Joel Dodge is an attorney and writer based in New York City. Recently, he has been writing articles on the topic of universal basic income, several of which have been published in the online news publication Quartz.
Dodge’s interest in UBI stems in part from his attraction to the idea of a child allowance–a policy he encountered in the Netherlands while studying Dutch social programs. He cites the journalist Russell Shorto, an American expat living in Amsterdam, as an influence. In Dodge’s words, Shorto wrote about “the refreshing surprise of the Dutch government depositing money in parents’ bank accounts to help out with the cost of school books, diapers, and raising kids generally.” Commenting on the origins of his interest in UBI, Dodge explains, “The charm and user-friendliness of the policy stuck with me–how government wanted to be there to help out for the big moments in life, and it did so through simple automatic cash infusions.”
Read more: “The best way to fix child poverty in the US is to give poor kids free money”
With UBI’s recent increase in publicity and popularity, Dodge began researching earlier discussions of basic income guarantee programs in US politics — especially circa 1970, when the US federal government nearly passed a basic income guarantee in the form of President Richard Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan, and Nixon’s challenger, George McGovern, developed his own basic income proposal (the “demogrant”).
Dodge says, “Part of learning about UBI has been excavating our past political debates, which is exciting. So it’s both an old idea and an extremely cutting edge, even revolutionary one.”
Read more: “When Basic Income Was Almost an American Reality“
In his most recent writings on UBI, Dodge has explored some of the main objections from both Right and Left. He dismisses the contention that it will “make people lazy” — pointing that, insofar as people do stop working, they might make other valuable social contributions (as did such “gentlemen of leisure” as Charles Darwin and Rene Descartes).
Read more: “Universal basic income wouldn’t make people lazy–it would change the nature of work”
The major worry from the left — that a basic income would disrupt the welfare state in a way that leaves many worse-off — is one that Dodge finds more pressing. In communication with Basic Income News, he describes motivation for writing “The progressive case against a universal basic income“:
I was motivated to write [it] for two principal reasons. First, I think some of the hype surrounding the cross-ideological embrace of UBI is overstated. The right and left have very different ideas about how UBI would interact with the current welfare state, and I wanted to draw attention to that disagreement.
I also saw certain influential liberal policy figures like Larry Summers, Jason Furman, and Jared Bernstein rapidly coalescing around the same critique of UBI in recent months: namely, that funding a UBI would inevitably come at the expense of other social welfare programs. And I think it’s an important critique. Those who advocate for UBI on the left need to come up with a clear and plausible way to fund a UBI while merging it with our existing social welfare regime.
Scott Santens and some other UBI advocates support retaining government healthcare programs and adding on certain UBI supplements, such as disability benefits. They point to the holes in our social safety net, but that’s really an argument for just plugging in these holes to keep people from falling through the cracks–a much more practical near-term project in our political tradition than a UBI, frankly.
And the reason progressives support certain in-kind benefits like food stamps, housing support, and public healthcare is because we think these are essentially fundamental rights that everyone should be entitled to. Would we really go back on those basic instincts if we replaced the welfare state with a UBI? That is, if someone exhausted their UBI, would we support the hard-line Charles Murray-style position that they are out of luck and must depend on charity? I doubt it, and certainly hope not. So I think UBI needs to be structured in a way that adapts to the moral imperative of guaranteeing that certain targeted, basic needs will be met, understanding that there’s social value to providing more than just cash benefits in some circumstances.
Overall, Dodge describes himself as “deeply curious about UBI” but, at the same time, cautious. He believes that it’s important to wait for the outcomes of upcoming studies of basic income before adopting such a policy. Meanwhile, he maintains that progressive reforms should be approached in an incremental manner. As he relates in other remarks to Basic Income News:
I’m deeply curious about UBI. I admire the ambition, simplicity, and utopian instinct of UBI. But it’s also important to pay attention to how basic income works in practice in the experiments that are just gearing up. The best data we have now are from experiments conducted more than 40 years ago, so we need to see how UBI works today.
I also tend to be an incrementalist when it comes to progressive reform. So I try to harness some of the energy surrounding UBI toward smaller scale reforms. Some of our refundable tax credits could be transformed into direct periodic payments from the government to help out families year-round. There are good fiscal and efficiency arguments to back this up, so the political path is clearer. And if we enact UBI-lite policies today, it could pave the way toward bigger and bolder UBI-style reforms tomorrow.
Bibliographical Summary: Joel Dodge on UBI
“The best way to fix child poverty in the US is to give poor kids free money” (August 19, 2016) Quartz.
“Universal basic income wouldn’t make people lazy–it would change the nature of work” (August 25, 2016) Quartz.
“When Basic Income Was Almost an American Reality” (August 30, 2016) Medium.
“The progressive case against a universal basic income” (September 23, 2016) Quartz.
See also J. DODGE blog.
Photo CC BY-NC 2.0 Zoriah