I started to document all the horrible decisions Trump made which dramatically worsened the COVID-19 Pandemic in the U.S., but was quickly overwhelmed by the task. That pathologically dishonest dumpster fire of crippling personality flaws needs to be removed from office. Then we need to start fixing all the damage he’s done to our institutions and global reputation. We need to make up for lost time in our urgent fight against climate change, and our ongoing fights against racism, transphobia, and other forms of bigotry.
But the pandemic has made it clear that there are other serious problems in American Society which are just as urgent.
Millions of people lost their jobs this year, and they also lost their health insurance because that’s tied to employment in the U.S. It’s time for truly universal health care.
And someone shouldn’t go hungry or risk homelessness just because they lose their job. A Universal Basic income:
- will reduce or even eradicate extreme poverty,
- will probably save money because paying someone $7500 saves homeless shelters ~$8100 while reducing the amount they spend on alcohol and drugs,
- might reduce some types of property crime and muggings,
- won’t significantly reduce hours worked compared to people using more traditional unemployment benefits,
- will make our society more resilient against increasing automation which will inevitably exacerbate unemployment,
- and would have dramatically simplified our response to the 2020 pandemic.
Let’s put a safety net in our society to protect the most vulnerable and accelerate innovation by reducing the fear of failure.
“I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.” [Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1967]
“Many of you live from day to day, without any type of legal guarantee to protect you. Street vendors, recyclers, carnies, small farmers, construction workers, dressmakers, the different kinds of caregivers: you who are informal, working on your own or in the grassroots economy, you have no steady income to get you through this hard time … and the lockdowns are becoming unbearable. This may be the time to consider a universal basic wage which would acknowledge and dignify the noble, essential tasks you carry out. It would ensure and concretely achieve the ideal, at once so human and so Christian, of no worker without rights.” [Pope Francis, 2020]
