges in employment and housing due to stigma,” he added.

    “Focusing on this population will allow us to help some of our most vulnerable residents and also provide insight into the efficacy of guaranteed income initiatives on targeted populations.”

    Middleton attended virtual meetings with officials from Mayors for a Guaranteed Income and the Stockton Demonstration Project, groups with the goal of encouraging federal legislation for a universal basic income, as well as a meeting with scholars from the University of Pennsylvania. These meetings informed the council’s decision to include those recently released from incarceration; the scholars noted that the “55 participants could potentially have more informational value on the efficacy of the guaranteed income initiatives rather than a randomly selected universe.”

    In January, Mayor Steve Schewel, a member of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, announced that the Bull City was among 30 cities across the country under consideration for a guaranteed basic income for some residents.

    Schewel asked Middleton and Councilman Pierce Freelon to lead Durham’s effort to develop a guaranteed income plan. The first phase of the pilot would likely run for one year. Middleton would like to see the project extend beyond a core group of 55 individuals.

    “I plan to continue my engagement with corporate and philanthropic partners to supplement our expected $500,000 grant in the hope of conducting a pilot that will involve no less than 100 people,” said Middleton.

    “As in all things, the amount of funding will determine the breadth of our reach.”

    Last year, before the city council learned of the grant opportunity, Middleton said, he proposed a $2 million guaranteed basic income trial for Durham “as part of a multi-faceted comprehensive plan to address poverty, policing, and the root causes of our city’s gun violence issue.”

    The proposal was derailed in part due to the economic toll the pandemic has had on the City’s coffers.

     “It was gratifying to learn that what we talk about in our public square here in Durham was being noticed around the country and Mayors for Guaranteed Income came looking for us,” he said.

    “Although we won’t get $2 million, the prospect of being able to put somebody else’s money where our municipal mouth is in the midst of a pandemic is beyond fortuitous.”

    Middleton said on February 5 that the council had unanimously approved a resolution supporting Durham’s efforts to secure funds from Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, made possible by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who announced in December that he had donated $15 million to the group. The funds could provide each of the organization’s 30 partner cities, including Durham, with up to $500,000.

    The resolution states that Durham signed on to the Mayors for a Guaranteed Income pledge and is actively working with community partners.

    City council members went on record in support of a guaranteed income, and the council concluded that it “supports ongoing, direct cash payments throughout the campaign and until our economy recovers.”

    The resolution notes that even before the pandemic, nearly 40 percent of American households could not afford a $400 emergency.

    Moreover, an already growing wealth gap that disproportionately impairs quality of life for women and people of color has been “dramatically exacerbated” by the pandemic.

    The resolution notes that “American cities are laboratories of democracy,” and that mayors across the country have banded together “to address these inequities” and advocate “in favor of cashed-based guaranteed incomes.”

    It also notes that the guaranteed payments have been more effective than unemployment benefits for families of color.

    “The data show that another direct payment would increase Native American, Latinx/Hispanic, and Black family income by 4.1 percent, 3.9 percent, and 3.6 percent respectively, compared to 2 percent of household income for white families,” the resolution states.

    The resolution refutes the idea that a guaranteed income is an incentive for hard-hit citizens to not work—“as demonstrated by the large number of poor people that work every day to provide for their families.”

    Instead, the resolution explains, the intent is to codify “a national value that declares that there exists a floor beneath which we will allow no person to fall simply by virtue of their humanity.”

    Middleton said the council intends to submit its application for the funding within the next two weeks, and that he anticipates launching the pilot by the end of March.

    “I’m very, very, very confident of our chances to get the money to Durham,” Middleton added.

    _____

    Follow Durham Writer Thomasi McDonald on Twitter or send an email to tmcdonald@indyweek.com.

    To see original article please visit: https://indyweek.com/news/durham/durham-city-council-member-mark-anthony-middleton-on-tuesday/

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  • Domestic Violence Is a Pandemic Within a Pandemic. Direct Stimulus Checks Would Help

    One universal truth holds both pre-pandemic and now: The number one obstacle to escaping an abuser is financial insecurity.

    This article contains descriptions and discussion of violence and abuse.

    Opinion by Stacey Rutland, founder of Income Movement

    When I was 7 years old, my mom woke my sister and me in the middle of the night and told us to pack our belongings into the black garbage bags she handed to us. “And be as quiet as you can,” she told us. We were leaving our abusive stepfather for the first of what would become many times. That night, we drove 200 miles to a close family friend who had offered us her living room couch as a safe space to regroup.

    Four years later, the same stepfather left us. After beating our mom, he abandoned us in a home with rent we couldn’t afford without him. It was winter, and our heating bills skyrocketed. Free lunch at school was the primary nourishment for my sister and I during those cold months.

    Over the past months, I have imagined what these two crisis moments for our family would have looked like if there had been a quarantine-in-home order and a pandemic raging across the globe.

    But millions of women and children don’t have to imagine it; they are living it right now, with dire consequences.

    The increased stress that comes from more time spent at home during the pandemic has led to massive spikes in domestic violence, a crime in which women are victims 85% of the time. Early pandemic data shows that in some areas, domestic violence homicides have more than doubled.

    Less alone time has also made it harder for victims to access help, as they are unable to escape the watchful eyes of their abusers (the National Domestic Violence Hotline’s website has a quick-exit button on every page to address this devastating reality).

    But one universal truth holds both pre-pandemic and now: The number one obstacle to escaping an abuser is financial insecurity.

    Our federal leaders have an opportunity in front of them. They can move forward with a standard solution for financial support during this pandemic. Or they can recognize our current reality and build legislation that addresses the needs of those most at risk, those our systems have pushed to the farthest margins. By doing so, they can design a solution that takes care of nearly everyone—including women and children facing quarantine with an abuser.

    What does such a program look like? To combat the financial control abusers exert over domestic violence victims, relief measures should use distribution methods that limit an abuser’s ability to isolate his victims by denying him access to existing bank accounts and credit cards. Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s Automatic Boost to Communities Act outlines the use of pre-loaded debit cards that are unique and specific to stimulus support.

    This means women would receive their own cards with their own money.

    Rep. Tlaib’s proposal outlines distribution of cards via easily accessible public locations, further ensuring funds get into the hands of their intended recipients.

    domestic violence
    A young woman suffering from domestic violence stands alone in the bay window of her home. (Photo by In Pictures Ltd./Corbis via Getty Images)

    Monthly $2,000 checks for the duration of this pandemic would also provide a critical lifeline to victims of domestic abuse. Most abuse survivors have only $250 in savings. These were the findings of a recent report by FreeFrom, a group that focuses on the nexus of intimate partner violence and economic security that has given out thousands of cash grants to survivors throughout the pandemic. Abuse survivors are also four times more likely than the average adult to have faced food or housing insecurity in the past year.

    Survivors report the pandemic has made things worse, from the stress of having fewer financial resources to slowed court proceedings delaying critical income like child support.

    FreeFrom also found that the average survivor needs just $730 right now to stay safe. Stop and think about that for a moment. In a country that can find billions for corporate bailouts and trillions in tax cuts for the wealthy, it is nothing short of shameful to ask women and children to quarantine in abusive conditions for lack of money.

    Instead, what if this economic crisis and health pandemic became an opportunity for women and children to leave a violent situation? What if our leaders wrote legislation that would consider these most vulnerable members of our community?

    What if this pandemic was, instead of a prison sentence for these women, an opportunity for independence and freedom?

    One $2,000 deposit onto an accessible debit card would pull them out of harm’s way. Recurring checks throughout the pandemic would make sure they have the financial security to stay safe and build new lives. And it would help the vast majority of those facing economic precarity during this pandemic as well.

    I know that access to financial resources would have given my mother the ability to leave my stepfather far sooner. I cannot change that for her. But I can fight to make sure that families in the same situation today have the economic security that paves their path to safety.

    I should not be alone in this fight. I urge the Biden administration and Congress to join me and protect our country’s most vulnerable by providing a literal lifeline to those who need it most. Pass legislation for monthly stimulus checks today. Support those who need it most during this devastating time.

    Stacey Rutland is the founder of Income Movement, an organization that’s been at the forefront of the fight for recurring stimulus checks.

    _____

    To see original article please visit: https://www.newsweek.com/domestic-violence-pandemic-within-pandemic-direct-stimulus-checks-would-help-opinion-1570623

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  • Why Walmart’s CEO says Americans urgently need another stimulus check

    By Melissa Repko

    KEY POINTS

    • Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said more customers spent their recent stimulus checks on necessities, such as groceries, rather than big-screen TVs.
    • He said the spending patterns indicate that more families are hurting and need help.
    • The retail chief stressed that message when he met with President Joe Biden last week.

    When Walmart CEO Doug McMillon went to the White House last week, he said he gave a clear message: Americans urgently need another round of stimulus checks.

    Walmart’s stores and websites reflect consumers’ spending patterns, the retail chief said in an interview with CNBC’s Courtney Reagan on “Squawk Alley.” The company could tell when they stocked up on food and cleaning supplies in the early part of the Covid pandemic and gravitated toward bikes, puzzles and hair color as they remained stuck at home.

    When consumers got the most recent stimulus checks at the end of the year, he said a new pattern emerged: more shoppers put the extra dollars toward buying necessities.

    “We can see in our customer behavior that some customers — as they received this most recent stimulus — are spending it more on basics, more on private brands, smaller pack sizes, things like that as opposed to some of the stimulus dollars that came out earlier last year that were spent more like tax rebate checks, where people were buying televisions and things to entertain themselves at home,” he said.

    “There’s a bit of a mix shift now and we think it reflects the fact that customers out there do need some help.”

    McMillon met with President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen last Tuesday, along with JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Gap CEO Sonia Syngal, Lowe’s CEO Marvin Ellison and Tom Donohue of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He said he urged help for American families and small businesses during that meeting.

    Congress and the Biden administration are working on a coronavirus relief bill that could send another direct payment to millions of Americans intended to keep families afloat and help boost an economy hampered by the global health crisis. On Thursday, the Labor Department reported that first-time unemployment filings rose to a total of 861,000 last week. That was higher than the Dow Jones estimate of 773,000.

    The current bill calls for direct payments of $1,400 per individual, or $2,800 per married couple, plus $1,400 for both child and adult dependents — but lawmakers are still hammering out a deal and numbers could change.

    If approved, it would be the third direct payment to Americans since the start of the pandemic and the largest check so far. The government sent payments of up to $1,200 in the spring and another that was up to $600 in December, but the amounts and eligibility were based on a person’s income.

    As a major retailer, Walmart would benefit if customers have more money in their pockets.

    Its chief financial officer, Brett Biggs, told CNBC that its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings got a lift from stimulus payments and it would expect similar results if consumers get another check.

    Yet McMillon said he stressed stimulus checks during his Oval Office visit because of what he has seen and heard at the company’s stores.

    He said some families have increasingly dire financial circumstances as they struggle to find work.

    McMillon said he recently spoke to a customer who was trying to stretch $20 to cover all of his expenses for the last week of the month, from groceries to gas.

    “Those customers are the ones that the stimulus package needs to go help and go help quickly,” he said.

    _____

    — CNBC’s Courtney Reagan contributed to this report.

    To see original article please visit: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/18/why-walmarts-co-says-americans-urgently-need-another-stimulus-check.html

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  • A voice against burying the idea of a basic income for Canadians

    The expert panel would have benefited from a political scientist or, heaven forbid, one or two people actually living in poverty sharing the pen.

    By Hugh Segal

    A recent report of the British Columbia Expert Panel on Basic Income prepared over two years by three economists, two from B.C. and one from Alberta, has given encouragement to long standing opponents of a basic income.

    In some ways, however, the very nature of their sixty-five recommendations for program changes in income security and related programs in B.C. undercuts the anti-basic income orientation of the report itself. The analysis and recommendations of the report do appear to have the authors bumping into themselves while coming around the corner.

    They are right, of course, in one central conclusion: basic income is not affordable by any one province on its own.

    Important pillars of Canada’s poverty reduction program, the Guaranteed Income Supplement for seniors, and the Child Benefit for low-to-modest income families with children are national programs administered by Ottawa. They are successful and efficient — and did not and do not require building new administrative capacity to administer them, now, or in the future — as would be very much the result for the multi-program fix called for by the B.C. expert panel.

    The other rather intriguing conclusion from the content of the report, was the agreement of all three panel members to downplay the value of “autonomy” for those in poverty who might be lifted out of poverty by basic income.

    Better, the report concluded, to shower the poor with a myriad of different programs, each incrementally adjusted or improved over the present version, in the belief that will create the village necessary to help the poor.

    It is the classic government conceit, that if “we build it” they will come — the “they” here being the poor with no other choice.

    Our First Nation brothers and sisters understand the sound of “the crown knows best” trumpet. It is simply a colonialist response that denies poor Canadians the life choices, however modest, that a basic income would provide.

    The B.C. report embraces costing of a basic income with assumptions about the option of sending a cheque to everyone, whether needy or not, and taxing back the excess from those not in need.

    There are few proponents in Canada of this Andrew Yang-style American proposal.

    As is the case with the Guaranteed Income Supplement and the Child Benefit, that has not been the Canadian way. Our tax system is an excellent way of determining need, through the statutory filing we all make, and enhanced automatic filing now being considered by Ottawa.

    The Guaranteed Income Supplement for those over sixty-five is based on the premise that every senior needs around $1,500 monthly ($2,400 for a couple). The gap between what they do have and $1,500 is topped up by the supplement — the opposite of “the same cheque for everyone” as opponents of a basic income allege. Recipients will need different levels of top up, and that is exactly what happens now.

    The B.C. report buries very little of the compelling case for basic income by questioning the improvement in health outcomes that would accompany using a basic income to lift the poor into the mainstream.

    The three economists set aside decades of empirically reviewed literature on the social determinants of health.

    Most disappointed at the report are the members of the B.C. Green party, whose alliance with the New Democrats allowed the Liberal government to be replaced without an election. They sought action on the basic income, as a condition of that alliance.

    The B.C. NDP government may well use the expert panel as a rationale to do little if anything other than tinker incrementally with a myriad of programs.

    Poverty levels in B.C. will not come down as a result of any of report’s recommendations.

    There are lessons here for those who care about government and the quality of expert advice it seeks and, on occasion, receives.

    The expert panel would have benefited from a political scientist or, heaven forbid, one or two people actually living in poverty sharing the pen.

    Even Adam Smith, the market and society theorist from the eighteenth century, whom they cite in their anti-basic income rationale, might well have told them that.

    _____

    To see original article please visit: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2021/02/19/a-voice-against-burying-the-idea-of-a-basic-income-for-canadians.html

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  • Can you excite people about economic reform via a public service ad?

    One woman’s work to get UBI onto the screens and into the hearts of Americans.

    By Diane Pagen

    People who care about winning a Universal Basic Income (UBI) have done many things to push it into the public consciousness and onto the desks of public servants. Over the years, a host of things including flyers, street outreach, interviews, calling elected officials, public art, community groups, conferences, demonstrations, and now many online activities are ways people have worked to move progress on UBI.

    No one ever thought of doing a Public Service Announcement (PSA). Until 2021. Until Gisèle Huff.

    I remember PSAs when I was a kid. They were short and to the point. They helped people understand important community problems, and solutions. They appealed to our desire to be a community. There was one to remind kids to be kind to seniors; one to remind people how to cross the street (“cross at the green, not in-between”); to be a good friend (include the new kid at recess); to pick up your trash (“don’t be a litterbug!”) and to guard against prejudice (we need to bring that one back).

    Gisèle Huff’s project to create a PSA for a Universal Basic Income began more than a year ago. Her late son, Gerald Huff, was a proponent of UBI for many years before his death in 2018.

    The grief Gisèle endured and her desire to continue Gerald’s legacy led to her declaration that she would continue to work for the world Gerald envisioned — one where people’s basic needs were met so they could fully realize their talents and humanity.

    Gisèle established the Gerald Huff Fund for Humanity to advance work toward a national UBI.

    In conversation, she explained to me how she re-connected with one of her late son’s childhood friends, who is now active in public relations and advertising. They talked about her idea for creating a PSA. This led to introductions to a marketing team that was excited to work on a PSA as Gisèle envisioned it.

    The PSA launched Thursday, January 14th and has reached almost 3 million viewers during its broadcast across the digital space, which has included airtime on news organizations sites like The Wall Street Journal, Buzzfeed, Vice and more.

    Who are the target demographics for this PSA? “Young people, and people of modest incomes or low-incomes with children are some of the people who most need to see this and hear its message,” Gisèle said. “Also, people who have so-called ‘good jobs,’ because over the past several decades, job security has eroded. The person with a ‘good job’ is more and more finding themselves on the losing end of the employer-employee equation. A Universal Basic Income will provide the income security that will matter as traditional job security disappears, exacerbated by increasing automation.”

    The second group of people who need to see it, Gisèle explained, are politicians. “Our biggest problem is our leadership. They are stuck in the 20th century and they can’t seem to climb out on their own.” The PSA will help politicians and leaders connect our current economy to the experience of the American people and help them think about “earned” income in new ways.

    “With COVID, workers in low-paying jobs, who were previously thought of as expendable, are now recognized as ‘essential,’’ Gisele continued. “A Universal Basic Income is a great way to recognize worker value with tangible cash to meet their own needs.

    “When we look at our economy in highs and lows, every single person is essential. We need to start demonstrating that we know this through our economic policy.”

    Gisèle is 84, with a lot of lived experience. She emigrated to the U.S. from France as a child with her mother, after living under Nazi occupation during WWII. They came knowing no English and with $400 to their name. From that humble beginning, as Gisèle explains, “it was possible for me to climb the economic ladder as the epitome of the American Dream.”

    “Back then, the economy was very different. A worker was able to advance with relative security. I was able to succeed in that economy. But we are telling today’s workers a lie — that that model of work and economic reward is still the foundation of America’s economy. It isn’t that way anymore.”

    Despite the disastrous toll that COVID-19 has had on the world economy, there continue to be those in power who insist the traditional job market is still intact. Resistance to cash relief by some in Congress is proof that many leaders are so detached from ordinary people that they do not see the economy clearly. The PSA invites people to undergo a “mind shift” in how they think of their own worth, and the worth of everyone else, friends, neighbors, even strangers.

    The PSA says simply that Universal Basic Income is the way forward for American society.

    “We must communicate that the way to show that our society is really one that values people is to legislate it,” said Gisèle, “with a Universal Basic Income.”

    _____

    Diane Pagen is a published author, activist and social worker in New York City. She led Basic Income NYC for years and helped found the Basic Income March.

    To see original article please visit: https://income-movement.medium.com/can-you-excite-people-about-economic-reform-via-a-public-service-ad-59b45a0a388a

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  • Andrew Yang’s ‘People’s Bank’ to Help Distribute Basic Income to Half a Million New Yorkers

    “I wake up and I feel privileged that I may have a positive impact on the lives of other people,” said Yang on Wednesday.

    By Jenni Fink

    Andrew Yang, the front-runner in the race for New York City’s next mayor, announced the creation of the People’s Bank of New York City, which, if he wins, will be responsible for distributing cash payments to some New Yorkers.

    Along with its distribution of a basic income, the People’s Bank of New York City is intended to help underserved communities. Yang’s goal is to use the People’s Bank to expand access to bank accounts and help entrepreneurs who may be overlooked at other financial institutions.

    “I wake up and I feel privileged that I may have a positive impact on the lives of other people,” Yang said Wednesday.

    “I wake up pumped up about what I can do to help our city get back on our feet. If that’s not motivating I don’t know what is.”

    Undocumented immigrants can face barriers to opening bank accounts if they don’t have a Social Security number or an individual taxpayer identification number. Yang said the People’s Bank of New York will allow people to open accounts with an IDNYC card.

    A recognized form of ID for interacting with the New York Police Department and providing identity for employment, that card is available to all New Yorkers over the age of 10, regardless of immigration status. Select banks in New York City already accept the card for opening accounts.

    The People’s Bank of New York will also provide microloans to small-business owners who are “being overlooked by traditional banks.” The goal is to get “startup capital” to people of color who often launch businesses on a significantly lower budget than white business owners do.

    “Starting on a shoestring budget makes it much more difficult to turn a profit in good times, let alone survive the economic shocks wrought by something like COVID-19,” Yang said.

    “We need a People’s Bank to ensure that our small businesses are given the chance to succeed with affordable capital and a patient lender when they need it most.”

    A universal basic income was a staple of Yang’s presidential run, and he carried the idea over to the mayoral race. Under his plan, half a million New Yorkers with the “greatest need” would be eligible to receive an average of $2,000 per year, with the cash transferred directly from the People’s Bank into their accounts each month.

    The goal is to “end extreme poverty” in the city, and Yang said it would help decrease costs in other areas.

    It’s a $1 billion per year investment, but he left the door open for the program to expand as time goes on.

    “As studies of basic income programs have shown, lifting people up from the depths of poverty increases mental and physical health while decreasing crime,” Yang’s campaign website says.

    “By reducing crime, hospital visits, and homelessness, this basic income program will decrease the costs associated with these social ills and allow the cash relief program to grow over time.”

    On Sunday, Yang hit the donation threshold necessary to qualify for taxpayer matching funds, at a rate of 8-to-1 for small contributions. Yang is the fourth person to meet the requirement, and his campaign told Politico the average contribution amount is $84.

    A poll from Fontas Advisors and Core Decision Analytics released February 10 put Yang at the front of the pack of contenders for New York City mayor. At 28 percent, he’s 9 points ahead of Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams. City Comptroller Scott Stringer came in third at 13 percent. Adam Rosenblatt, president of Core Decision Analytics, said in a statement that name recognition is likely helping the top three contenders, but that could change because the “vast majority” of voters are unfamiliar with other candidates.

    Yang, who first moved to New York City when he was 21, said he was running for mayor because he saw a crisis and believes he can help.

    “New York City is at a crossroads, and the election of the new mayor will be a pivotal milestone in our recovery from the pandemic and the resulting economic devastation,” George Fontas, founder and CEO of Fontas Advisors, said in a statement.

    _____

    To see original article please visit: https://www.newsweek.com/andrew-yangs-peoples-bank-help-distribute-basic-income-55k-new-yorkers-1569999

    The post Andrew Yang’s ‘People’s Bank’ to Help Distribute Basic Income to Half a Million New Yorkers appeared first on Basic Income Today.

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  • New York’s Ulster County to provide $500 a month for one year to 100 families

    Ulster County Executive Patrick Ryan, Tuesday, announced major programs aimed at helping families get back on their feet as the county and the rest of the world continue their fight against the coronavirus pandemic and its impacts on health and the economy.

    Ryan’s Universal Basic Income Pilot Program will provide $500 per month for an entire year to 100 families.

    “By teaming up with one of the world’s leaders on UBI, we can start to better understand what $500 a month for an entire year will mean for a single parent, a recent SUNY Ulster graduate, or a member of our senior community,” he said in his 12-minute pre-recorded message delivered in the Senate Garage in Kingston.

    The county will become one of the first in the country to undertake such a large universal basic income pilot program, all funded through community donations.

    The effort will be a partnership with Project Resilience, the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Guaranteed Income, Community Foundations of the Hudson Valley, and Ulster Savings Bank.

    Ryan also announced his Green New Deal with three initiatives to “simultaneously protect our environment and boost our economy.”

    The Ulster County Green Business Champions program to “mobilize businesses to take climate action and make their business greener, and to recognize businesses who are already leading in these efforts.”

    The program will provide support to businesses in planning and implementing green investments including improved energy efficiency and using renewable energy.”

    Solarize Ulster will “accelerate local renewable energy generation through community solar production and distribution.”

    And, the Green Careers Academy will be expanded to provide “a more robust pipeline to help put people back to work post-pandemic in the rapidly expanding green jobs sector.”

    The program, which was founded in 2019 in partnership with SUNY Ulster, will be expanded to include Ulster BOCES, Bard College, Cornell Cooperative Extension, Central Hudson, Citizens for Local Power, Habitat for Humanity, the Climate Reality Project, and several Local labor unions “to help train residents and help them secure good-paying green jobs.”

    _____

    To see original article please visit: https://midhudsonnews.com/2021/02/17/ryan-outlines-bold-new-programs-in-2021-state-of-county-address/

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  • Opinion: One-off stimulus checks are so 19th Century: Give Americans automatic, recurring, electronic cash

    Recurrent, direct payments should be a permanent part of the U.S. recession-fighting arsenal.

    Opinion by Mark Blyth

    Early in the COVID-19 pandemic last year, just one month after dropping out of the U.S. presidential race, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) took a clear and bold stance for families:

    $2,000 monthly checks until the crisis is over.

    Sanders’s fight for direct checks is right, as checks are a much needed lifeline for families in the midst of the COVID-induced recession. But there’s more that must be done.

    So let’s ask the bigger questions here. Why on Earth in the year 2021 are we relying on checks? And why do we have a political bun-fight over this issue every time it happens?

    First, checks. Really? Practically every American has a smartphone. There are tons of banking apps from Paypal to Zelle to Venmo. The U.S. Treasury has a website called Treasury Direct that allows anyone to set up an account to buy Treasury bills and bonds.

    The government could simply reverse the direction of those transactions and send cash from the Treasury to those account holders.

    No holdups in the mail. No missing addresses. Best of all, we could make it recurring. 

    We have all heard about the “K-shaped” economic recovery that the U.S. is experiencing. The top 20% of U.S. society commands 80% of the wealth. Whenever that is threatened by a market crash or a pandemic, the Fed swings into action to provide “support” for those markets. What that really means is buying lots of bonds and flooding banks and businesses with cash to stabilize them. The Fed can even promise to buy certain types of assets, such as corporate bonds, to stabilize their price.

    The Fed is able to do this because its “pipes” flow from the Fed to the big banks and then out to big firms. The Treasury, what the rest of us rely on, has no pipes, hence the checks.

    This is not only unfair — boosting the price of assets held by society’s richest citizens while telling the vast majority to wait for a check is a first-rate inequality booster.

    It’s also harmful and needlessly expensive. Recognizing this, we should rethink our financial plumbing and the purpose of our pandemic response. Not just for this crisis, but for the future. 

    Let’s start with the basics. Can we please stop calling them stimulus checks? That makes them sound like a party drug. They are not. They are better thought of as insurance checks. Why? Because by insuring families against job and income loss, you stop an already bad recession from becoming a deeper crisis.

    It simply makes sense to insure society against depressions and families against bankruptcies. 

    Second, rather than pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into the banking and corporate sectors, somehow hoping that this will impact employment, let’s make these insurance payments electronic, automatic and targeted at families up to the 60th percentile of the income distribution.

    Congress can set an employment target such that when U.S. unemployment reaches a certain level the Treasury automatically sends out checks. When the target goes back to its pre-recession peak, the checks automatically stop. This would impact families directly, and given that they will spend what they receive it will not all end up pumping up an asset bubble and ever greater inequality with it. This would be far cheaper than what we currently do and far more effective. It would give the Fed less to do and target Treasury resources far more effectively. Worried about cost or even future inflation? Easy. Once we return to the target, raise taxes. Both problems are solved. 

    Direct payments to families are effective. The first check issued in the spring of 2020 was a primary reason that U.S. poverty fell at the start of the recession.

    But as the money ran out, up to 8 million people were forced into poverty. As chair of the Senate Budget Committee, Sanders has the opportunity to continue to lead the fight to get money to those most impacted by the pandemic — and make sure it continues until the crisis is over.

    But Sanders should push his Senate colleagues and President Joe Biden to make recurrent electronic payments to the bottom 60% of American families a permanent part of the U.S. recession-fighting arsenal. This is the 21st Century, so why are we using a 19th Century technology (the check) to fight today’s economic problems? That’s politics — and it’s politics America can do without. 

    _____

    Mark Blyth is the William R. Rhodes ’57 Professor of International Economics; The Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, at Brown University.

    To see original article please visit: https://time.com/5933102/stimulus-checks-pandemic-over/

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  • UBI’s Lessons for Redesigning Canada’s Social Welfare System

    UBI, at its core, is an unconditional cash transfer that guarantees a livable income regardless of work status. This differs from Canada’s current philosophy on welfare, which disincentivizes individuals from receiving financial support.

    Opinion by Sarah Thomas and Daniela Garabito

    In almost every aspect, 2020 has interrupted the global status quo and demanded innovative solutions. This includes Canada’s welfare system, which saw the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) sidestep the heavily regulated and selective income relief system in just a few clicks. Likened to a Universal Basic Income (UBI), the CERB propelled alternative welfare models back into the mainstream. UBI’ was one of the biggest buzzwords of 2020, but debate surrounding the welfare system has existed for decades among academics and politicians. While British Columbia’s recent report on UBI did not ultimately advocate for the model’s adoption, it highlighted how we can draw on elements of UBI to improve Canada’s current welfare system. 

    UBI is often dismissed as a delusionary concept advocated by the extreme left. Yet this assumption frequently stems from misconceptions about what a UBI is.

    Multiple interpretations of UBI exist, which each conceptualize how a UBI should be modeled, and what the benefit levels should be, very differently. UBI can take many different names, such as a “basic income guaranteed”, “guaranteed livable income”, and “minimum income”, which hints that there may be subtle differences between them.

    This article refers to a UBI which, at its core, is an unconditional cash transfer that guarantees a livable income regardless of work status. This differs from Canada’s current philosophy on welfare, which disincentivizes individuals from receiving financial support.

    Existing theories on UBI also disagree on the cost and administration of such schemes depending on what form they take, such as a universal demogrant or a Negative Income Tax (NIT). 

    Under the NIT model, individuals lacking a steady source of income would receive the maximum benefit. As earnings from other sources increase, the benefit is decreased by a proposed tax back rate per dollar earned until the benefit is reduced to zero. This type of model is not foreign to Canada, as the Guaranteed Income Supplement essentially acts as a negative income tax targeted towards seniors. On the other hand, a universal demogrant provides a cash transfer to all citizens regardless of income. The Old Age Security credit is an example of a universal demogrant also specific to seniors, which is taxed back later from higher-income earners. This approach, which does not use means-testing, often generates the high up-front costs that can make a UBI appear wildly unaffordable.

    While implementing a UBI would not be a quick fix to alleviating poverty, the current patchwork of Canada’s social assistance programs has been failing to help those most in need for decades.

    In 2018, approximately 3.2 million Canadians lived below the poverty line. While many are caught by existing social safety nets, the vague requirements of these programs, which are also subject to personal biases, often cause many Canadians to fall through the cracks.

    Though social assistance regulations differ across provinces, their administrative frameworks remain relatively the same; applicants are subject to asset limits, which are the threshold of resources individuals may own and still be eligible for income assistance. Unfortunately, low liquid asset limits, such as the  $300 threshold for a single employable person in the Northwest Territories, restrict recipients’ abilities to save enough to become independent of income support.

    UBI skeptics typically raise concerns surrounding work disincentives, but current social assistance can be just as discouraging. In Quebec, a couple with two children receiving social assistance can only obtain $300 of net earnings before their benefits are reduced by a dollar for each additional dollar earned.

    Unless a recipient is deemed to have a disability, income support is almost always contingent on proof of work search. This requirement excludes Canadians struggling with mental illness or addiction, those with young dependents, and those engaged in full-time unpaid work such as caregiving.

    In British Columbia, single parents are considered “employable” when their youngest child is just three years old. 

    Despite MP Leah Gazan’s motion last August to make CERB a “permanent guaranteed income,” Canada will likely not adopt the model in the foreseeable future. This is not to say that there hasn’t been enough serious thought from politicians about UBI. In fact, a UBI pilot occurred in Manitoba in the 1970s  and again in Ontario in 2017. The 2017 pilot saw working-age participants receive monthly payments equivalent to 75 percent of the low-income measure, reduced by fifty-cents for every dollar of employable income earned.

    Both pilots showed positive impacts on the health, education, employment, and financial stability of participants. 

    However, a 2018 report by the Parliamentary Budget Office estimated that the cost of the Ontario pilot on a national scale would reach $76.0 billion in 2018-2019 and nearly $79.5 billion by 2022-2023. While the report estimates the 2018 net costs could be reduced to $44 billion if the program replaces other federal income supports, this remains a deterrent for most policymakers. Additionally, a federal UBI would require buy-in from every province, as welfare services fall under provincial jurisdiction. Such a drastic rebuild of Canada’s welfare system is unlikely, but understanding the beneficial aspects of a UBI could play an important role in improving what currently exists. 

    Unlike existing social assistance programs, UBI has lower barriers to entry and administrative costs thanks to its unconditional nature. Many social programs require extensive documentation to prove continued eligibility, which poses a great time-cost for applicants. For example, the Ontario Disability Support (ODS) requires beneficiaries to report their net income every month and submit pay stubs and receipts for verification, leading ODS employees to process nearly 35,000 documents per day. With research supporting that time spent navigating bureaucratic barriers exacerbates poverty, it is crucial to implement a program that eases paperwork requirements by having less stringent eligibility conditions.

    Contrary to Employment Insurance, a UBI protects gig economy workers, who account for 8-10% of Canadian workers, against involuntary job loss. Gig workers were only protected under the CERB, which was a merely temporary measure.

    By determining eligibility based on income, rather than working conditions, UBI eliminates Employment Insurance gaps and is better adapted to the modern labor economy.  

    In addition to protecting all workers, UBI differs from other welfare programs in that it ends, rather than perpetuates, the cycle of poverty. Current government assistance places stringent conditions on how recipients must pay back and utilize the aid they receive. The high tax on earned income for social assistance recipients constrains their ability to take risks, like searching for more rewarding employment opportunities or starting entrepreneurial ventures. In some provinces, it is also very difficult to combine social assistance with student grants and loans, which limits recipients’ ability to pursue educational opportunities that would expand their job prospects. 

    With few limitations on how the cash transfer can be spent or combined, UBI allows recipients to invest in their education or find more rewarding employment opportunities. This was shown in the 2017 Ontario trial, where the provision of a basic income encouraged many participants to leave low-paying jobs and take risks to reshape their careers.

    In fact, a third of those that responded to the post-pilot survey shifted to higher-paying opportunities, and one-quarter enrolled in educational programs. 

    Finally, UBI diverges from existing programs in that it aims to provide recipients with a livable income, rather than a minimal cash transfer that fails to cover their basic needs. In Ontario, for instance, a single employable person would have been granted a maximum annual income of $8,796  under existing programs, well below Toronto’s $24,163 Market Based Measure (MBM), which reflects the cost of basic goods and services. In contrast, the 2017 pilot provided single participants living in select Southern Ontario municipalities with $16,989 — double the previous amount.

     Policymakers should consider including several of UBI’s characteristics in the redesign of Canada’s social welfare programs. UBI involves a simpler bureaucratic framework than existing welfare schemes and incorporates more inclusive eligibility conditions. UBI is also better adapted to the modern labor market, providing critical income support to gig economy workers.

    Lastly, unlike existing social assistance programs, UBI’s unconditional cash transfer allows participants to escape the cycle of poverty.

    Although B.C.’s report found UBI unsuitable to target the diverse needs of the province’s residents, this innovative scheme offers an alternate welfare model based on accessibility, unconditionality, and simplicity that policymakers can learn from.

    _____

    To see original article please visit: https://mcgillbusinessreview.com/articles/let-them-eat-cake-ubis-lessons-for-redesigning-canadas-social-welfare-system

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  • Americans Need Recurring Stimulus Checks Until the Pandemic Is Over

    Giving people money is a proven, fast, equitable strategy to spur economic recovery. The truth is, we need recurring stimulus checks in addition to established progressive policies.

    Opinion by Natalie Foster

    The hole America faces is deep and getting deeper every day as COVID-19 cases mount and the economy struggles to restart. Which is why Washington must think bigger for the recovery package. The biggest danger right now is doing too little, rather than too much. President Biden’s leadership on bold relief comes at a crucial time.

    The idea of $2,000 stimulus checks has exploded in popularity over the past few months. Georgia Senators Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock ran, and won, in large part on checks. President Joe Biden committed to introducing legislation for additional direct payments to families.

    While a one-time stimulus check is critical to help people in the midst of the pandemic, for a real and sustainable recovery, we’ll need recurring checks until the crisis is over.

    Giving people money is a proven, fast, equitable strategy to spur economic recovery. The truth is, we need recurring stimulus checks in addition to established progressive policies—like unemployment insurance and the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit—that uplift all Americans, especially communities of color, until this pandemic is over.

    The jobs crisis is severe and worsening: According to recent data, US employers cut 140,000 jobs in December. All were held by women, while men gained employment. On top of that, women ended 2020 with 5.4 million fewer jobs than they had in February, before the pandemic began, while men lost 4.4 million jobs over that same time period.

    And beneath this gender disparity was another problematic difference in job loss; Black and Latinx workers lost more jobs in December than their white counterparts. That’s a major blow, considering that Black and Latinx households are twice as likely to have difficulty paying their bills. They also face higher levels of food insecurity, COVID-19-related mortality, and business closures than their white counterparts.

    Families experiencing economic hardship need relief that is both fast—the IRS can get money into most Americans’ bank accounts in a matter of days—and sustained. Bills keep coming, and the checks need to keep coming too: Data suggests the CARES Act checks ran out for many families after a couple of months. The programs we already have are essential to expand but we need to do more — and faster. Expanding unemployment insurance essential, lifesaving for workers who get it, but it’s not reaching most of the people who have lost income. Urban Institute estimates​ that regular checks could keep 3.5x more people out of poverty than unemployment insurance alone. In other words, while these essential programs complement direct checks, they are not alternatives.

    Alongside unemployment insurance, a relief proposal at the scale of the crisis should include the promised $2,000 check, followed by additional checks of $1,000 or more, monthly or at least quarterly, until employment approaches pre-pandemic levels. We can target this relief to families who need it and will spend it – to help those who are struggling and drive the recovery.

    The Urban Institute research shows that just one more $1,200 stimulus check could keep 8 million Americans out of poverty, while two more checks could save 14 million from falling into poverty.

    Imagine what monthly checks could do for struggling American families. Direct checks targeted to the bottom income earning half of households would also ensure those same families aren’t left behind, and would disproportionately benefit Black and Brown families hit hardest.

    If relief is big enough, Brookings analysis confirms, direct payments would have a greater impact on our GDP in the immediate term than many other major policies under consideration.

    We’ve learned this lesson before. The Obama-era 2009 Recovery Act was too small, and a decade later many Americans still struggled. Many economists agree that the Recovery Act fell short of delivering a speedy recovery and the decisive political win that would have come with it, because it wasn’t sustained enough or visible enough to everyday Americans (and thus was often viewed as a corporate bailout).

    President Biden appears to understand: we must avoid that mistake this time and “failure to do so will cost us dearly.” Checks make government support visible to Americans. We must not underestimate the power of putting money in people’s pockets at a time when so many are barely scraping by.

    The economic conditions facing most Americans are getting worse, not better. We should target checks to those who need help most and who will spend it to spur the economic recovery. But a one-time check will only last people a couple of months, at most. To truly build back better, we need recurring payments until the crisis is over. People who are going without food, medicines and electricity cannot afford to be held hostage to political games in Washington. They need steady and regular relief, and it is the duty of our president and Congress to provide it to them. It’s good economics and the moral thing to do.

    _____

    Foster is the co-founder and co-chair of the Economic Security Project, an organization focused on cash-based policies, guaranteed income and curbing corporate power.

    To see original article please visit: https://time.com/5933102/stimulus-checks-pandemic-over/

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  • The Pandemic is Giving Americans a Chance to Fix Its Welfare State

    Maybe such fat checks wouldn’t have been as necessary if the country had a more robust support system for its people.

    Opinion by Noah Smith

    Americans are strongly in favor of a very large Covid-19 relief bill. It seems likely that this enthusiasm reflects more than just anxiety over the pandemic; many Americans are fed up with decades of a stingy welfare state, and in this crisis they finally see an opportunity to make back some lost ground.

    A recent report by McKinsey & Co. found that countries that generally spend less on social welfare ended up increasing their government spending by more during the pandemic. A look at the data shows this relationship fairly clearly:

    Source: OurWorldinData.org

    The Anglosphere countries — the U.S., U.K., Australia and Canada — tend to do substantially less social spending than European countries like France, Germany and Sweden in normal times. But the U.S., UK, and Canada boosted their spending much more in 2020 than those other countries (Australia did less, but probably just because it wasn’t hit as hard by the virus).

    Thus, the pandemic relief package was so big precisely because it had to be — there was not as much of a pre-existing safety net to catch Americans when they lost income due to the pandemic.

    Not surprisingly, a recent Quinnipiac Poll showed 68% in support of President Joe Biden’s new $1.9 trillion relief proposal.

    The most popular spending measure, according to a recent YouGov survey, is the broadest one: a one-time payment of $2,000 per family member. Biden’s actual proposal calls for an additional $1,400 on top of the $600 already allocated in the December relief bill.

    Although some on the political left are demanding much more, $2,000 per person is actually a lot of money. Real income per capita in 2020 was only $2,300 lower than in 2019. Thus, a $2,000 payout to every person in America, combined with the previous $1,200 payout in the Cares Act, would more than cancel out the entire 2020 income loss from the pandemic, on average.

    Of course that’s just an average. Many people have suffered far worse drops in income, usually as a result of unemployment. But remember that the cash handouts are far from the only form of relief.

    There’s also the special pandemic unemployment benefit, which was so generous that poverty actually fell during the darkest early days of the pandemic. There were also supports for businesses to keep workers on payroll, as well as various other forms of aid. Globally, the U.S. has been above average in its generosity with overall aid during the pandemic, and Biden’s bill would move us further up the rankings.

    The very generosity of the Cares Act seems to have awakened something in the American psyche. It was the most transformative, effective government social program since the creation of Medicare in 1966. And it was so simple: the government just gave people a bunch of cash. It appears to have vindicated the refrain of those who have been calling for the U.S. to increase the welfare state by adding direct cash benefits rather than expanding the typical thicket of vouchers and conditional aid.

    People want more.

    After decades of cuts to welfare programs, austerity in the middle of recessions, and hectoring lectures about how the American people don’t deserve government bailouts, the Covid-19 relief effort has finally helped Americans to realize that the government can just send them cash, and that this makes their life better.

    They’re not ready to stop at a measly $1,200.

    And yet while helpful in the short run, cutting Americans $2,000 checks won’t fix the underlying problem of the welfare state. If the U.S. is going to add cash benefits to the current mix of government rograms, it needs to add them on an ongoing basis. This is what Biden’s child tax credit proposal and Senator Mitt Romney’s even more generous counter-proposal are all about.

    Though it’s not quite a universal basic income, these cash payments — $3,000 to $4,200 per year for each child in a family — would be very widely targeted.

    They represent the country’s best shot at the dream of a bigger but simpler welfare state. So one-time $2,000 checks are fine, but child tax credits would be a much more enduring way of giving Americans a boost.

    _____

    To see original article please visit: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-10/covid-stimulus-shows-the-inadequacy-of-america-s-welfare-state

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  • What happens when all the rent comes due?

    “An eviction is not a single event in a person’s life. It actually changes the trajectory of a life, because it has such catastrophic implications for fiscal and mental health.”

    By Andrew Khouri

    Millions of Americans unable to pay their rent during the pandemic face a snowballing financial burden that threatens to deplete their savings, ruin their credit and drive them from their homes.

    A patchwork of government action is protecting many of the most financially strapped tenants for now. But it could take these renters — especially low-income ones — years to recover, even as the rest of the economy begins to rebound.

    “Even if they say we can pay [missed rent] back in two or three years — that’s money we don’t have,” said Kelly Wise, a 32-year-old resident of L.A.’s Westlake neighborhood.

    After losing jobs selling merchandise at concerts and cutting fabric for Hollywood sets, she is more than $10,000 behind on rent.

    Debt threatens to hit renters in several ways. Some have kept up with their rent payments but have turned to credit cards and high-interest loans. Others owe mounting bills directly to landlords that must be paid back when eviction moratoriums expire, opening the possibility — if the debt goes unpaid — for evictions and court orders for back rent. That could erode credit scores and lead to wage garnishments and more.

    “We are setting up millions of people for long-term harm and a cycle of economic and housing instability,” said Emily Benfer, chair of the American Bar Assn.’s COVID-19 Task Force Committee on eviction.

    Renters across the nation are dipping into 401(k)s, taking on higher-interest debt, and scrambling for risky, essential-worker jobs to pay the rent. Research from Moody’s Analytics and the Urban Institute estimates 9.4 million U.S. renter households owed an average of $5,586 in back rent, utilities and related late fees as of January, for a total burden of $52.6 billion.

    Other estimates show a smaller but still significant amount of rent debt. The full scope of the problem isn’t clear because the situation is fluid, and estimates so far are based on surveys and models, rather than hard data.

    “[Bad] debt affects your credit score, and credit scores affect everything in your life,” said Yuval Yossefy, a manager at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, a nonprofit law firm.

    Federal, state and local officials are grappling with how best to help people stay afloat — including keeping them housed — amid job losses, slashed incomes and pervasive disease. A second year of the COVID-19 pandemic has brought little reprieve, with new variants of the coronavirus threatening to accelerate the virus’ spread and cause longer disruptions to the economy and everyday life.

    States are planning to get federal aid funds, which have begun to flow, into the hands of landlords to reduce the debt load on tenants. California, where median rent is 50% higher than in the nation at large, has passed what state leaders characterize as the strongest statewide measures to address the crisis, providing a potential model for how states could distribute rent funds.

    The California measures, approved by the Legislature last week, extend a statewide moratorium on evictions for people with pandemic hardships through June.

    Significantly, they bar landlords from using rent debt accrued between March 2020 and June of this year to deny future housing — a nod to fears that unpaid rent may affect people’s housing for years to come.

    And to protect the most vulnerable, they establish a program that uses federal stimulus money to encourage landlords to forgive debt accrued by low-income tenants over the span of a year: April 2020 to March of this year.

    Whether California landlords opt in, exactly how the program will be implemented, and if it will make a significant difference for those most in debt are still open questions. Nonprofit groups that work with low-income renters say the measures could be hard to enforce and, in terms of altogether forgiving some debt, rely precariously on optional landlord participation.

    Eviction and debt can make it difficult to find new housing, take out loans, get some types of jobs or budget for necessities like food. In California, where rent was unaffordable for most tenants to begin with, the debt pile-on compounds a long-brewing problem.

    Illustration: a man and a woman weighed down by balls and chains representing their debt.


    “A family that makes less than $30,000 a year, they are going to be on the verge of homelessness for the next 10 to 15 years because of this huge debt,” said Ana Grande, associate executive director of the nonprofit Bresee Foundation in Los Angeles, which provides assistance to low-income families.

    Making matters worse: Studies show those with debt are least likely to afford it — even if they regain their old incomes. Compared with all L.A. County renters, households that earned less than $25,000 in 2019 were more than twice as likely as all renters to not pay their rent during the pandemic, according to a joint USC-UCLA survey. Households that earned between $25,000 and $50,000 were the second most common group to report not paying.

    Nonpayment was also highest among Latino and Black Americans who, compared with white Americans, have been hit harder by the health and economic effects of the virus. They are also less likely to have family who can lend financial help given the country’s long-running racial wealth gap.

    An eviction ‘changes the trajectory of a life’

    Across the country, a series of problems can unfurl from a single eviction.

    Some landlords refuse to take tenants with an eviction on their record, while those who do are likely to charge more, fail to keep up their properties and have units located in dangerous neighborhoods, according to housing attorneys and other experts.

    Studies have found people who are evicted are more likely to experience depression and to die of any cause. People move far from their support networks, or miss work while trying to find new housing and lose their jobs. Kids fall behind at school.

    “An eviction is not a single event in a person’s life,” Benfer said. “It actually changes the trajectory of a life, because it has such catastrophic implications for fiscal and mental health.”

    In a pandemic, experts say an eviction is particularly dangerous, leading a person to double up with friends and family in crowded housing situations that accelerate the virus’ spread.

    Absent an eviction on a person’s record, debt and poor credit scores can impede the ability to find housing, often leaving people to live in lower-quality conditions, said Ariel Nelson, an attorney with the National Consumer Law Center.

    Poor credit scores also limit the ability to take out car, home and other loans at reasonable interest rates, putting homeownership further out of reach.

    Past-due debts on a credit report may lead some employers to turn down a candidate for jobs that involve handling money, such as a bank teller or a cashier at a restaurant, said Bruce McClary, spokesperson for the National Foundation for Credit Counseling.

    If debts continue to go unpaid, creditors can garnish wages, though restrictions exist on how much disposable income creditors can take.

    To preempt this, people might dip into savings or cut back on food. They may take out the only loans available to them: sky-high-interest products that critics say are nearly impossible to pay back.

    Some tenants have already headed down the debt spiral.

    The USC-UCLA study found 8.5% of surveyed tenants paid some rent with a credit card in July, compared with 3% normally. Nearly 8% used a payday or other emergency loan.

    An out-of-work graduate student in Lakewood told The Times she requested and got a budget increase for her student loan to pay rent, adding to her total student loan load. A laid-off worker in the concert industry said they used a 401(k) loan. Some people interviewed said they had already dipped into their savings.

    Lamonte Goode, a 44-year-old dancer, says he may tap his savings to begin paying the roughly $10,000 in back rent he owes. With COVID-19 restrictions halting TV shows and theater performances, Goode said he hadn’t found steady work since March and was looking for a job outside his field to pay bills. Unemployment hasn’t been enough to cover expenses, including the $1,800-a-month rent on his one-bedroom in West Hollywood, he said.

    Asked if he thought he would be able to repay the debt, Goode said he didn’t know and that he was trying hard to come up with the money. He also raised the question: Should the burden fall on him?

    “I am not the reason COVID is happening. Yet I still have to pay the debt for something I am not in control over.”

    “The fact that someone lost their job and couldn’t keep up on rent is a very unique and extreme circumstance and does not and should not have a bearing on their creditworthiness for this next almost-decade,” said Nisha Kashyap, a staff attorney at the pro bono law firm Public Counsel, citing how long bad debts typically stay on a credit report.

    “This is a global pandemic that came out of nowhere.”

    Sid Lakireddy of the California Rental Housing Assn., which represents landlords in the state, says he believes fears of mass evictions and long-term harm to credit are overblown.

    Most landlords would rather work with their tenants on repayment plans than fight in court over an eviction or debt, he said, particularly since vacancies have risen in many cities. “The last thing we want is to put a good tenant out on the street.”

    The federal government and state and local officials say they are trying to help both tenants and small landlords, who are also struggling.

    Then-President Trump signed a bipartisan stimulus bill in December that approved $25 billion in rent and utility relief funds nationwide. President Biden extended the national eviction moratorium for people with pandemic hardships until the end of March, though critics say that ban is weak.

    The new California law is stronger and contains provisions to reduce the likelihood that pandemic debt will have wide ripple effects.

    Under the law, landlords cannot sell or assign any rent debt accrued during the pandemic until July 2021.

    Russ Heimerich, a spokesman for the state’s Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency, said the law goes even further for low-income tenants with pandemic hardships: It forever bars landlords from selling rent debt accrued through June.

    That would prevent a primary way credit scores could take a hit, since it’s usually debt collectors rather than landlords who report to the credit bureaus, said Nelson, the attorney.

    Heimerich said the law also included several incentives for landlords to participate in the rent relief program for low-income tenants, and that making it mandatory would have been legally impractical.

    Still, critics of the law say it relies too much on tenants knowing their rights and having the means to exercise them, putting the least-resourced in a weak position to benefit.

    Some tenants have already been evicted, said Stephano Medina, an attorney with the Eviction Defense Network, during a recent news conference held online by tenant advocates on their concerns about the law.

    Moratoriums don’t stop landlords from filing cases, and tenants sometimes don’t realize they need to show up in court to defend themselves, Medina said.

    One part of the law that is likely to be particularly hard to enforce is a clause that prohibits landlords from denying housing based on rent debt accrued during the pandemic, said Leah Simon-Weisberg, legal director with Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, an organizing group that advocates for low-income households.

    Prospective landlords often screen tenant candidates through their former landlords, allowing them to learn of debts they aren’t supposed to base decisions on.

    It’s also unclear how many landlords will participate in the state’s rent relief program, which will pay landlords 80% of what they are owed if they forgive the remaining 20%. Lakireddy said that’s a good deal, and many landlords are likely to accept it.

    California’s rent-control laws may complicate the landlord’s decision, said Tina Rosales, a lobbyist with the Western Center on Law and Poverty. Under state law, landlords can charge as much as they can get for a rent-controlled unit once it becomes vacant. So it could be more lucrative to pursue an eventual eviction and not forgive debts if a tenant is paying significantly below market rates.

    “It has the potential for landlords to pick and choose which tenants they will participate in the program with,” Rosales said, potentially affecting the most vulnerable.

    Another outstanding question is how far California’s rental relief funds will go, given the range of estimates of how much rent people owe. Some tenants, for example, might miss out on debt forgiveness — not because their landlord won’t participate butbecause the pool of money runs out.

    For many who can’t work from home, the cost of staying housed becomes a choice between incurring debt or accepting the risk of contracting COVID-19 on the job.

    One family’s hard choices

    The Buenos, a family of five in Los Angeles’ Koreatown neighborhood, were like many of the country’s hardworking households. Fernando prepped fish for a sushi chain. His wife, Maribel, cooked at a downtown L.A. brunch spot.

    Maria, 23, the eldest of three sisters, worked at a big-box retailer and helped out with the family bills. She set a goal to own her own home by 30.

    The Buenos are now scattered. A promotion sent Maria’s father to New Jersey before the pandemic, but his hours were soon cut as lockdowns were put in place. Her mother lost her job and moved across the country with her youngest daughter to join Fernando.

    At home in Koreatown, the bills fell on Maria, who stayed behind with her 18-year-old sister, Pamela. Their parents send money, but even coupled with Maria’s $20-an-hour wage, it’s not enough to cover the $2,500 in monthly rent.

    She exhausted her $3,000 in savings and is still $15,000 behind on rent.

    Maria worries about how she’ll protect her younger sister and keep both of them from becoming homeless.

    James Engel, a principal with the company that manages Bueno’s building, said the company planned to work with residents on multiyear repayment plans when rent protections expire, rather than pursue evictions and collections. He wouldn’t comment on individual tenants’ cases.

    Maria says she doesn’t want to risk having the debt over her head and is looking for a second job during the pandemic.

    The possibility of getting sick is a sacrifice she’s willing to make.

    _____

    To see original article please visit: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-02-02/rent-debt-worries-grow-covid-strains-tenants

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    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Opinion: We need to shift from a culture of fear to a culture of care to fight the politics of hatred

    The human “fight or flight” response gives demagogues like Trump a tool for political manipulation. But we could replace oppression with a system of care.

    By Zach Norris

    Threats both real and imagined can be used to manipulate us. It turns out that invoking safety—which inevitably means invoking threats to our safety—is an effective way to trigger automatic, irrational anxiety responses. The mere whiff of danger whips people up into a state of panic and sends us into an automatic “fight or flight” response, because our brains are finely tuned threat-detection devices. As humans evolved, those who recognized and avoided mortally dangerous things were the ones who survived to pass on their genes.

    We are literally wired to pay attention to any hint of danger—and those threat detection-and-analysis processes in our brain happen mostly unconsciously and automatically, without the input of our rational brains. This makes us super susceptible to inflammatory rhetoric that magnifies uncertainties, risks, and threats.

    “Politicians, journalists, advocacy groups, and marketers continue to blow dangers out of proportion for votes, ratings, donations, and profits,” writes Barry Glassner, the sociologist whose 1999 bestseller The Culture of Fear has been reprinted and updated for the Donald Trump era.

    When people in power trigger anxieties and then promise a plan for safety, many are likely to embrace that plan. No matter the consequences.

    Against the drumbeat of constant news coverage about active shooters, terrorist threats, and jobs taken by foreigners, the stage was set for an authoritarian strongman who promised to bring everything back under control. To protect our jobs, our wealth. To protect our way of life. To keep our homes and families safe. To make America great again. People were desperate for safety and security, and the strongman offered it at bargain prices.

    The rise of fascism often occurs when great expectations have been smashed to bits. It thrives under conditions of economic inequality, where the gulf between haves and have-nots is deep and wide.

    It was when the American Dream had shattered for so many that we were most susceptible to the rise of a strongman who promised to return us to bygone bucolic eras.

    Connecting the dots between capitalism, inequality, and the politics of hatred, the economist Umair Haque writes: “What do people do as hardship begins to bite—especially those who expected comfortable, easy lives? They become reactionary, lashing out violently. They seek safety in the arms of demagogues. … It’s the once prosperous but now imploded middle which turns on the classes, ethnicities, groups, below it. The people who expected and felt entitled to lives of safety and security and stability—who anticipated being at the top of a tidy little hierarchy, the boss of this or that, the chieftain of that or this, but now find themselves adrift and unmoored in a collapsing society, powerless. … They turn to those who promise them just that superiority, by turning on those below them. … supremacy and dominion over the weak, the despised, and the impure.”

    Our generalized anxiety and economic insecurity in the United States coincides with a demographic shift: the browning of America—a near future in which white folks will no longer be the majority. It has already impacted every city across the country and is now impacting small towns and rural areas as well.

    For many who were previously the majority—white folks—this constitutes the ultimate threat, the dissolution of the long-standing social order, a kind of existential unraveling.

    As john a. powell, legal scholar and author of Racing to Justice, notes: “When a person embraces the concept of supremacy, then equality is viewed as an attack. They believe this country belongs to whites. They believe that having people of color in positions of respect and power is un-American. There has been no greater example of a threat to their belief system than President Obama. It was not Obama’s policies they objected to, but his humanity.”

    powell has written extensively about what he calls “othering”—systemic exclusion, and the rise of ethnic-nationalist and authoritarian politics.

    Many of those who voted for Trump in 2016 did so because he conjured the image of a strongman who would protect them from threats, whether they were white voters fearing a loss of control over democracy in the wake of President Obama, or financially insecure voters feeling threatened by immigrants and globalization. Trump used people’s fears to fuel marginalization and dehumanization. He promised to lock up or lock out all those he claims have caused the downfall of the nation. Fascism makes Us vs. Them—the politics of hatred—into national policy.

    Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at Yale University and author of How Fascism Works, explains: “The story is typically that a once-great society has been destroyed … and you make the dominant group feel angry and resentful about the loss of their status and power. … The goal is to make them feel like victims, to make them feel like they’ve lost something and that the thing they’ve lost has been taken from them by a specific enemy, usually some minority out-group or some opposing nation.”

    The Us vs. Them story goes this way: “they” threaten “our” way of life. “Our” successes are dependent on “their” losses in a zero-sum game. “They” cannot be trusted because “they” always lie. “They” are always to blame; “they” are dangerous and must be contained.

    “They” are often described using language like primitives, savages, apes, vermin, infestations, and animals. And using the language of disease: contagions, germs, pollutants, infections.

    Today one of the chief threats supposedly comes from Muslims, who are deemed threatening to the American way of life, and from our borders to the south: “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” “We’re not going to have a country” if things don’t change, warns Donald Trump, ranting on about dangerous caravans of thousands of drug-dealing, murderous aliens closing in on our borders.

    But the roots of Us vs. Them long pre-date the Trump administration, going way back to the beginning of our nation.

    Native Americans were called savages and heathens who threatened Christian values. The Us vs. Them narrative facilitated the demonization of indigenous peoples and their removal from what would become the United States. Black people were not seen as people but as wild beasts to be tamed, as property. The Japanese Americans in 1942 were called the “yellow peril.”

    The media of the time called them “sneaky,” “treacherous,” even “lecherous.” Political cartoons characterized the “Japs” as monkeys and as men who lusted after white women—stereotypes long applied to men of African descent as well. With language like “fatherless” and “wolf packs,” the social scientists who created the “superpredator” theory generated appeal for policies that targeted and dehumanized those youth, overwhelmingly boys of color. In the United States there has been a kind of musical chairs of oppression, where powerful white men set the tune and the last marginalized group standing is the first one scapegoated.

    The rails upon which the train wreck of Trump’s administration is riding were laid by bipartisan predecessors going back decades. In the 1960s, as crime rates were on the rise, President Lyndon Johnson articulated one possible way to achieve public safety: to wage a war on poverty that focused on increasing investment in communities still ravaged by decades of disinvestment and Jim Crow segregation. But interest in that strategy was short-lived. Richard Nixon campaigned and won election with a focus on “law and order.” In so doing, he helped launch what would become the largest prison-building boom in human history.

    Year after year, politicians of all stripes, especially at the state and local levels, fought to demonstrate who could come up with the toughest “tough-on-crime” attitudes, the longest sentences. Decades later, despite the failure of this approach, the law and order politics of Bill Clinton and the “superpredator” rants of Hillary Clinton kept hammering the same notes.

    Elsewhere, other similarly situated Western democracies chose to make deep investments in social welfare. Today they have much lower crime rates and lesser levels of inequality. They invested in a social safety net, while we invested in a punishment dragnet. They invested in care, while we invested in fear.

    If lawmakers in the US had taken the path of investment to address issues most salient in poor communities, rather than dehumanization, deprivation, and punishment, it would have benefited everyone. We might now be in an era of less harm and greater prosperity for all.

    Instead, America invested in systemic dehumanization, a choice that had the backing of Democrats and Republicans alike. Of all the bipartisan strategies of the past 50 years, this may be most responsible for the rise of fascism in the United States today.

    From Fear to Care

    There are two ways to think about safety. There is a fear-based way and a care-based way. For the fear-based model, architects of anxiety cultivate and stoke the Us vs. Them mindset, based on a zero-sum mentality around the idea of scarcity: that there is not enough of the good stuff for everyone. This fundamental divisive and adversarial mindset extends beyond politics (Democrats vs. Republicans), race (white vs. people of color), and class (rich vs. poor) into most institutions. In housing we have landlords vs. tenants; in the law we have plaintiffs vs. defendants; in health care we have insurance companies vs. patients.

    When we set two sides against each other, rather than acknowledging they are components of one whole, the result is always less safety for both sides. Two-sided is always lopsided.

    The fear-based model defines safety only in terms of being free from crime and criminals, which is limited, and limiting. This has resulted in a criminal legal system that holds close to seven million adult Americans in jail, in prison, on parole, or on probation. With or without literal incarceration, millions of people are cast as “others” and “bad guys,” including many children who have a hard time focusing in school, many people whose anxiety and depression pushes them to consider suicide, and many people who miss a paycheck, get evicted, and have to sleep in their car.

    Over the past nearly 250 years, the architects of anxiety have leveraged the Us vs. Them mentality and the zero-sum mindset to select groups of people to scapegoat, based on their race and ethnic backgrounds, their belief systems, their abilities, or sexual and gender identities.

    These architects then created and steadily expanded what I call the “framework of fear,” which employs four key elements: systematic deprivation, extensive and expensive systematic suspicion, cruel punishment, and often-permanent isolation from the rest of society.

    According to the architects of anxiety, this framework should keep us safe. In fact, it has done just the opposite.

    The framework of fear has led to the traumatization of not just the individuals who have been targeted, dehumanized, and criminalized, but the traumatization of entire communities, unfathomable devastation that will be decades in the reckoning. Because trauma is as much a chief cause of violence, as the result of violence, our current fear-based system paradoxically generates more harm than it prevents, in never-ending cycles of trauma.

    Perhaps most importantly, our democracy itself has been compromised by the climate of scarcity, suspicion, and dehumanization that the fear-based model of safety has propagated. In the last forty years, Americans’ participation in associations and civic organizations has declined, while trust in government and satisfaction with democracy have plummeted. That coincides with our economic inequality growing by leaps and bounds as well as the explosion of our prison population. Those things can’t be disconnected. The fear-based framework threatens not just our agency as individuals but also our democracy as a collective.

    This moment presents the opportunity to take action toward a culture of caring and policies of caring. We need to shift our focus from individual criminals and what qualifies as crimes, to what actually causes most suffering and damage.

    The real threats to our safety are not coming from a few bad apples; they simultaneously come from powerful massive institutions and “-isms” (racism, capitalism) that we all have a hand in upholding and from within our own families and communities.

    The care-based approach asks how do we care for ourselves and each other so that we all can be safe. A new care-based model of safety can replace deprivation, suspicion, punishment, and isolation with resources, relationships, accountability, and participation, what taken together I call a “culture of care.”

    A culture of care prevents many harms from happening in the first place, by investing in a social safety net (resources), by building our capacity to relate to one another across difference (relationships), and by increasing our sense of “skin in the game” with more vibrant engagement on every level, within neighborhoods, and within our democracy and society (participation).

    Care-based safety also means we address harms in ways that hold people accountable and bring about healing (accountability). It means we tackle all the harms going unaddressed by the current system: on the one end of the spectrum, the really huge harms perpetrated by huge institutions, over history, and on the other end of the spectrum, the interpersonal harms like domestic violence and sexual abuse.

    In terms of paying for the shift from fear to care, where there’s a will, there’s a way.

    Much of the billions that we currently spend each year on the framework of fear, incarceration in particular, can be reallocated and used as investments in programs and services that keep us healthy and safe. A tax on the rich that merely matches the rate that was in place from 1913 until 1982 (70 percent for the highest tax bracket) also can be partially allocated to a social safety net that benefits everyone.

    Despite all the talk about “public safety,” there is very little public in our safety system. We need holistic solutions to ensure our communities have the safety and security necessary to thrive. A care-based model of safety includes all the things that create and maintain stability and well-being on the level of the individual, the family, the community. The care-based approach gives all young people the opportunity to become responsible, engaged, and empathetic participants in their communities.

    Safety is not tied to our capacity to watch our neighbors, but rather based on our capacity to truly look out for one another. There is no doubt in my mind that we are safer when we act together than when we let ourselves be divided.

    _____

    Excerpted from Defund Fear: Safety Without Policing, Prisons, and Punishment by Zach Norris (Beacon Press, 2021). Reprinted with permission from Beacon Press.

    ZACH NORRIS is the executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which creates campaigns related to civic engagement, violence prevention, juvenile justice, and police brutality, with a goal of shifting economic resources away from prisons and punishment and towards economic opportunity. He is also the cofounder of Restore Oakland and Justice for Families, both of which focus on the power of community action. He graduated from Harvard and took his law degree from New York University.

    Connect with him at zachnorris.com or on Twitter.

    To see original article please visit: https://www.yesmagazine.org/democracy/2021/01/11/anxiety-authoritarianism-culture-of-care/

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  • GoFundMe CEO to Congress: Americans need help with basic needs and we can’t do your job for you

    Opinion by: Tim Cadogan

    As Congress debates a new COVID-19 aid package, millions of Americans are struggling to pay for rent, groceries, utilities and medical bills, or to keep their small businesses from shutting down. 

    We know their needs are both large and urgent because they tell us about them.

    Since March, an American has started a COVID-related fundraiser on GoFundMe every two minutes. It’s not something they do lightly. Asking for help is difficult. People do it when their needs are dire and they have nowhere else to turn.

    In fact, when the pandemic began, 1 in 3 fundraisers on GoFundMe were related to COVID-19, and the activity has persisted at an alarmingly high rate.

    Their pleas have turned GoFundMe into a leading indicator of the biggest pandemic-related hardships. Even before the weekly jobless claims, the monthly unemployment numbers and the quarterly gross domestic product reports tell us the state of the economy, we at GoFundMe learn firsthand about the real struggles Americans face. 

    Surge of people asking for help

    It will surprise no one, then, that in the past year, we’ve seen an unprecedented surge in fundraisers of all kinds, as the economy tanked, millions lost their jobs and nearly 1 in 4 families faced food insecurity.

    From March 1 to Aug. 31 alone, people started more than 150,000 fundraisers for COVID-related assistance on our site, and the requests for help have yet to abate. Last month, even after Congress passed a second relief bill in December, the number of new fundraisers on GoFundMe was higher than in May during the first wave of the pandemic. 

    The situation is nothing short of a national emergency. Congress should treat it as such by quickly passing a large relief bill whose generosity is commensurate with the need.

    We’ve known for years that most Americans don’t have $500 to spare to cover unexpected emergencies, like a car breakdown. Now, it’s as if their entire lives are breaking down again and again and again. The scale and variety of the fundraisers we see point to the level of desperation among Americans and give us a window into where the relief could be most helpful.

    Monthly bills. In October, after seeing a steady rise in fundraisers from people struggling to pay bills like rent and utilities, we created a new category for those on our site. In just a few months, it has grown into one of the largest categories on the platform, accounting for 13% of fundraisers. 

    A new round of stimulus checks would help scores of needy families, like that of Martha Zepeda of Houston. While Zepeda, a single mom who has struggled to make ends meet throughout the pandemic, has been out of a job for three months, she didn’t tell her daughter, Alondra Carmona, a high-school senior. By the time Carmona found out earlier this month, they were two months behind on rent and faced a likely eviction in March. Carmona, who has been accepted to prestigious Barnard College, decided to put the entirety of her college savings to support her family. “As much as I dream of going to Barnard College, it is not looking promising right now,” Carmona wrote on GoFundMe, as she sought to raise the money she needs to make that dream a reality.

    Restaurants and small businesses. During 2020, fundraisers seeking donations for small businesses — previously a rarity — became commonplace: 3 of every 5 COVID-related fundraisers in the United States sought to support small businesses and their employees, with restaurants alone accounting for tens of thousands of fundraisers. After ebbing during the summer months, fundraisers for struggling restaurants spiked anew toward the end of the year. 

    Many are small family-owned businesses like Ray’s Ice Cream, which has served its community in Royal Oak, Michigan, for 63 years, employing thousands of local youngsters along the way. Last year, as sales to restaurants flatlined and COVID-19 restrictions forced Ray’s to close, it faced the prospect of having to lay off its employees. “I would love to make payroll for all these great kids that work for me,” owner Tom Stevens wrote on GoFundMe.  

    Food. It’s no secret that hunger and food insecurity have risen sharply during the pandemic. As millions turned to food banks across the nation, we also saw a sharp increase in fundraisers from people seeking help to cover their next meal. After spiking in April, the fundraisers for food leveled off at rates that are far higher than typical. In January, for example, they were 45% higher than a year earlier.

    What’s more, the single largest fundraiser in GoFundMe’s history began in April and has already raised nearly $45 million for America’s Food Fund. 

    The need to keep helping

    These are hardly the only areas of need. We’ve seen high-profile appeals for support for renters facing eviction, front-line workers who need personal protective equipment and a never-ending stream of fundraisers aimed at supporting students, classrooms, charities and more. The surge in these types of fundraisers is a direct result of government programs coming up short. 

    We are pleased that the fundraisers for Ray’s Ice Cream and Alondra Carmona resonated with the GoFundMe community. Donations to Ray’s topped $78,000, allowing Stevens to make payroll and keep the store open. And in just a few days, Carmona easily surpassed her goal of raising $75,000 so she can pursue her dreams of a STEM education at Barnard.

    They’re not alone in benefitting from the kindness of relatives, friends, neighbors and even strangers. Someone makes a donation on GoFundMe every second.

    Much of it comes from regular folks: 70% of donations are for less than $50. And we’re stepping up, too, donating millions to family and business relief efforts through our charitable arm.

    We are proud of the role that GoFundMe plays in connecting those in need with those who are ready to help. But our platform was never meant to be a source of support for basic needs, and it can never be a replacement for robust federal COVID-19 relief that is generous and targeted to help the millions of Americans who are struggling.

    _____

    Tim Cadogan is the CEO of GoFundMe. 

    To see original article please visit: https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/4440425001

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  • P.E.I. Senators: Basic income is an idea whose time has come

    By Diane Griffin, Brian Francis, and Mike Duffy

    Last spring more than 50 members of the Senate of Canada urged the federal government to implement a guaranteed basic livable income program. At the same time, a special committee of the Prince Edward Island legislature called on Ottawa to join the province in creating a guaranteed livable basic income (GLBI).

    Doubters suggested a GLBI would be too costly, and too complicated. They’d prefer tinkering with the status quo. The GLBI idea seemed stalled.

    Faced with this hurdle, a group of Island Senators has written Premier Dennis King and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to suggest a way to end the stalemate. Why not start with a small pilot project in Prince Edward Island?

    In our letter we reminded Mr. Trudeau that Prince Edward Island’s modern economy is a result of an innovative 1969 federal-provincial program called the “P.E.I. Comprehensive Development Plan.” Ever since, successive governments have used P.E.I. (population ~150,000) as a “test bed” for important innovations in agriculture, fisheries, energy from waste, wind energy and so on.

    Now out of the economic disruption caused by COVID-19, P.E.I. and the federal government have another historic opportunity for social innovation. The arguments for a GLBI are well-known and are persuasive, especially in an economy like PEI’s with an ageing demographic.

    Last week the British Columbia government stepped away from the GLBI idea because of the plan’s perceived potential shortcomings. A pilot project in P.E.I. would test those concerns and allow the program to be adjusted as needed.

    Critics may argue against an incremental approach, but we should not forget that medicare, our most successful social program, began incrementally, one province at a time starting with Saskatchewan.

    In 1984, the Macdonald Royal Commission recommended a GLBI as a counterbalance to the negative effects of free trade with the United States. The Mulroney government passed free trade, but ignored the rest of Macdonald’s report.

    Mr. Trudeau now has an opportunity to finish that work and, in so doing, turn the page on the economic devastation caused by COVID-19 and build a brighter future for P.E.I., and one hopes, eventually for millions of Canadians.

    The government response to the economic disruption caused by the pandemic was a scramble, with some covered and others not. Had a Guaranteed Livable Basic Income been in place, Canadians would have been automatically protected.

    We closed our letter by urging Mr. Trudeau to begin Canada’s post-pandemic recovery with a pilot GLBI program in Prince Edward Island, the birthplace of Confederation.

    A guaranteed livable basic income truly is – an idea whose time has come!

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    Diane Griffin, Brian Francis and Mike Duffy are Senators for Prince Edward Island.

    To see original article please visit: https://www.thetelegram.com/opinion/regional-perspectives/pei-senators-basic-income-is-an-idea-whose-time-has-come-550641/

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  • Decades of data show that work requirements and time limits generally worsen mental health and directly increasing incomes improves it

    By Theo Wayt

    When governments in developed countries like the U.S. and Britain provide extra support for low-income people through tax credits and more generous unemployment benefits, individuals’ mental health and wellbeing generally improve, according to a new paper by a group of U.K. researchers.

    By contrast, however, introducing benefit restrictions like work requirements and time limits generally worsen mental health.

    The conclusion, which is based on a comprehensive review of published quantitative observational studies over decades, has increased importance as the coronavirus pandemic and accompanying economic turmoil has led governments around the world to overhaul social assistance programs. 

    “Changes to social assistance policies, reductions in those, were a very common policy that was studied, and were mostly related to detrimental outcomes in terms of mental health,” said lead author Julija Simpson, a Ph.D. student at Newcastle University.

    Simpson wrote the paper, which will be published in the March 2021 issue of Social Science & Medicine, alongside Newcastle University colleagues Viviana Albani, Zoe Bell, Clare Bambra and Heather Brown.

    The paper comes as U.S. lawmakers consider overhauling the child tax credit system, and the U.K. is mulling additional austerity measures that would cut unemployment benefits, possibly sending hundreds of thousands of British children into poverty.

    Simpson said the mental health implications of these policies must be considered alongside other health and economic concerns.

    “We’re all vulnerable to what happens, and it could be the global pandemic or it could be your own life circumstance, but we all need social security,” said Simpson. “If you’re always concerned with survival, then you can’t really do much else.”

    The paper was the first review to systemically examine the effects of social security reforms on mental health, meaning the researchers synthesized a variety of past quantitative studies on the topic rather than conducting their own.

    To do this, they searched several academic databases for studies on the topic between January 1979 to June 2020, coming up with more than 20,000 results. They then used screening criteria to narrow the sample down to just 38 studies.

    “Because I tried to be quite careful not to exclude any relevant studies, the search terms were relatively broad,” said Simpson.

    Out of the studies, 21 examined social welfare expansions and 17 evaluated contractions.

    Eight of the studies examined the Earned-Income Tax Credit — or EITC — in the U.S., a policy that subsidizes earnings for low-income families. Four of the studies found that expanding the EITC significantly improved mental health outcomes. An additional study found that introducing a high-rate state EITC reduced the annual age-adjusted suicide rates by nearly 4%. Another study on suicides, however, contradicted this claim.

    Two studies also examined an EITC-like “welfare-to-work” program from the U.K. that expanded support for low-income families by providing more generous tax credits. Both studies showed a positive effect on mental health for low- income people.

    “They were generally found to improve mental health for the recipients,” said Simpson of both the U.S. and U.K. policies, adding that tax credits are “a good way to improve both employment outcomes and health outcomes.”

    The researchers also examined seven studies on 1990s welfare reform in the U.S., in which the federal government replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program with a far more limited program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which contained restrictions like work requirements and benefit time limits. Single mothers were most severely impacted by the changes, Simpson said.

    The seven studies were mixed, with some showing a significant deterioration in mental health and others showing no effect.

    “Those studies mostly showed that [the reforms] had negative effects on mental health,” Simpson said.

    The researchers also examined studies on disability and retirement benefits and mental health, though with much smaller sample sizes.

    In aggregate, the studies have a clear message, the researchers found: Expanding social welfare benefits improves mental health.

    The review comes amid a rapidly growing academic interest in examining secondary and potentially unintended effects of social safety net policies. For example, University of Strathclyde economist Otto Lenhart has recently found that raising the minimum wage is associated with a drop in teen births and that providing paid family leave reduces child hunger.

    Simpson said she plans to focus further research on ongoing social security reforms in Britain. She’s also interested in conversations around universal basic income in the U.S.

    The paper, titled “Effects of social security policy reforms on mental health and inequalities: A systematic review of observational studies in high-income countries,” is forthcoming in the March 2021 issue of Social Science & Medicine and was made available online Jan. 18. The authors are Julija Simpson, Viviana Albani, Zoe Bell, Clare Bambra and Heather Brown of Newcastle University. Simpson is lead author. 

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    To see original article please visit: https://academictimes.com/exhaustive-study-links-social-welfare-mental-health/

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  • Poll: Americans Want Immediate Checks, Not Increased Targeting

    By Senator Ron Wyden

    The most visible—and popular—pieces of economic relief Congress has approved over the past year have been relief payments and enhanced jobless benefits.

    The initial $1,200 payment, combined with the $600 weekly boost to jobless benefits, lowered poverty rates in the midst of a pandemic and worst economic crisis in 100 years.

    Surveys of the American people throughout the past year have been consistent—there is overwhelming support for a stronger safety net—in the form of simple, straightforward relief—in the midst of a pandemic.

    The American people recognize that their neighbors are experiencing unprecedented financial challenges through no fault of their own.

    As Democrats move forward with President Biden’s American Rescue Plan, the income thresholds for relief checks are still being debated.

    President Biden has proposed beginning to phase out the checks at $75,000 for an individual and $150,000 for a couple, which I also support. Let me explain why this is the right approach.

    Families who have not experienced job loss are still struggling due to fewer shifts, less business, and new child care responsibilities.

    Picture a couple with two children in elementary school. They made $140,000 prior to the pandemic. Dad made $75,000 and Mom made $65,000. Mom was able to work from home and managed work, remote school, and child care for months into the pandemic, but quit her job in October when she could no longer manage it all.  That’s been the experience for millions of working women.

    Now they are trying to make ends meet with half their previous income. Mom is hoping to begin looking for work when school reopens, but her children have fallen behind in school and she’s spending much more time helping them with their work.

    This family would have received a relief payment in January and is surely counting on another one to help pay their bills and relieve some of the stress of their new situation.

    While the IRS would use their 2020 income if they file early when determining whether they receive a relief payment, even their 2020 income does not reflect their current circumstances.

    I agree with my colleagues that “high income” families should not receive help, but I don’t think they would consider the family described above as “high income.”

    While they aren’t facing the same struggles as other families who have lost jobs, they clearly need more help.   

    New polling from Data for Progress and Groundwork Collaborative shows strong support for prioritizing getting relief out the door quickly, over even further targeting of payments—77 percent of Democrats, 61 percent of independents, and even 46 percent of Republicans—support getting checks out the door quickly and aren’t too concerned about whether families with a bit more of a financial cushion get additional relief.

    logo.png

    The bottom line is that the American people recognize the unprecedented nature of this crisis. They know that families are experiencing their own unique challenges, which is why they strongly support being more generous with relief, not less. 

    _____

    Senator Ron Wyden is the Democratic Chair of the Senate Finance Committee.

    To see original article please visit: https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2021/2/9/ron-wyden-checks-not-targeting

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  • Members of Congress, Mayors and Organizers Call for $2,000 Recurring Checks In Nationwide Day of Action

    By the Economic Security Project

    Members of Congress, mayors, organizers, small business owners, and individuals impacted by the pandemic participated in events across the country on Thursday, February 6th as part of a nationwide Day of Action demanding that Congress pass recurring $2,000 checks.

    Recent polling shows that more than 80% of the public supports $2,000 checks, including 74% of Republicans. And 60% support recurring monthly payments of $2,000 until the pandemic is over.

    The “Make it Monthly” Day of Action, organized by Economic Security Project Action, Change.org, Income Movement, and The People’s Bailout, included events in 12 states; a live, national conversation with Members of Congress, our very own Natalie Foster, and restaurant owner Stephanie Bonin; an ad in TIME from 33 mayors.

    “Past Due” Events

    The delivery of $2,000 “past due” invoices to 19 Members of Congress in 12 states by grassroots organizers and individuals impacted by the pandemic. The invoices contained the names of more than two million people who signed a Change.org petition asking Congress to authorize $2,000 monthly checks.

    In Irvine, CA, activists met with staff of Congresswoman Katie Porter who accepted the invoices, and listened to stories from some UCI students and a constituent who had to close his business.

    In Hanford, CA, Lemoore resident Aurora González delivered a message to Congressman David Valadao: Congress must include monthly stimulus checks in the next COVID relief bill. Oralia Vallejo of the Kings County Latino Roundtable noted that government COVID relief has not been sufficient, especially for the low-income residents who have lost their jobs as well as farmworkers.

    “We really need this support so we can improve the lives of everybody.”

    In Orlando, FL, organizers Erica Wright and Stacey Rutland from Income Movement delivered petitions representing 154,000 signers to the office of Senator Marco Rubio.

    In Portland, ME, Lewiston resident Gina Morin, a volunteer with the Maine People’s Alliance, helped deliver 6,000 invoices to the office of Senator Collins.

    In delivering the petitions, Morin said, “I know what it’s like to have been forced onto the street, and I’ve been working with other volunteers to help folks here in Lewiston but there’s only so much we can do.”

    In Las Vegas, NV, organizers delivered petitions to the offices of Senator Catherine Cortez Masto. Nick Rampone with Humanity Forward said, “People just need [checks]. Our belief is that recurring cash stimulus, direct to the people, is the most effective way to do that.”

    Live Conversation with The Appeal

    Image for post

    Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Congressman Tim Ryan (D-OH), former Stockton Mayor and Founder of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income Michael Tubbs, Economic Security Project Co-chair Natalie Foster, and restaurant owner and Change.org petition organizer Stephanie Bonin, joined a live conversation hosted by The Appeal and NowThis, about how one stimulus check isn’t enough, and they should be recurring.

    Congresswoman Ilhan Omar: “Every single day, our office is inundated with voicemails, emails from people who are desperately struggling to put food on the table, to keep a roof over their heads, just to survive…

    “Many of us who have, unfortunately, known what real struggle looks like, which unfortunately isn’t that much here in Congress, can attest to the dire struggles that people are faced with, the anxiety that they’re living with, the desperation in their voices as they leave voicemails for us. And we have to do everything that we can.”

    Congressman Tim Ryan: “This has been an issue from before the pandemic. We’ve seen income inequality continue to be exacerbated by globalization, by automation, by huge tax cuts over the past 20 years that went primarily to the top 1%. This has led to the level of income inequality that has been unsustainable for so many families.. The economy is clearly on the wrong track for 80% of the American people, and this is an opportunity to highlight that, to talk about investments into families.”

    ESP co-chair Natalie Foster: “Direct cash payments are the best, fastest way to put relief into people’s hands. Because rent comes every month, the bills come every month, putting food on the table happens every month, and so should the checks… It will be hard to do, but we can do hard things. And we have to do hard things.

    “There are now 35 mayors across the country who have called for a federal guaranteed income, and many of them are demonstrating the idea in their cities, from St. Paul, to Columbia, SC, to Atlanta, GA.

    “There is a groundswell of support for monthly checks.”

    Former Stockton Mayor and MGI Founder Michael Tubbs: “There always seems to be a lot of hand wringing and heart wrenching discussion about how to help the majority of people. But just four years ago, we passed $2 trillion in tax cuts — not in the pandemic, in regular times — to the richest among us, which is even more than President Biden is proposing with his $1.9 trillion package.

    “This is a question of values, a question of who we are as a country, and a question of do we want to not just recover, but do we want to build back better from where we were.”

    Restaurant Owner and Change.org petition organizer Stephanie Bonin: “What people are spending the checks on is different, whether it’s diapers, or being able to make our rent, or being able to make up for reduced hours, it’s all different. But what we have in common is that we’re all trying to be survivors of COVID-19, and in doing that, we need help. And that’s what we’re calling on.”

    Mayors Join the Call for Recurring Checks

    While everyone was coming out for the Day of Action, mayors were also speaking out for checks. Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, representing 33 mayors from cities and towns across the country, ran an ad in TIME calling for recurring checks until the end of the pandemic.

    Billboard for Recurring Checks in West Virginia

    Image for post

    Income Movement put up a billboard in West Virginia urging Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin to back $2,000 stimulus checks, garnering several local news stories and a response from Sen. Manchin indicating his openness to targeted direct checks.

    More Perfect Union joined in on the local efforts, interviewing West Virginians who would be the most affected by austerity measures.

    In their own words, families and workers asked Sen. Manchin to “come to the people of West Virginia, and tell our people why we don’t need this money.”

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    To see original article please visit: https://medium.com/economicsecproj/members-of-congress-mayors-and-organizers-call-for-2-000-recurring-checks-in-nationwide-day-of-cb74764cd109

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  • $2,000/mo for unpaid caregivers could save Medicaid $6,175/mo

    A new report from AARP’s Public Policy Institute explores how the coronavirus pandemic has amplified chronic problems in long-term care, as nursing homes became COVID hotspots and hiring home health aides was complicated by shortages and the need to isolate. More family caregivers have stepped in to provide help for their loved ones over the past year, at significant personal financial cost, due to lost wages and spending to cover needs.

    The report finds that expanding state programs that compensate family caregivers for some of the assistance they provide to their family and friends can be an important solution – during COVID and beyond – for providing caregiving needs in a cost-effective way that also meets many families’ desires to be there for their loved ones.

    “LTSS Choices: Paying Family Caregivers to Provide Care during the Pandemic—and Beyond” found that 33 states had offered options for self-directed long-term services and supports (LTSS) programs that allow an individual to hire their own workers to provide needed care—and sometimes to hire family members – prior to the pandemic.

    In the past year, 15 additional states have expanded their self-directed programs to allow hiring of family members.

    Many people prefer to hire someone they know, such as a family member, friend or neighbor, and a majority (65%) of those caring for an adult have said a program under which they were paid for at least some of their caregiving hours would be helpful.

    “The vast majority of older adults want to stay in their homes as they age, and allowing them to pay a friend or family member to help with their daily needs can make that possible,” says Susan Reinhard, Senior Vice President of AARP’s Public Policy Institute.

    “The pandemic provided a push for states to expand this option, and we hope many of them will make their policy changes permanent. Paying family caregivers is a solution that saves states money and meets the growing need for long-term care.”

    The report also looks at possible cost savings from providing more home and community-based care. According to a multi-state analysis from Public Partnerships, participants in self-directed care programs received an average monthly budget of $1,774 in 2019, compared to a monthly cost of $6,175 for a Medicaid-funded semi-private room in a nursing home. Most programs that allow family members to be paid for caregiving are operated under Medicaid, with a smaller number funded by individual states or the Veteran-Directed Care program.

    This paper is the fourth in the AARP Public Policy Institute’s LTSS Choices initiative – a series of reports, blogs, videos, podcasts, and virtual events that seeks to spark ideas for immediate, intermediate, and long-term options for transforming long-term services and supports. Click here to learn more.

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    AARP is the nation’s largest nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to empowering people 50 and older to choose how they live as they age. With a nationwide presence and nearly 38 million members, AARP strengthens communities and advocates for what matters most to families: health security, financial stability and personal fulfillment. AARP also produces the nation’s largest circulation publications: AARP The Magazine and AARP Bulletin. To learn more, visit www.aarp.org, www.aarp.org/espanol or follow @AARP, @AARPenEspanol and @AARPadvocates, @AliadosAdelante on social media.
    Source: AARP

    To see original article please visit: https://goldrushcam.com/sierrasuntimes/index.php/news/local-news/28011-aarp-new-report-finds-long-term-caregiving-hits-crisis-levels-during-coronavirus-more-states-expanding-options-for-paying-family-caregivers

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  • Mitt Romney Just Proposed a Permanent Basic Income Guarantee for Families of at Least $250 a Month and Up to $15,000 a Year

    The Family Security Act would offer up to $350 per month, per kid, to help parents raise their children.

    Opinion by Dylan Matthews

    In 2019, Mitt Romney became the first Senate Republican to endorse a form of child allowance, where all low- and middle-income parents would get a cash benefit to help raise their kids, regardless of whether or not they’re able to work. At the time, the plan was modest, amounting to only $1,500 a year for kids under 6 and $1,000 for kids 6-17.

    But on Thursday, Romney went further and proposed the Family Security Act, one of the most generous child-benefit packages ever, regardless of political party. The plan completely overhauls the current child tax credit and turns it from a once-a-year bonus to massive income support, paid out monthly by the Social Security Administration. (The bill text isn’t final, but you can read the Romney team’s summary here.)

    Romney’s plan would replace the child tax credit, currently worth up to $2,000 per child and restricted to parents with substantial income (it doesn’t fully kick in until you reach an income of over $11,000), with a flat monthly allowance paid out to all parents:

    • Parents of kids ages 0 to 5 would get $350 per month, or $4,200 a year
    • Parents of kids ages 6 to 17 would get $250 per month, or $3,000 a year

    Parents with multiple kids could get a maximum of $1,250 per month or $15,000 a year; that translates to five kids between the ages of 6 and 17. Very large families would be somewhat penalized, but many families with three or four kids will get the full benefit.

    Just like the current child tax credit, Romney’s proposal would phase out for wealthy parents — the benefits begin phasing out for single filers with $200,000 and joint filers with $400,000 in annual income.

    But the phaseout would be implemented on the back end, through the tax code — even the richest parents would still get their $250-$350 per-kid checks in the mail every month; they’d just return the money on April 15.

    That helps ensure the benefit is truly available to all eligible people and not delayed due to concerns of “overpayment.”

    If you’re a liberal reading this and wondering if there’s a catch, there is — but it’s not necessarily a huge one. Romney doesn’t want his plan to add to the deficit, and he wants to simplify the set of child-related benefits the government currently offers. So his plan would pay for the child allowance by eliminating a number of other programs, including some that mostly benefit the poor (more on those below).

    According to an analysis from the centrist Niskanen Center think tank, which has backed child allowance proposals from both parties, the deficit-neutral Romney plan would be highly progressive.

    They estimate that poverty as they measure it would fall by nearly 14 percent across the board (lifting 5.1 million people out), and by one-third for children. The effects would be even more pronounced for extreme poverty, defined as living under half the poverty line. Some critics argue the poverty line Niskanen uses is too low, but the point remains: This plan would do an awful lot to chip away at poverty in the United States. (You can read Niskanen’s full report on the plan here.)

    Poverty effects of the Mitt Romney child allowance plan. 

    That poverty effect, Niskanen concedes, is smaller than the effect of Joe Biden’s proposed one-year child tax credit expansion would have during that one year. But that’s only because the Romney plan curtails tax breaks and cuts spending, including getting rid of other programs for low-income people that the child allowance renders redundant.

    The upside of Romney’s plan being fully paid for, however, is that it would allow Congress to make the measure permanent under budget reconciliation rules, whereas the Biden proposal that relies on deficit funding is a temporary one-year measure.

    The Romney plan also has some advantages over the Biden plan as currently presented, even beyond being permanent. Checks are sent in a truly universal manner, which makes for easier monthly payments. As of this writing, the Biden administration hasn’t commented on whether or not its plan will include monthly payments, though some Democratic offices in Congress have told me on background they are pushing for monthly payments. A White House spokesperson told me, “We are working with Congress and the Treasury Department to determine the best way of getting families this relief in the American Rescue Plan.”

    The Romney plan has already earned praise from surprising quarters.

    Matt Bruenig, the leftist writer and founder of the People’s Policy Project think tank who writes frequently about child benefits, told me:

    “Among the child benefit policies that have been proposed so far, Romney’s is the best. It has the highest benefits and the simplest administration. I’d like to see Romney get rid of his proposal’s benefit phaseout and child cap, which create hassle without meaningful savings, but otherwise it’s a pretty solid proposal.”

    Sharon Parrott, president of the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which pushes for expanded benefits for low-income people, was more skeptical. “This proposal shows growing bipartisan support for expanding the child tax credit, but it’s misguided to undercut the policy’s poverty-reducing impact by using deep cuts in other critical forms of support for low-income people to pay for it,” Parrott told me.

    “They want to talk about it as consolidation, but they are massive cuts. Their own document shows an EITC cut of $47 billion.”

    In its current form, the Romney plan may not be able to make it through Congress, for reasons Parrott highlights and detailed further below. But if the Biden administration embraces it and tweaks it, it could hit on a rare achievement: a truly bipartisan expansion of the social safety net that permanently reduces poverty in America.

    The background to Romney’s proposal

    To understand the Romney plan and why it’s so important, you have to understand a bit about how the child tax credit works now.

    Currently, the credit offers parents up to $2,000 a year (up from only $1,000 a year before the Trump tax cuts). But the benefits are sharply limited when it comes to poor families. That’s because households have to earn at least $2,500 per year for the credit to be “refundable,” or for households that don’t have a tax liability to actually receive the benefit. And only $1,400 of the $2,000, at most, is refundable; poor families that don’t make $2,500 a year can never get the full $2,000.

    An American without any taxable income — say, a single mom with a kid who lives with family but doesn’t have a job because of the recession or some other barrier — won’t owe any taxes, but because their income falls below that $2,500-a-year threshold, they don’t get any benefit from the current child tax credit.

    The problem is more severe than that, though, because even above $2,500 per year the credit phases in slowly, at a rate of 15 percent. A parent has to earn at least $11,833.33 to qualify for the full refundable credit, a bar that the poorest households can’t meet.

    That has led to a variety of proposals meant to expand access to the credit for poor people. The most modest suggestion, pushed in the Senate by Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Mike Lee (R-UT), was to let families that pay payroll taxes, but not income taxes, claim the credit. That still excluded the poorest families where the adults are out of work. The Rubio-Lee measure failed on the Senate floor during the 2017 tax cut debate (though they did succeed in increasing the credit to $2,000 per child for people with high enough incomes to owe taxes).

    Democrats went bigger. During the tax cut fight, Sens. Michael Bennet (D-CO) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) proposed a bill called the American Family Act (AFA) that would make the child tax credit fully refundable — meaning poor families could access the full benefit right away, no phase-ins or income thresholds. They refined the bill with Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Suzan DelBene (D-WA) and reintroduced it in 2019; by the end of the last Congress, 38 of 47 Senate Democrats had sponsored or cosponsored it, as had 188 of 232 House Democrats. The latest version is expected to be reintroduced for 2021 soon.

    The AFA looks a lot like the Romney proposal. It would also offer $3,000 a year or $250 a month for parents of kids aged 6 to 16; 17-year-olds would not be eligible, and are not eligible under the child credit now.

    It offers a lower payment compared to the Romney plan, $3,600 a year or $300 per month, to children under 6. But it also includes no cuts to other programs that might offset the credit’s benefits.

    The AFA also envisioned the payments being made by the IRS and/or the Treasury Department, rather than through the Social Security Administration as in the Romney plan. There are advantages and disadvantage to using each agency, Elaine Maag, an expert on child and family benefits at the Urban Institute, told me:

    “SSA does have experience delivering monthly payments, which is certainly an advantage they have over other agencies … but SSA does not have information about who a child lives with, which means they would likely need to coordinate with the IRS on who should receive the payment.”

    Joe Biden, as part of his American Rescue Plan, has essentially proposed implementing the AFA for exactly one year. His plan as proposed does not specify that the payments will be monthly, though his campaign proposal did include monthly payments. Biden’s campaign plan and the American Rescue Plan also include 17-year-olds, which neither the current child tax credit nor the AFA did.

    The key to Romney’s plan: It’s deficit-neutral

    Senators Sworn-In As Judges And Jurors For Impeachment Trial As Summons Is Issued To Donald Trump
    Mitt Romney walking to the floor of the Senate on January 26.

    Mitt Romney, a Republican, is calling for an even bigger child benefit for kids than President Biden is. So why might Democrats not immediately want to sign on?

    The short answer is the pay-fors. Romney’s plan is deficit-neutral at least through 2025 (when many Trump tax breaks expire, making analysis beyond that year tough), and to do that he pairs his remarkably generous child allowance plan with some cuts to other tax breaks and spending programs.

    Romney’s proposal would eliminate:

    Romney would also replace the earned income tax credit (EITC), which currently offers more benefits to families with more kids, with a flat credit worth up to $1,000 per working adult, with no child-related component. The EITC for adult dependents, however, would be unchanged.

    The Niskanen analysis suggests that poor Americans, overall, would come out ahead in this trade.

    The SALT deduction, for instance, is highly regressive. Per the Tax Policy Center, about 75 percent of the benefit of the deduction goes to the richest 20 percent of Americans; the bottom three-fifths of Americans get roughly nothing from it.

    The child and dependent care credit, while well-intentioned, is also poorly targeted. It’s not refundable, so the more than 40 percent of households without a positive income tax burden cannot benefit from it. As a result, the Tax Policy Center estimates only 12 percent of families with children benefited from the credit in 2020. By contrast, roughly 100 percent would benefit from Romney’s plan.

    Eliminating the head-of-household filing status, while boosting other benefits for single parents and caretakers (as through a child allowance), is a common feature of tax reform proposals because it makes filing taxes more complex without much payoff. And while TANF is supposed to benefit poor families, in practice states tend to use it as a slush fund to fund whatever they like. For every 100 families in poverty, only 23 got TANF benefits in 2019, while 100 would qualify for the Romney allowance.

    That said, the people who do rely heavily on the program might suffer.

    “Eliminating TANF as one way to help pay for the costs of the new benefit is tricky,” Urban’s Maag says. “TANF is a small program affecting a small population. Eliminating it will likely create difficulties for those families; it’s a relatively small but disadvantaged group.”

    But while all of Romney’s pay-fors may appear to be reasonable trades for a generous child allowance, they might create political headaches for the plan in Congress. Democrats in rich blue states like New York and New Jersey are fervent defenders of the state and local tax deduction, with many pushing to repeal even the modest limits on the deduction put in place in the 2017 tax bill. (Less cynically, some tax experts have argued that state and local taxes really should be tax-free, to encourage rich people to live in high-tax states and subsidize their poorer neighbors.)

    Meanwhile, Biden has proposed dramatically expanding the child and dependent care credit by making it fully refundable and much, much more generous. Eliminating it entirely obviously goes in the opposite direction.

    And, Parrott notes, Romney could have financed the plan with tax increases on the rich, rather than cuts to other safety net programs.

    “The question is how you’d finance a child tax credit expansion for low-income kids,” Parrott says. “Their answer, largely, is to take away resources from low-income kids.”

    The bottom line: The Romney plan would make a real dent in poverty

    Democrats do not, on their own, have 60 votes in the Senate, which means that Republicans opposing a bill can block it by filibustering. The only way around that, for the time being, is the budget reconciliation process, which enables 51 senators (or 50 and tiebreaker Vice President Kamala Harris) to pass legislation.

    It’s hard to see Romney’s proposal gaining enough Republican support to get the plan above 60 votes, though I’d be thrilled to be proven wrong on that front. But it could easily, with Romney, Democrats, and maybe a few other Republicans on board, make it into a reconciliation package.

    The difficulty with reconciliation packages is that they normally cannot increase the deficit after 10 years. When George W. Bush passed his tax cuts in 2001 through reconciliation, those tax cuts had to sunset in 2011.

    A permanent child allowance, without any pay-fors, would definitely increase the deficit. That’s part of why the Biden administration has so far only proposed a one-year variant of its plan to expand the child tax credit.

    So Romney’s plan offers a plausible and appealing alternative. It’s almost as effective at reducing poverty, even when taking into account its pay-fors, as the Biden plan, and because it’s deficit-neutral, it can be enacted permanently as part of a budget reconciliation package. And obviously, a permanent plan is more valuable to poor families than Biden’s one-year package.

    If Biden wants to tweak it by slightly changing the pay-fors, that’s fine; I’d prefer a more generous allowance paid for by higher taxes on the rich, to make up for the EITC cuts.

    But it’s important not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. And as it stands, the Romney plan is better than the Biden plan, in my estimation, if only because it’s permanent. A Romney aide told me they have reached out to the president already on the topic and are hoping they can negotiate.

    It might not be Chuck Schumer’s ideal plan, but it would help millions of families with children in a straightforward way. It would meaningfully slash poverty and provide a base from which to slash it more in the future.

    Programs that give families cash, according to UC Irvine economist Greg Duncan, result in better learning outcomes and higher earnings for their kids. 

    One study found a $3,000 annual income increase for poor parents is associated with 19 percent higher earnings for their child once he or she grows up. That implies that a child allowance of that size could dramatically improve the lives of children decades later.

    Romney’s plan presents an opportunity to enact that kind of profound change in the lives of millions of impoverished children. Congress shouldn’t pass it up.

    _____

    To see original article please visit: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22264520/mitt-romney-checks-parents-4200

    The post Mitt Romney Just Proposed a Permanent Basic Income Guarantee for Families of at Least $250 a Month and Up to $15,000 a Year appeared first on Basic Income Today.

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  • How Congress learned to stop worrying and start disbursing cash

    The $1,200 Covid-19 stimulus checks last year were a breakthrough in US policy — and may signal a new course for US politics.

    By Dylan Matthews

    The Biden administration and its allies in Congress are pushing for a new round of $1,400 checks to all but the richest Americans. If you’ve been following the ins and outs of Covid-19 relief politics in recent weeks, this isn’t surprising news.

    But consider what a dramatic transformation of American politics this represents. The first $1,200 checks that were sent out as part of a massive relief package in early 2020 were genuinely unprecedented in American history. The US has issued refunds for taxes paid in the past, and those refunds sometimes looked a bit like unconditional checks, as in 2001.

    The $1,200 checks were not refunds. They were just checks, and they were available even to low-income Americans with low or no tax burdens.

    These checks were the closest the US, or most other rich countries, had ever come to trying a universal basic income. By one estimate, 93 percent of Americans got money from the program, which offered benefits to, say, a family of four as long as they earned under $218,000. “93 percent basic income” is not quite universal basic income, but it’s not far off, either.

    March 2020 was a strange time when it felt like the world as we knew it was collapsing, so it was natural to think this would be a one-off policy. But it wasn’t. Democrats in Congress pushed for more cash in the spring and summer. So did President Trump and some Republicans like Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) late last year. The result was a surprising second batch of stimulus checks: $600 in cash sent to most adults.

    In the wake of the December stimulus bill’s passage, Trump expressed his preference for an even bigger $2,000 check, a target enthusiastically embraced by Democrats in Congress.

    Riding that momentum, Biden and his allies in Congress are trying to send out $1,400 checks to reach that $2,000 goal. Meanwhile, progressives are pushing the administration to support even larger checks — not just $1,400 to top up the $600 from December, but a full $2,000.

    Whatever the final figure ends up being, it’s worth stepping back to appreciate just how much the politics of giving people money has shifted in the past year. Sending cash is hugely popular and has become the subject of mass public attention in a way that’s rare for legislative proposals.

    In late December, Google search interest in the $2,000 checks exceeded interest in the Kardashians or Taylor Swift.

    Cash’s bipartisan popularity, and its ability to muster large-scale public interest and support, suggests that the future might involve a lot more policies like checks — even when the pandemic has passed. Covid-19, in other words, may have done what years of basic income advocacy could not do on its own: convinced our political class that handing out cash is a good, popular, economically effective policy.

    More than that, the surprising embrace of checks by some Republicans suggests that the tax cut-centered right-wing politics that emerged in the Reagan era may be waning. If slashing rates is replaced in the Republican toolkit with handing out checks, that’s a win for basically everyone.

    The self-sustaining politics of checks

    There’s a great bit in the pilot episode of The Carmichael Show where Jerrod Carmichael’s dad, played by David Alan Grier, confesses that he voted for George W. Bush in 2004. His liberal Black family is shocked and horrified. But his explanation is simple: Bush gave him a check in 2001. “He sent me that stimulator check. No president ever sent me $1,600. Nobody ever sent me $1,600. You can bomb whoever you want long as you send me $1,600.”

    Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX) holds a mock tax refund check while speaking in support of President George W. Bush’s tax cut plan in 2001.

    I don’t know how common a reaction that was to the 2001 tax cut checks (which were more like $600 for married couples). But Grier’s character’s reaction gets at the heart of why checks have taken off this year.

    Members of Congress often act, in the words of political scientist David Mayhew, as “single-minded seekers of reelection.” There are lots of ways to get yourself reelected, but wouldn’t sending your voters money be the simplest way of all?

    Congress does all kinds of other giveaways, of course, from the mortgage interest deduction for the affluent to the earned income tax credit for the working poor. But they tend to be relatively complex and buried in the tax code, where it’s hard for voters to know who, exactly, in Congress made this help for them possible. Why not simplify it dramatically?

    For years I’ve been somewhat baffled, as a writer on social policy, that this logic hadn’t taken off more. Examples like Bush’s 2001 refunds were rare; Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) tried a similar approach with his “sales tax rebates” for families with kids in 2018, but the amounts were paltry, at just $100 per child.

    It seemed like there was a strong taboo against simply attempting to send money to voters, as evidenced by the criticisms that Walker was engaged in “vote buying” by introducing his refund plan in the months leading up to his election.

    That changed last year. The $1,200 checks included in the CARES Act in March — which were much more universal, especially at the low end, than Bush’s 2001 refund — were sufficiently popular that a groundswell of support built up for subsequent rounds. They were so popular, in fact, that they overshadowed every other aspect of the US’s fiscal response, including the similarly unprecedented $600-per-week boost to unemployment insurance payments.

    A common genre of viral tweet in 2020 involved insisting that $1,200 was all the US did for people, usually while exaggerating what other countries did (by, say, insisting Canada gave everyone $1,433 a month when it just did so for unemployed people, to whom the US gave at least $2,400 a month):

    Obviously, Drake giving away about $1 million as part of his music video for “God’s Plan” does not remotely compare to the $848 billion the federal government has spent on cash payments and bonus unemployment checks to date.

    But this reaction tells us something important: The flat cash checks to almost every American were by far the most visible part of the country’s policy response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

    Even other good, relatively broad-eligibility policies like the unemployment bonuses were less salient to people.

    And for politicians, there’s a real advantage to offer tangible, salient relief that’s visible to all. This helps explain why Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, the two Democrats who flipped both Georgia Senate seats on January 5, made the $2,000 checks proposal central to their campaigns. Ossoff is now reportedly urging fellow Democrats to be “bold” in pushing for actions that result in immediate material gains for voters. It’s not hard to see why: That’s a big part of the political strategy that made him a senator.

    Cash politics has downsides, but they’re easy to overstate

    Not everyone, even on the left, is enthusiastic about the rise of checks as the de facto language of economic populism. The most compelling critique is that giving money to citizens is just one of many functions the government will perform — and that if checks become too popular, the other functions will get starved.

    How much check money is given out, economic policy analyst Nathan Tankus notes, is “becoming a proxy for how good or bad legislation is. If this continues to be established as a benchmark, we will get worse and worse legislation.”

    More money in checks can mean less money for public health infrastructure, education, medical research, and basically everything else the government does other than hand out money.

    That may not be a terrible thing if the benefits being crowded out can be replicated with cash — $1,000 in cash is more valuable than $1,000 in food stamp benefits, for instance, because it can be spent more flexibly and on more material needs, a common argument UBI advocates make. But there are other priorities like schools or medical insurance for which checks cannot substitute.

    This has already happened to some degree in the one US state with a universal cash program: Alaska, which pays out a “dividend” from its oil wealth to all residents every year.

    Pressure to increase that dividend has translated into spending cuts, rather than tax hikes, from the state’s Republican leadership. Depending on what’s being cut, that can translate into a net loss for many residents.

    This is a valid concern, and people like Tankus are right to raise it. But I still think check politics is an improvement on the politics surrounding fiscal policy that preceded this moment.

    To see why, it helps to break down the approach to checks taken by the two parties. Are Democrats eschewing non-check investments in favor of checks, now that they have unified control of Congress and the presidency? Not really, no.

    President Biden’s “American Rescue Plan” includes $1,400 checks, yes, but also the beginnings of a more regular cash program in the form of an expanded child tax credit, copious state and local aid, vaccination and testing funding, investments in child care subsidies, and so on.

    The checks are the largest provision in the plan, per the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, at about $465 billion, but state and local aid isn’t far behind at $350 billion, and another $350 billion would go toward expanding unemployment insurance.

    Democrats just don’t seem to be using checks as an excuse to avoid investing in other non-cash priorities.

    Republicans are a different story. Figures like Hawley or Sen. Mitt Romney (or Donald Trump) who embraced checks over the past year do not typically pair this with a commitment to invest elsewhere in the budget, at least outside of defense. Trump’s budgets as president frequently included deep safety net cuts, even as he pushed hard for $2,000 checks. So it’s reasonable to worry that the future is Republicans pushing for big cash payouts at the expense of other priorities.

    My optimistic read on this, though, is that this means Republicans are using check politics for the same purposes they have used tax cut politics in the past. And check politics is a marked improvement.

    The end of tax cut populism?

    It’s easy to forget this now, but the Reagan tax cut project of the 1980s was largely a populist endeavor. Business interests, sociologist Monica Prasad has found, were not particularly enamored of Reagan’s and other supply-siders’ plans to slash the top individual tax rate from 70 percent to 50 percent.

    Business interests were understandably more focused on pushing through substantial corporate tax rate cuts and saw individual rate cuts as a distraction. But the Republican coalition embraced across-the-board individual rate cuts, at least in part, because the idea was genuinely popular, Prasad argues.

    President Ronald Reagan signs tax and budget cuts while on vacation at his ranch in 1981.

    Tax rates were much higher across the board in 1981 than they are now, and even more importantly, inflation was high and rising, and tax brackets were not indexed for inflation. This meant that with each passing year, more people were getting pushed into higher tax brackets, which angered middle-class taxpayers, not just the rich.

    The key to victory for conservatives, supply-siders like Jude Wanniski argued, was not to become Scrooges decrying government spending, but to become like a “second Santa Claus.” The first Santa Claus was the Democrats, who offered benefits through more spending programs. The second Santa Claus would be the Republicans, offering benefits through tax cuts. It was an explicitly populist strategy, and it made sense politically, if not economically.

    As critics of the tax cuts, then and now, have noted, across-the-board tax cuts have the effect of helping the rich more than the middle class. But that doesn’t mean they were unpopular.

    Reagan’s subsequent political success, followed by the relative failure of George H.W. Bush when he raised taxes, served to convince Republican operatives that across-the-board cuts were a winning strategy.

    And so across-the-board cuts made their way to the top of George W. Bush’s agenda in 2001, with measures like the $600 refund checks as a way to bolster the populist appeal of the changes to folks like Jarrod Carmichael’s TV dad. As the political scientist Larry Bartels noted in his classic paper on the Bush cuts, “Homer Gets a Tax Cut,” the result was that a plurality of Americans supported Bush’s policies even as they acknowledged the tax cuts mostly helped the rich. It’s just that they perceived the cuts as also helping them.

    The net effect of these policies was not far from the one feared by check skeptics today — that checks will mean less money for public health, education, and other priorities.

    Bush’s and Reagan’s policies ballooned deficits, which enabled the successful calls for austerity by Republicans in Congress like Newt Gingrich in the 1990s and John Boehner and Paul Ryan in the 2010s.

    The tax cut-fueled deficits enabled Gingrich, Boehner, and Ryan to chip away at spending priorities important to Democrats through a series of deals with former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. This is not to say that the “starve the beast” strategy — cutting taxes to force reductions in government spending later — was always successful. But it’s hard to see measures like the “sequestration” cuts of the Obama years happening without the Bush tax cuts increasing the national debt, and Republicans’ ensuing use of the debt as a rationale for budget cuts.

    President Trump holds up a tax overhaul bill after signing it into law in the Oval Office in December 2017.

    In the Trump years, though, tax cut populism ran dry. Republicans had cut middle-class taxes to the bone under Reagan and Bush and so focused their attention on slashing the corporate tax rate.

    The result was the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017, an unpopular package the American public rejected, seen as a giveaway to corporate America.

    The bill did cut rates for individuals by a few points here and there, and more importantly greatly expanded the standard deduction, but the public correctly saw middle-class benefits as minimal compared to what corporations and the rich got.

    The poorest Americans got $60 each back on average, the Tax Policy Center found, while the top 1 percent got over $50,000 apiece.

    This was a development some conservative policy analysts and thinkers had anticipated. The “reformicon” movement of the 2010s sought to reorient Republican economic policy away from tax rate cuts and toward more concrete benefits for middle-class taxpayers, like a more generous child tax credit. The idea was that the Reagan formula of slashing rates across the board couldn’t work anymore. The party was running up against the limits of what rate cuts could do. They had to figure out how to be a different kind of Santa Claus.

    The signature proposal of the reformicons — a child tax credit refundable against both the income and payroll tax, not just the former — did not exactly set the world on fire, perhaps because it was mostly about adjusting refundability formulas, and no ordinary person knows what the phrase “refundable tax credit” means.

    Indeed, the main legacy of that proposal has been that Democrats picked it up beginning in 2017, made it simpler to understand ($3,000 cash to every child every year, plus an extra $600 to young kids), and used it as a centerpiece of their tax agenda starting in 2019, most recently by including it in Biden’s American Rescue Plan.

    A simple plan

    You can think of stimulus check politics, then, as a kind of round two of the reformist conservatives’ ideas. It’s even simpler than Democrats’ “$3,000 to every child every year” plan.

    Everyone below the phaseout — in Biden’s proposal, $75,000 for individuals, $150,000 for households — gets money: adult, child, whoever. Unless you’re pretty rich, you get a check. It’s a better way to be a second Santa Claus than either the Reagan/Bush tax cut approach or the convoluted tax credit plan of the reformicons.

    If Republicans arrive at check politics as a replacement for tax cut politics, it will be good for their political prospects — but also incredibly good for the country. What made tax cuts politics somewhat deceitful was the idea that to help the middle class, you needed to help the rich even more.

    Pushing “across the board” tax cuts was essentially a way to bribe the middle class into going along with rate cuts that primarily helped the richest taxpayers (like slashing the top rate from 70 percent to 50 percent back in 1981), because at least the middle class got something too. The rich got more in both dollar and percentage terms than anyone else, but all boats (at least of people who make enough money to owe income tax) were rising, so complaints were limited.

    President Biden and Vice President Harris meet with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in the Oval Office on January 29. Biden stressed the urgent need to pass a Covid-19 relief package.

    But giving everyone under a certain cutoff a check is truly progressive. The $1,400 that Biden is proposing is always going to be a higher percentage of income for a poor person than a rich person. And 2020 set a precedent that when the government sends cash, it sends it to everyone — including the roughly 40 percent of Americans who earn too little money to pay income taxes, who were left out of the Reagan and Bush efforts.

    The net effect of the 2020 stimulus debate may be to transform the Republican Santa Claus — a huge elitist throwing big stacks of bills at the rich plus a little bit for the plebes to keep them at bay — into an egalitarian handing out checks to the bottom half of the income ladder.

    That would be a huge win. Republicans have always run on returning your tax dollars to you; this would simply be settling on a much more equal way of doing so. This shift won’t solve every problem with budget debates, of course; checks will compete with spending priorities the same way tax cuts did and do. But it’s a better Santa Claus.

    _____

    To see original article please visit: https://dailycaller.com/2021/01/28/americans-covid-19-stimulus-checks-republicans/

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  • U.S. Could Distribute $1,875 Stimulus Checks For 8 Months For Same Cost As 2017 Trump Tax Cuts, Says Robert Reich

    By Shahar Ziv

    The U.S. could afford to give every working adult $1,875 stimulus checks for eight months for the same cost as the tax cuts that Trump passed in 2017, argued Robert Reich. Reich, the Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton and author of the forthcoming book, “The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It”, tweeted the comparison saying “it’s a question of priorities” for the country. His comments come after Senate Republicans blocked at least four votes that would have increased the size of stimulus check payments from $600 to $2,000. 

    McConnell Blocked $2,000 Stimulus Check Votes

    Reich’s comments were an implicit rebuke to remarks made by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) who blocked attempt after attempt to unanimously approve a House-passed bill that would have increased stimulus payments to $2,000. McConnell had called the effort to augment stimulus checks “socialism for rich people.”

    “Borrowing from our grandkids to do socialism for rich people is a terrible way to get help to families who actually need it,” McConnell speciously argued.

    Reich essentially subtweeted McConnell, saying that “Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations will cost $2.3 trillion over ten years. For the same cost, we could afford to give every American $1875 checks for the next 8 months.” His criticism of McConnell’s dubious claims reinforced the argument that Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) had assiduously made on the Senate floor last week.

    In response to McConnell’s “socialism for the rich” claim, which he repeated four times during one Senate floor speech, Sanders replied, “the majority leader helped lead this body to pass Trump’s tax bill. You want to talk about socialism for the rich Mr. Majority Leader?!”

    Trump Tax Cuts Will Cost Americans $2.3 Trillion Over 10 Years

    Reich and Sanders are not wrong. The tax cuts passed by President Trump and a Republican Congress in 2017 have added trillions to the deficit; there was no concern voiced about grandkids and their future when the bill was being debated.

    Despite Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s famous claim that “not only will this tax plan pay for itself but it will pay down debt,” his own department’s analysts recently pegged “the 10-year cost at $2.3 trillion given the administration’s assumption that tax breaks for individuals and large estates will be extended past 2025.” 

    Moreover, the tax cuts were and continue to be heavily skewed towards the rich. In 2018, households earning $1 million or more received roughly 16.5 percent of the total tax cut benefit, despite only being 0.4 percent of all tax filers, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). By 2027, those million dollar or more households are projected to be 0.6 percent of all tax filers, but would get a staggering 81.8 percent of the total benefit from the tax cut bill. 

    “For most Americans, the proposed tax cuts are tiny and temporary,” Reich wrote in a blog post on his website.

    “Meanwhile, the top 1 percent will get a gigantic tax cut. The Tax Policy Center estimates that the current plan will save the bottom 80 percent between $50 and $450 in taxes per year, but that it saves each person in the top 1 percent an average of $129,000 a year,” he added.

    In other words, socialism for the rich. 

    Had we not thrown over $2 trillion out of the national piggy bank and into corporate coffers, the country would be in a stronger position to support hard-working Americans who are still struggling to make ends meet months into the coronavirus pandemic.

    To complain about “borrowing from our grandkids” in the context of stimulus checks, but not in the context of a $2 trillion-plus tax cut is pure hypocrisy. Let’s also not forget about the tax cuts that Republicans sneaked into the Cares Act that provided 43,000 millionaires with a $1.7 million windfall each.

    Reich’s Stimulus Check Calculation

    Reich suggests that instead of the tax cuts that cost taxpayers trillions, the government could give a $1,875 stimulus check for eight months, which is the equivalent of a $15,000 aggregate payment per person.

    Given the $2.3 trillion cost he is using as a comparison, this would equate to giving stimulus checks to roughly 153 million people. 

    Reich clarified via e-mail that he was using “working adults” in his calculation. While 153 million people may not directly equate to “every American” – the U.S. population was roughly 331 million people in 2020 – it does roughly square with 160 million economic impact payments that were sent following passage of the Cares Act. If we were to use a higher figure, like 331 million people, the stimulus check amount would slightly decrease, but the underlying argument would still hold.

    The Upshot

    Reich’s rebuttal of McConnell’s ridiculous claim that $2,000 stimulus checks are “socialism for the rich,” is spot on. While the majority leader succeeded in blocking the vote on stimulus checks at the end of the 116th Congress, the question for the 117th Congress along with President Biden will be simple: what are your priorities?

    _____

    Published originally on January 4, 2021 by Forbes.

    To see original article please visit: https://www.forbes.com/sites/shaharziv/2021/01/04/giving-1875-stimulus-checks-for-8-months-would-cost-same-as-2017-trump-tax-cuts-says-robert-reich/

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