MLK and Guaranteed Income
There were two issue campaigns that Martin Luther King focused on throughout the last year of his life, and both are still relevant, still necessary. One was opposing the war in Vietnam and his more general opposition to militarism. The second was calling for a guaranteed income.
For King, moreover, they were not separate issues, but paired aspects of a necessary “revolution of values.”
On this King memorial day, his “I Have a Dream” speech from 1963 is sure to be replayed often. Each time we hear it, we might recall his subsequent efforts. His campaign for guaranteed income deserves extra attention because an updated version would be the most rapid, reliable, and responsible way to end the recession.
The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty. … There is nothing except shortsightedness to prevent us from guaranteeing an annual minimum – and livable – income for every American family.
Guaranteed income was a mainstream idea in the 1960s. Advocates included George McGovern, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Gerald Ford, and Richard Nixon. Leading economists who endorsed it ranged from Milton Friedman to James Tobin to John Kenneth Galbraith. In 1970 a guaranteed income plan passed in the House of Representatives with two-thirds of the vote, but was narrowly defeated in the Senate.
Today, however, despite the recession, there is hardly any talk about guaranteed income.
We are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished.
Guaranteed income will significantly cut crime and health care costs, too, and facilitate the personal actions and political reforms necessary to reduce climate change.
A host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic security. The dignity of the individual will flourish.
We ordinary citizens, when each of us has some reliable income guaranteed, will be more empowered to realize our goals and dreams. It will be easier to stay in school or go back to school. To start businesses. To be full-time parents. To volunteer and serve our communities. It will also be easier for us to work together, We the People, to take back our government from the special interests.
“We are confronted by the fierce urgency of now,” King wrote in the final paragraph of Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? That was his last book, where he called for guaranteed income, and it’s a phrase Barack Obama has quoted. Will Obama demonstrate the audacity to endorse an updated version of King’s plan? Will we demand that from him and other elected officials?
Steven Shafarman
Tags: Martin Luther King