Michael Tubbs on the potential of guaranteed-income programmes
Stockton’s mayor says this is an idea whose time has come
IN MARCH 2020 Tomas Vargas junior lost his job at a commercial airport because of covid-19 and became one of 40m Americans who applied for pandemic unemployment assistance. The money didn’t arrive for weeks, but Tomas was able to fall back on the guaranteed income of $500 a month that he’d been receiving since February 2019, as part of an experimental programme I’ve been piloting in Stockton, California. He spent this unconditional cash on rent, food and bills. Building on this income floor, he gave back to his community, providing free car-repair services to essential workers and donating supplies to the local fire station.
Though Tomas’s experience is specific to a once-in-a-generation pandemic, a sudden job loss for any other reason could also have forced him, and a majority of Americans, into eviction, food-bank lines, and crippling debt. Covid-19 has simply laid bare what has always been true: people are working, but the economy isn’t. Economic insecurity in America is widespread, and structural racism has maintained racial wealth and income disparities that make it impossible for people to thrive. Tomas’s story is one example of how an income floor can build economic resilience.
