A guaranteed basic income is a lovely idea, but one that hasn’t yet been done on a large scale. Some areas of our very own state are kicking around a new pilot program to see if they can figure it out.
Here are Five Fast Facts on Washington’s new guaranteed basic income plan:
- 💰What is it? The Growing Resilience in Tacoma – or GRIT – program selected 110 eligible Tacoma-area families living just above the poverty line to receive $500 monthly payments. They can be used for paying bills, tutoring services, or whatever else they need. These families are tracking their spending habits to show how the money is being used.
- 💌Where did the money come from? This particular program is funded by $800,000 in private donations. Someone actually put their money where their mouth is…nice!
- 💖The Good - Not surprisingly, the families in the program are big fans, and find a lot of stability and benefit in the extra financial margin every month. #captainobvious
- 😱The Bad - The biggest obstacle for a basic income plan is cost - for a country the size of America, it would require trillions in tax increases for a payment of just $10k! The same scenario plays out on a statewide scale, just with smaller numbers.
- 🤪🧩The Complicated - The other problem with basic income plans is when you try to scale up to large numbers. It’s so complex to sort out who gets what, what is fair, and how to manage it all. That’s why no one has done it before. It requires more than an abacus or two to do that math!
🔥Bottom line: A guaranteed basic income is a great idea! Only a Scrooge McDuck would hate it. But, as with many things, making the great idea work in the nuts and bolts of reality is a lot harder than it sounds. Maybe GRIT will figure it out, maybe it won’t…so the impact on our Paychecks is unknown right now. But with only donated private money at stake at the moment, it seems at least worth the experiment!
What do you think about the idea?
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