Pandemic speeds largest test yet of universal basic income
&quot;The US economist Milton Friedman proposed an idea related to UBI called a negative income tax in 1962, in which those earning under a certain amount would receive supplemental funds from the government rather than paying tax.&quot;<p>The whole point of UBI is that it&#x27;s universal. What Friedman is describing is essentially a social safety net, i.e., one that only those below a certain level of income receive.<p>&quot;&#x27;If you can only qualify if your income is below this threshold, it creates a very strong disincentive for anybody to earn above that threshold because they would be losing their benefits,” she says. &#x27;We call it a poverty trap.&#x27;&quot;<p>Yes, and that&#x27;s a major reason why poor Americans, perhaps especially the black community, is stuck in the poverty trap. Marriage rates among blacks were higher than rates among whites in the 1940s and we know that children with a father in the home tend to grow up to be better adjusted and less likely to engage in crime or remain&#x2F;land in poverty. Twenty years later, government programs coupled with the social upheaval of the sexual revolution destroyed the black family. Now three quarters of black children are born out of wedlock (we see something similar among poor whites, but poverty afflicts blacks more than whites). Poor black women are discouraged from marrying because doing so could or would cause them to lose whatever benefits they receive.