Martin Luther King Jr Advocated Universal Basic Income (UBI)
by John Lawrence, April 7, 2018
As more and more jobs become automated and the divide between the haves and the have littles becomes greater, there comes a day when there is a need to shovel a little money into consumers' hands. After all 70% of the American economy is based on consumption. If consumers have no money to consume, the economy goes bust. So far that has not happened and employment by all indications is robust. Nevertheless, it is not operating at full capacity when jobs are shipped overseas and the rust belt jobs of the good old days have largely disappeared.
Martin Luther King Jr. realized that no matter how prosperous "the economy" was there would always be people who were left behind. He said:
The problem indicates that our emphasis must be two-fold. We must create full employment or we must create incomes. People must be made consumers by one method or the other. Once they are placed in this position, we need to be concerned that the potential of the individual is not wasted. New forms of work that enhance the social good will have to be devised for those for whom traditional jobs are not available.
So far cheap goods have held pace with the replacement of good paying jobs with mediocre paying jobs. As long as most people can afford a car and a color TV, the economy keeps on churning. Problem is fewer and fewer people can afford to pay rent. That's why the ranks of the homeless are swelling. This never used to be a problem in America. Even in the War on Poverty, most of those poverty stricken had a roof over their heads of sorts. The War on Poverty is the unofficial name for legislation first introduced by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during his State of the Union address on Wednesday, January 8, 1964. This legislation was proposed by Johnson in response to a national poverty rate of around nineteen percent. Now in addition to a poverty rate, there's a homeless rate.
Could a UBI solve the problem? Maybe. Government has been offering the poor in-kind goods and services for years - just not enough of either. A UBI could take the place of all kinds of welfare programs. Right now the poor may qualify for EBT - Electronics Benefits Transfer - in which their debit card is loaded with a certain amount of money each month. Problem is EBT is hackable. People don't always spend their money in the wisest way. Giving people cash and letting them decide how to spend it leads to some people spending it on booze and drugs.
The homeless are a special economic class of individuals beneath even the class that was considered to be in poverty in the 1960s. While capitalism has created a few extremely wealthy individuals and families, it has created an underclass of homeless people. A combination of UBI and in kind government supplied goods and services is probably necessary so that major tourist destinations like LA and San Diego aren't taken over by people urinating and defecating in the streets. A recent Hepatitis A outbreak demonstrated to everyone that benign neglect of the homeless is not an acceptable solution to the problem.
