What Should We Guarantee, and How?

• Author: Shafarman, Steven
• Position: Adapted from 'Healing Politics: Citizens' Policies and the Pursuit of Happiness,' forthcoming

For an effective social safety net, most people think government has to guarantee jobs, wages, incomes, or all three. Each offers a good slogan, at least, but is more complex than it appears. Examining these policies and their histories may suggest ways to refine one or all, thereby helping Greens and other progressives strategize and succeed.

Whatever occurs with jobs or wages, income guarantees of some type are necessary because there are and always will be people who do not work. Reasons may involve age, disability, lack of education or opportunity, or laziness. Regardless, if families, churches, or charity organizations fail to provide food and shelter, government must. Guaranteed incomes would be much simpler and more reliable than the current hodgepodge of welfare programs.

The idea of a guaranteed income has a long and illustrious history. An early advocate was Thomas Paine. In 1796, he proposed a "national fund" that would unconditionally pay an equal share to every adult citizen: "It's not a charity, but a right I'm pleading for." The progressive populist movements of the 1880s and '90s were provoked by guaranteed income ideas in Henry George's Progress and Poverty and Edward Bellamy's novel Looking Backward, each of which sold millions of copies. What sparked the creation of Social Security in 1935 was the Townsend Plan to provide seniors with an income of $200 monthly. During the same period, between 7 and 8 million people joined "Share-Our-Wealth," Huey Long's movement that promised $2,500 each year to every family.

In the 1960s, supporters of a guaranteed income included Milton Friedman, James Tobin, Paul Samuelson, John Kenneth Galbraith, and other renowned economists. Martin Luther King Jr. believed this would bring a "genuine revolution in values" and enable us to solve race-related problems and achieve world peace. A national commission--leaders from business, academia, and organized labor, appointed by Lyndon Johnson--held hearings around the country and unanimously recommended the idea. Politician advocates included Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Richard Nixon.

The House of Representatives passed Nixon's Family Assistance Plan on April 16, 1970, by a margin of almost 2-to-1. Polls showed that most Americans favored the plan, as did major newspapers. But it was defeated in the Senate Finance Committee due to conservative maneuvers that Moynihan described in a 1973 book, The Politics of a...