Minneapolis just publicly announced it’s own version of a guaranteed basic income pilot and though this “how many [UBI/guaranteed income] pilots do we need to prove the model’s success” refrain keeps running through my head, I’m excited to see the continued expansion of guaranteed income- a concept advanced by both the Black Panther Party in their 10-Point Program and Martin Luther King, Jr in the 1960s. I wrote this meditation a few months ago when Roxane Gay called for submissions on the topic of guaranteed income. It wasn’t published there but still feels timely now. As always, this is just a starting place.
Scarcity and abundance: a meditation on guaranteed income
So much of the world we live in is based on an (objectively false) sense of scarcity: scarcity of housing, scarcity of vaccines, scarcity of water, scarcity of food. Despite plenty of evidence that, in fact, resource and wealth hoarding among the richest drives scarcity for the rest of us, the sense of scarcity is insidious in its nature- seeping into every facet of our daily living. Scarcity saps our imaginations, shrinks our dreams, and keeps us stuck scrambling to make ends meet. Scarcity is so ingrained in our lives that it’s difficult to imagine what the world would be like if, at the minimum, everyone had enough income to live a dignified life. Mayors for a Guaranteed Income understands scarcity for the farce that it is and, instead, advocates that “everyone deserves an income floor through a guaranteed income, which is a monthly, cash payment given directly to individuals. It is unconditional, with no strings attached and no work requirements. A guaranteed income is meant to supplement, rather than replace, the existing social safety net and can be a tool for racial and gender equity”. Count me in.
Martin Luther King, Jr. referenced this deep sense of scarcity in his last book Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community (1967) where he talks about guaranteed income. He says, “the contemporary tendency in our society is to base our distribution on scarcity, which has vanished, and to compress our abundance into the overfed mouths of the middle and upper classes until they gag with superfluity”. Dreams and ideas grow scarce in poverty. Care and love seem more scarce too.
I’ll be honest. The first thing that comes to my mind when I think about a guaranteed income is my own Long Covid health crisis. I think about how 8 months after testing positive for COVID-19, I just couldn’t keep up with work anymore and took a three month medical leave hoping to recover. Maybe, had I had a guaranteed income, I wouldn’t have been quite so stressed about how I’d pay rent or my other bills. I think about how I wouldn’t have been forced to return to part-time work when my body wasn’t ready solely because I had no other source of income. I think about how maybe I wouldn’t be spending my very scarce energy battling with an insurance company over short-term disability payments if I had a guaranteed income. A wave of relief comes over me imagining a world where Long Covid would not cause me to worry about homelessness or creditors because my ability to live wouldn’t be so directly tied to whether or not I could work. The reality is I didn’t have a guaranteed income and, ultimately, I haven’t gotten my health back and I also lost my job. Creativity runs scarce when all you can think about is how next month’s rent will be paid.
We could discuss the existing, manufactured scarcity all day and we wouldn’t have covered it all. But perhaps, the more useful, compelling exercise is to focus on the abundance we might find if no one was forced to live in poverty. I wonder, how else the world might be changed if everyone had enough?
I wonder if Black maternal health would improve with guaranteed income? Perhaps, with a guaranteed income, there would be an abundance of happy, healthy families. Indeed, The Abundant Birth Project from Expecting Justice in San Fransisco is aiming to do just that, starting with pregnant Black and Pacific Islander people.
I wonder if queer folks would have more safe spaces to dance and enjoy life? Perhaps, with a guaranteed income, there would be an abundance of queer people- elders and youth- with an abundance of genders, sexualities, expressions, and spaces.
I wonder if all the disabled artists and thinkers and story keepers would finally get to share all of their gifts and skills if they had access to guaranteed incomes, “pegged to the median income of society, not the lowest income levels” as Martin Luther King, Jr. put it, not the entrenching poverty of Social Security disability payments. Maybe there would be an abundance of accessibility; a world accessible to everyone.
I wonder if homeless folks would have an abundance of safer housing options with a guaranteed income. Early data from the New Leaf Project in Canada which gave direct, unconditional cash payments to homeless adults suggests that’s exactly what would happen.
I wonder if the people of Flint or the Navajo Nation would finally get an abundance of clean water if everyone had a guaranteed income.
With a guaranteed income, I wonder if I would become a poet. With an abundance of time and energy saved not worrying about paycheck to paycheck living, would an abundance of beautiful words come to me?
I wonder if the cashier at the grocery store would become an architect or nurse or a pilot or an artist with an abundance of opportunity and space to study afforded by a guaranteed income.
I wonder what would fall apart if everyone had a guaranteed income. Would predatory lending and borders crumble? Would the abundance of pawn shops transform into an abundance of art galleries and dance studios and community hubs? Perhaps large tree roots would grow through the school to prison pipeline and destroy it.
I wonder who would become activists if they had a guaranteed income? I wonder who would finally be able to imagine a world without racism, without police, without abuse. Perhaps, with guaranteed incomes, we would have an abundance of water protectors, organizers, doulas, and revolutionaries. With guaranteed incomes, would impacted people would finally have the abundance of energy and time and capacity to fix their focus on systems that need dismantling? I wonder.
Would our backyard gardens grow with more vibrancy if we had guaranteed income? Perhaps there would be an abundance of food and it wouldn’t be compressed into the overfed mouths of the middle and upper classes. Perhaps there would be enough for everyone.
Would the prisons not be so full if everyone had a guaranteed income? Would the abundant jails be uprooted and replaced by abundantly funded schools? Mayor Melvin Carter’s pilot program to provide unconditional payments to families with school-aged children in St. Paul, Minnesota might indicate what’s possible.
Would trans women of color live to see 90 if we all had a guaranteed income? Perhaps we would have an abundance of gender-affirming care and support instead of an abundance of violence against trans people. Mayor Breed and the trans Latinx community in San Fransisco might be the vanguard of our imagination.
Would childcare be robust and accessible if we all had a guaranteed income? Would there be an abundance of play, care, and protection of our children?
Would food taste better? Would flowers grow brighter? Would joy last longer? Would you sing louder? Would you celebrate bigger? Would you dream wider? Would you love deeper? I wonder what new world- one we haven’t even imagined yet- we would create if, on the way, everyone had a guaranteed income. I wonder.
A guaranteed income shifts the weights of scarcity more toward abundance. A guaranteed income is merely the foundation from which a new, safer, dignified world can be built because a guaranteed income allows individuals to climb off their hamster wheels, take deep breaths, and look up at the sky. A guaranteed income is the alchemy that takes our personal wants, ameliorates them, and creates space for collective care. A guaranteed income is the starting place; not the ending.