by Chris Hughes
A guaranteed income for working people would transform the lives of those in our country who need the most help. By empowering people to chase their own dreams, it would provide the equal opportunity for all that we so often talk about. It would help rebalance our economy by asking the ultra-wealthy to pay their fair share. It is the kind of big, simple idea that we should not be afraid to champion.
My father, the guaranteed income skeptic, has come around to the idea in time. We both agree that people want to work, and that if you work, you should not live in poverty. He has come to understand how unstable jobs in America are becoming and the evidence behind cash transfers. We both agree that the ultra-wealthy, not people like him, should be paying their share.
When Martin Luther King Jr. began his fight for the guaranteed income in 1967, there were 40 million Americans living in poverty. Today, fifty years later, there are still 40 million Americans living in poverty and even more lower-middle-class people who are teetering on the brink of economic collapse. We have the power to change this. A guaranteed income of $500 a month, paid for by the one percent, would lift 20 million people out of poverty and give them a fair shot at economic independence.
“The way out is through the door,” goes an old Confucian proverb. Let’s use it.
Afterword
My husband and I are expecting our first child this year, a little boy. I worry a lot about the world he will live in and the position of privilege he will occupy. He’ll grow up in Greenwich Village in Manhattan, a neighborhood that used to be full of artists and creative types, but that’s increasingly difficult to afford unless you are part of the one percent. His home will be a lot larger and nicer than the one I grew up in, and his food, education, and medical care will be the best that money can buy.
But all of these advantages will be worth little if his country is fraught with instability and poverty. That will almost certainly be the case unless we change how our economy works. The natural drift of capitalism toward inequality requires a constant vigilance to make the market work for everyone, not just for the rich. That’s important because most of us want a world with basic fairness, and it’s also important because capitalism will break down if wealth continues to concentrate at the rate that it has in recent years. As money collects in the investment portfolios of the rich, it gets tied up in sophisticated trading maneuvers at giant hedge funds and is not usefully spent in the productive marketplaces that benefit most people.
It is possible that everything will be fine, and that our son will inherit a world where we’ve found a way to share our collective abundance. The scarier, more dystopian possibility is an America that looks more like the old European civilizations, in which a wealthy gentry lord over the struggling masses. The energy and entrepreneurialism of America would wither in that kind of world. We have the capacity to correct our course—and we have done so before.
Some hesitate to advocate for a guaranteed income, fearing that the idea is too big or too bold. There is little doubt that, if instituted, a guaranteed income would reset many of our expectations of what government can do for working people. It would be expensive, and it would require meaningful new taxes on the wealthiest among us. But I believe we cannot allow the defensive crouch in our current politics to prevent us from imagining and working toward a more stable and moral future. We have seen firsthand in recent years what overly cautious politics can lead to, and we’ve learned that we need inspirational ideas that we can build toward. When we shirk bold ideas because they’re “crazy” or “outlandish,” we run the risk of creating a vacuum that others fill with fearmongering or nativism.
Given the historic assaults on progressive values by Donald Trump, many of us on the left feel like we are constantly playing defense, pushing back against corruption and attempts to dismantle the safety net. This is critical work, and my husband and many friends are dedicating their lives to it. But at the same time that we play defense, we need to offensively pursue bold solutions that tap into our biggest hopes and dreams for the country we want to live in. We cannot allow our short-term political battles, no matter how important they are, to prevent us from dreaming an audacious dream and building an American economy in which everyone prospers.
The people who have benefited the most from the new economy have a particular responsibility to think boldly about economic fairness. After Facebook’s IPO, my husband and I came into hundreds of millions of dollars, even though we weren’t yet 30 years old. We agreed then to give away the vast majority of the money to efforts that might leave the world a more just place than the one we inherited. That has taken many paths for both of us—direct philanthropy, political activism, and unexpected byroads like the one I took to try to shore up the civic pillar of high-quality journalism. Some have been successful, and some have not. But today, when it feels like the very foundations of our democracy are at risk, we both feel the urgency of this commitment more than ever. I believe the fight for a guaranteed income, alongside the defense of the safety net, are the most urgent and important challenges we face today.
I will have failed as a parent if our son does not realize what he owes to other people and to the world around him. When he is older, I will tell him that I was part of the early stages of a great company that revolutionized how billions of people communicate, and a campaign that elected America’s first African American president. I will be honest about my mistakes. I will tell him that my ambition got the best of me at times, and I will encourage him to feel no shame about embracing modest means to achieve idealistic ends. He will hear the story of where and how his grandparents grew up, how hard they worked to provide for me, and the values they passed down. I hope he will learn to appreciate their work ethic and commitment to leaving the world a better place than they found it.
And I will tell him what I know to be true in my own life: I got lucky. That the reason we are wealthy is not because of a gift of brilliance or decades of my own hard work, but because a new economy at the start of the twenty-first century created massive financial windfalls for a select few like us overnight. I will tell him that the same forces that made our fortune possible made it very difficult for the rest of America to get ahead. My hope is that I will also be able to tell him that I spent the rest of my life helping to give others a fair shot.
There is a long road and a lot of work ahead of us: there are many policy papers to write, budgets to refine, pilot projects to develop, and campaigns to fight. But at the end of that road awaits a country where every American enjoys the freedom and dignity that a stable, reliable income affords.
The moment to begin that work is now.
What You Can Do
Proceeds from the sale of Fair Shot fund the Economic Security Project, a network of researchers and activists exploring how regular cash transfers can help people adapt to the new economy. We underwrite groundbreaking economic research, support guaranteed income pilots and demonstrations, and host conferences and workshops to invite more people into the conversation about how a guaranteed income might work.
If you’d like to get more involved in the campaign, you can learn more at fairshotbook.com. Sign up for regular email updates, recruit friends and family to join the cause, or donate to the campaign.
Acknowledgments
This book would never have been written without the support and guidance of a community of friends, family, and fellow activists. To my colleagues at the Economic Security Project, particularly Natalie Foster, Taylor Jo Isenberg, and Adam Ruben, thank you for your encouragement and support to see this project through. We have learned many of the lessons in this book together as a team, and I could not imagine a better group of crusaders to work with every single day.
I am in enormous debt to Gwen Hyman, for your constant coaching and endless patience as this manuscript took shape. Your reassuring presence and pointed questions have made this book what it is. Thank you for being al
l at once an interlocutor and guide over the past few months. Thanks to you, I will never get out of my head the question, “What work is that sentence doing for you?”
To Sarah Cannon, for the countless hours of conversation and encouragement to follow my heart and do what I want to do, not to mention your willingness to drop everything for a thorough read of the manuscript. To Genevieve Powers, who has helped me with the big stuff and the little stuff alike for eight years, through the good and the bad. Thank you for your trust and blunt transparency, and for being a rock I can always rely on.
To the trailblazers who came before me who have worked on the basic income for years, in particular, Peter Barnes and Andy Stern. Your early work and ongoing leadership have set a high bar for those of us following in your footsteps. Thank you as well to Jeremy Durant for your early look at the manuscript and research support along the way. To the California Budget and Policy Center and the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy for indulging my frequent and impatient requests for more numbers. To Jim Levine, for believing in me and this idea when it was still in its earliest stages. To Arthur Goldwag, for your early read and careful wordsmithing. To Michael Flamini and the St. Martin’s Press team for your investment in the idea and shockingly fast work to get this book out into the world.
To my parents, for teaching me the value of work and the importance of service. Thank you for trusting me so completely to tell a little of bit of your stories in this book, and for showing me that love knows no bounds.
And most importantly, to my husband, Sean. Your exacting standards and critical eye have made this book tighter and clearer than anything I could have ever done on my own. You have indulged my early mornings and late nights, patiently listened to my wandering ideas at countless dinners, sacrificed more weekends than either of us would have liked, and pushed me to think harder and be more direct. You are the intellectual and emotional companion that I never imagined I might find and now could not live without. I am so inexpressibly and deeply in your debt.
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Please note that some of the links referenced in this work may no longer be active.
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