for The Atlantic, and author of the new book,

Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income

Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work,

and Remake the World.

Please welcome Annie Lowrey.

-♪ ♪ -(cheering, applause)

-All right. -Welcome to the show.

-Thank you for having me. -This is a book

that will get some people really orgasmic

and some Republicans nightmares for years.

-Hopefully. -Give People Money.

-Yes. -Not Let Them Earn Money.

Just Give People Money.

-Give it to them. -On a basic level,

what does "universal basic income" mean?

So, the idea would be that a government--

in this case, our government-- would give everybody

the equivalent of a social security payment.

So you would just get $500 or a thousand dollars a month, maybe,

just for living and breathing and being in the United States.

So you would just get paid to just be?

-Yes. -That's it?

That's it. It's a very, very simple, revolutionary idea.

-Right. Okay, so simple idea, complex in execution. -Yes.

You know, because as soon as you say "universal basic income,"

immediately, people jump to communism, socialism,

-Right. -you are going to give people money,

then your first question is, why would people bother working?

Right. So, the idea is that it wouldn't be enough money

to stop people from working.

So if you had $500 a month from the government,

it's very unlikely that you would quit working.

We have, actually, a lot of studies that have shown

that even with more money than $500 a month,

people don't stop working,

And the people who do stop working--

there's not that many of them--

-tend to be the parents of young children, -Right.

they tend to be young folks who are staying in school for longer

and then they tend to be older folks who perhaps retire,

take it easy a little bit earlier.

So you have groups of people who may be using

universal basic income to improve their lives,

you know, to raise children, to earn an education.

In the title, you say: How a Universal Basic Income

Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work,

and Remake the World.

Why revolutionizing work?

So, the idea is that if there were a future

in which a lot of jobs started to be replaced

with A.I. and automation,

how would a lot of people support themselves?

It's a really pressing question.

It's one that people are really worried about.

And the idea is that the government

would kind of have to step in to help keep...

keep people's heads above water

-Right. -in that kind of circumstance.

But there's also an argument

for doing something like this now.

So if you had a thousand dollars a month

to fall back on, you might not take a job with poverty wages.

You might ask an employer

-to actually improve working conditions. -Right.

So it could be really good for workers.

And we've seen just a remarkable reduction

in the power of the labor force versus their employers.

And so this would be kind of a solve for that.

When you speak about the labor force--

I mean, you've gotten a lot of pushback on this book, you know,

The Wall Street Journal, for instance, saying:

Why give people money?

Why not focus on giving people jobs?

Isn't that more important than just giving them a handout?

Yeah. I mean, so, people want to work,

and it's not necessarily a bad idea,

but imagine having the government run

a giant jobs program that was designed to employ,

like, 50% of the labor force--

that would be a really hard and expensive thing to do.

And the great thing about giving people money

is that you give them a choice, and you support the economy,

and that way you don't have to come up with

-30 million jobs. -Right.

-How do you pay for it? -(chuckles)

'Cause that's the big question you have here.

-I mean, like, if you look at the numbers... -Yeah.

I mean, if I understand correctly,

-$1,000 per person, per month -Yeah.

-would cost $3.9 trillion per year, -Right.

which is about one-fifth of the GDP.

So how do you, how do you pay that?

Even if you take away all of the Republican's tax cuts.

-Let's say you overturn that. -Right.

That's still gonna be five percent of paying for it,

so where do you get the money from?

Well, the United States is a low-low tax country

by OECD standards.

-I heard it's the highest taxes in the world. -It is not.

It is not even close to it.

And the government does less redistribution

than other similar economies do.

It's part of the reason that we have the kind

of wage stagnation and inequality that we've had.

It's why we have more poverty than other countries

that are equally rich as us.

So I think that the idea is that you would probably get rid

of some government programs,

and then you would raise the money maybe through something

like raising the estate tax,

financial transactions taxes,

things like carbon taxes, maybe a VAT.

But this idea that there isn't enough money

for really big ideas--

it might not be popular, it might not be easy to pass--

but the money it out there, that's not the problem.

If you look at people who are already paying tax,

there are many people in America who would say,

"I pay my fair share of taxes.

"There are already programs that help, as you said,

"social security-- there are people who get grants

"from the government-- why should they now

"also get another level of assistance in basic income

while I have to pay more tax?"

How would you respond to that?

So it probably wouldn't be everybody

who would be paying more in tax, right?

It would be very rich people and perhaps corporations

that would be paying more in tax.

But the thing that this would do

is it would really give more help to low-income families.

The United States, over time, has actually given less money

to people who are extremely poor.

The United States has a rate of child poverty

that is two, three, even four times as high

as in similar countries.

And so the idea here is that, you know, right now,

we have a safety net with gaping holes in it.

We allow and we choose for people to be in poverty.

Even now, with the good economy that we have,

one in seven Americans is in poverty,

more than 20% of children.

And so the safety net that we have

isn't working in a lot of cases.

And so I think that you've seen a lot of, you know,

political strife and concerns about inequality

in this country, and this, like, feeling that there's a need

for bigger solutions if the problem is going to be so big.

It's a powerful issue that, uh, I mean, everyone is debating.

You have many tech leaders joining in and saying,

"I think we need to look at this."

President Obama, in South Africa,

in his speech actually just said the same thing.

He said maybe we should be looking

at universal basic income.

There is, I guess, one question that would always loom over it,

and that is, historically, in America,

you'd be naive to propose

any idea involving giving people money,

if we don't acknowledge that race will always come into it.

-There'll be a factor, and that is race. -Yes. Yes.

Do you think it is a program

that could be passed in America?

Thinking of how ,like, welfare has been attacked, etc., etc.

Yeah, it's a real challenge.

So the reason that we don't have the kind of safety net

that you see in sort of similar countries,

whether Canada or Europe,

is largely because of race and racism, right?

We, as a country, have just really hated the idea

of giving money to people, and then, you know,

we judge them for how they use it, right?

You see this embedded in the programs that we already have.

You know, if you have food stamps or SNAP benefits,

we say you can buy this kind of food but not that kind of food.

And we have a lot of requirements for programs

that very low-income people use.

And so this would be a counterbalance to that,

but I do think it's right that, you know,

you would have a large group of people in the United States,

and we have a culture that really valorizes work

that would object to this and say, you know, like,

"I'm just not okay with that."

I do think that it's a very big challenge to it,

but it's not a reason not to do it.

It's a challenge, it's exciting, it's fascinating,

and, uh, it's one of the reasons I enjoyed the book.

Thank you so much for being on the show.

-Thank you. -I really appreciate it.

Give People Money is available now.

Annie Lowrey, everybody.