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The argument for a basic income
Earlier this year, I visited a town where residents are cut a check just for being alive. It’s not some Scandinavian utopia. It’s not part of some holdout communist state. It’s Cherokee, North Carolina, a town of 8,000 hidden away in the particularly misty stretch of the Great Smoky Mountains. I went to Cherokee to explore the idea of a “universal basic income,” which is a fancy way of saying something that’s really quite simple: Give everyone cash, just for existing. The goal, according to proponents of such a policy, is to alleviate, if not eliminate, the scourge of poverty. And, more importantly, to reduce the social ills — poor health, poor educational attainment, poor job prospects and higher odds of ending up in jail — associated with kids who grow up poor. Read more…