"The issue is not that the United States cannot pull its people above the poverty line," writes Annie Lowrey, "But that it does not want to." America's safety net fails people because it is designed to do so, she argues, "Woven as it is with deliberate and large holes." The solution, per the title of her new book, is to Give People Money.
"What we often think of as economic circumstance," Lowrey explains, "Is largely a product of policy. The way things are is really the way we choose them to be." She believes that "Poverty in the United States is a choice"-not for those in poverty, but for the society that allows them to suffer.
Perhaps giving people money could reduce the federal government's official calculation of the poverty rate down to zero.
The poverty rate is just an abstract data point, intended to approximate the share of the population living in conditions of poverty.
Perhaps poverty is not just a matter of consumption.
People trying to get by solely on that amount in a depressed and dissolving community-or, for that matter, in a booming but high-cost metropolis-are rarely held up as victories in the War on Poverty.
On one hand, she is committed to the claims of the book's subtitle-that a UBI would not only "End poverty" but also "Revolutionize work and remake the world." Thus, she writes, a UBI would "Allow[] people not to work" and even "Change society's understanding of value and labor." She disparages the American "Cult of self-reliance" and asks, "Why take a crummy job for $7.25 an hour when you have a guaranteed $1,000 a month to fall back on?".
https://www.city-journal.org/html/poverty-16065.html
"What we often think of as economic circumstance," Lowrey explains, "Is largely a product of policy. The way things are is really the way we choose them to be." She believes that "Poverty in the United States is a choice"-not for those in poverty, but for the society that allows them to suffer.
Perhaps giving people money could reduce the federal government's official calculation of the poverty rate down to zero.
The poverty rate is just an abstract data point, intended to approximate the share of the population living in conditions of poverty.
Perhaps poverty is not just a matter of consumption.
People trying to get by solely on that amount in a depressed and dissolving community-or, for that matter, in a booming but high-cost metropolis-are rarely held up as victories in the War on Poverty.
On one hand, she is committed to the claims of the book's subtitle-that a UBI would not only "End poverty" but also "Revolutionize work and remake the world." Thus, she writes, a UBI would "Allow[] people not to work" and even "Change society's understanding of value and labor." She disparages the American "Cult of self-reliance" and asks, "Why take a crummy job for $7.25 an hour when you have a guaranteed $1,000 a month to fall back on?".
https://www.city-journal.org/html/poverty-16065.html
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