Chicago Experiments With a Guaranteed Income of $500 a month
The Spread of Basic Income Programs: A Case Study in a Democratic Congressional Candidate for the Chicago Mayor’s Electoral Campaign
Whatever the outcome, the spread of basic income programs is a reminder of the growing divide between Democrats and Republicans, urban voters and rural conservatives, those who want more government in people’s lives and those who want less.
“There’s no indication that I see that the American public thinks what we really need is more aid to people who choose not to work,” said Robert Rector, a conservative public assistance expert at the Heritage Foundation who helped shape the welfare changes of the 1990s.
In Democratic cities like Columbia, S.C., and Shreveport, La., there are political leaders moving in opposite directions. None of the eight people who are vying to be the Democratic nominee for Chicago mayor made an issue of her guaranteed income effort, despite her being in the throes of a difficult campaign.
“These are the same people that didn’t want to expand health care, and look at the number of people in their communities, these ruby red communities, that are suffering,” Ms. Lightfoot said. These people are attacking the very core of our democracy, demonizing being different, being the other, based upon your religion, who you love and your gender identity, because they are the same people.
Adrian Talbott, associate dean for civic engagement at the University of Chicago, called the effort aprime example of Democrats’ assertion that government can work. He added that the expectation was, “with big bets on behalf of traditionally marginalized, vulnerable populations in light of the pandemic, government can meet this moment.”
The income cutoff for Chicago and Cook County is 250 percent of federal poverty, which means that it’s forgiveness, but it’s weighted towards certain groups such as homeless people.
The Poor People’s Campaign: Calling for Moral Revival in the Light of Recent Legislating Measures to Increase the Access to Food Assistance for the Poor
Editor’s Note: The Revs. William J. Barber II and Liz Theoharis are co-chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. The views expressed in this commentary are their own. CNN has an opinion on it.
Congressional Republicans have proposed the first of what promises to be a series of bills to limit access to food assistance for needy families. The first piece of legislation, introduced last week by US Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota, proposes work requirements and funding cuts to the already beleaguered Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), measures that will hurt those dependent on the largest food assistance program in the country.
This dynamic is even more troubling when you consider that food assistance isn’t the only cut politicians levy on the backs of the poor. An estimated 15 million people are at risk of losing health insurance as the Medicaid expansion ends.
In one of the world’s wealthiest nations, we must come to terms with the depth of societal failure at the root of mass hunger. How is it that food assistance benefits face cuts at precisely the same moment that high-earning depositors of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank are being rescued to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars?
These uninsured families find themselves back in the company of the 87 million people who were uninsured or underinsured before the pandemic started. Cuts to health care can mean death. To be exact, researchers at Harvard Medical School found that the number of uninsured Americans increased by roughly 2.3 million from 2016-2019, resulting in as many as 25,180 deaths.
The average CEO made 670 times more than their median workers in 2021, according to a survey last year by the progressive think tank Institute for Policy Studies, and yet the federal minimum wage remains at $7.25 and has not increased since 2009. Research from 2020 shows that increasing the minimum wage by even a paltry $1 could lead to fewer people ending their own lives. In fact, a recent study from Columbia University released last month found a troubling association between low wages and higher mortality rates, suggesting minimum wage increases could prevent needless deaths.
If these politicians were serious about lifting the load of poverty, they would fund necessary food programs and raise the minimum wage to a living wage. Poverty doesn’t exist because poor people don’t work, and it certainly doesn’t exist because we have a scarcity of resources.
What we have is a scarcity of political will and moral consciousness. Or, more precisely, the political and moral will of those in power is simply being directed toward other priorities. Helping the rich even as the poor stare down a barrel of cuts that will take food off the table and keep them in fear of making a needed trip to the hospital is something that needs to be done.
America, it’s time for a wake-up call. Many people are killed because of poverty, hunger, despair and inequality. They are grinding the faces of the poor. The problem has been going on for a long time and now we are going to speak up.
