Category Archives: Public Policy and Governance

For When This Dark Time Is Over

NPR recently reported on a fascinating project in Kenya.

The project was one of a number of pilots around the world in which citizens were given no-strings cash. In this case, an unanticipated result was that infants born to people who received the payments were nearly half as likely to die as infants born to people who got no cash. The payments cut mortality in children under 5 by about 45%, on par with interventions like vaccines and anti-malarials.

As long-time readers of this blog know, I support replacing our fragmented and inadequate social safety net with a Universal Basic Income (UBI). It won’t happen in my lifetime, if ever, but it’s on my list of “when this MAGA nightmare is over…'”

As I’ve previously argued, policies to help less fortunate citizens can be delivered in ways that stoke resentments, or in ways that encourage national cohesion.  Consider public attitudes toward means tested welfare programs, and contrast those attitudes with the overwhelming majorities that approve of Social Security and Medicare–universal programs. 

What if the United States embraced a new social contract, beginning with the premise that all citizens are valued members of the American polity, and that membership has its privileges?

In my imagined “Brave New World,” government would create an environment within which humans could flourish, an environment within which members would be guaranteed a basic livelihood, a substantive, excellent education, and an equal place at the civic table. In return, members (aka citizens) would pay their “dues:” taxes, a stint of public/civic service, and the consistent discharge of civic duties like voting and jury service.

A UBI would require significant changes to the deep-seated cultural assumptions on which our current economy rests, but if the various pilot projects have demonstrated anything, it is that a UBI and a single-payer health program would ease economic insecurities, reduce the gap between rich and poor, restore workers’ bargaining power and (not so incidentally) rescue market capitalism from its descent into corporatism and plutocracy. 

 America currently has a patchwork of state and federal programs, with bureaucratic barriers and means tests that are expensive to administer and that operate to exclude most of the working poor. Those who do get welfare are routinely stigmatized by moralizing lawmakers pursuing punitive measures aimed at imagined “takers” and “Welfare Queens.” Current anti-poverty policies have not made an appreciable impact on poverty, but they have grown the bureaucracy and contributed significantly to stereotyping and socio-economic polarization.

As Andy Stern, former President of the Service Employee’s International Union has argued,

“A basic income is simple to administer, treats all people equally, rewards hard work and entrepreneurship, and trusts the poor to make their own decisions about what to do with their money. Because it only offers a floor, people are encouraged to make additional income through their own efforts… Welfare, on the other hand, discourages people from working because, if your income increases, you lose benefits,”

With a UBI, in contrast to welfare, there’s no phase-out, no marriage penalties, no people falsifying information–and no costly bureaucracy.

Support for the concept isn’t limited to liberals. Milton Friedman famously proposed a “negative income tax,” and F.A. Hayek, the libertarian economist, wrote “There is no reason why in a free society government should not assure to all, protection against severe deprivation in the form of an assured minimum income, or a floor below which nobody need descend.” In 2016, Samuel Hammond of the libertarian Niskanen Center, noted the “ideal” features of a UBI: its unconditional structure avoids creating poverty traps; it sets a minimum income floor, raising worker bargaining power without wage or price controls; it decouples benefits from a particular workplace or jurisdiction; since it’s cash, it respects a diversity of needs and values; and it simplifies and streamlines a complex web of bureaucracy, eliminating rent seeking and other sources of inefficiency.

Hammond’s point about worker bargaining power is especially important. In today’s work environment, characterized by dramatically-diminished unions and the growth of the “gig economy,” wages  have been effectively stagnant for years, despite significant growth in productivity. With a UBI and single payer health coverage, workers would have the freedom to leave abusive employers, unsafe work conditions, and uncompetitive pay scales. A UBI wouldn’t level the playing field, but it would dramatically reduce the tilt. And if the robots do come—if the predictions of jobs that will be lost to AI and automation are even close to accurate—a UBI could act as a national safety-net, helping the country avoid massive civil turmoil.

There have been several pilot projects to assess the pros and cons of UBIs, and the results have been uniformly positive. Counter-intuitive as it seems, a significant body of research supports the importance of a robust social safety net to market economies. As Will Wilkinson of the libertarian Niskanen Center, has written:

“A sound and generous system of social insurance offers a certain peace of mind that makes the very real risks of increased economic dynamism seem tolerable to the democratic public, opening up the political possibility of stabilizing a big-government welfare state with growth-promoting economic liberalization.”

As Wilkinson has convincingly argued, today’s left fails to appreciate the role of capitalism and markets in producing abundance, and the right refuses to acknowledge the indispensable role safety nets play in placating the human, deeply-seated distaste for feelings of uncertainty and insecurity.

If we were a country that truly valued all citizens, these would be compelling arguments. It’s on my list for “after,” assuming we make it through these depressing times…

Comments

MAGA’s Road To Gilead

Given the Trump administration’s daily effort to elevate White “Christians” over people of color, it can be easy to overlook its equally rabid effort to return women to third or fourth-class citizenship–to return us to powerless and submissive possessions of our fathers and husbands.

Suddenly, opinions that once would not have been uttered publicly–opinions that would have marked their holders as deeply unwell residents of the modern world–are spewing forth from the mouths of people who have been allowed to occupy some of the highest positions in American government.

A recent newsletter from Lincoln Square focused on the effort to strip the nation’s women of our rights as citizens, in the name of a perverted “Christianity.” It reported on a recent endorsement by Pete Hegseth, the inept drunkard who currently heads the Department of Defense, of his pastor Doug Wilson’s belief that women should not have the right to vote.

As the author of the essay wrote,

In a way, Hegseth performed a public service by bringing to wider attention the “Christian nationalist” movement that is gaining strength and has much support in the Trump Cult. As the title of the CNN report indicates, it seeks “Christian” domination of America. All of us need to know what they mean by that. Pastor Wilson is a flat-out nutter who envisions an America that is a “Christian nation” the way Saudi Arabia is an “Islamic nation.” The ultimate goal is replacing secular democracy with a government ruled by “Christ the King.” Jesus presumably being unavailable for such a role that rejects his most important teachings, it would mean “Donald the King” or perhaps “Doug the King.

This movement is all about reverting women to what was for thousands of years considered to be their proper place of inferiority and submission. Indeed, as I explain in the book manuscript on which I am currently working, An Agreed-Upon Fiction: The Creation of the ‘Inferior’ Sex — How It Misshaped History and the Present, the whole authoritarian enterprise is based on a Foundational Lie that arose more than five thousand years ago. I call it Male Monocreationism: the assertion that men have all reproductive power and women merely provide a place in which men’s creations grow. “Women are the kind of people that people come out of,” Wilson said in the CNN interview.

The article quoted Wilson’s book, in which he wrote “A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts. This is of course offensive to all egalitarians, and so our culture has rebelled against the concept of authority and submission.”

I’m sure that there has always been some number of men who find this “philosophy” comforting–some subset of men who have found themselves unable to operate in a world that doesn’t afford the males of the species automatic dominance. (There are the Incels, for example–men who can’t get dates, let along amorous partners.) These are not healthy humans; they are clearly threatened by the realities of a modern world in which intellect rather than brute strength gives entree to civic and economic equality.

It’s one thing to recognize that society has always harbored such men; it is far more troubling when they feel able to announce their beliefs publicly, and frankly terrifying when people in positions of power publicly embrace them.

MAGA isn’t just waging war on democracy and the Constitution. At its core, it’s an effort to destroy modernity, to return us to a time of superstition and ignorance in which its members felt more comfortable. MAGA’s Christian Nationalists want to return us to a past in which women, LGBTQ+ folks, non-Whites and non-faux-Christians were all subservient to straight White “Christian” males.

And they’re through pretending otherwise.

Comments

There Really Is A Difference

When I was much younger, it was common to hear people say that there was no real difference between the political parties. That put-down–while never really accurate– was recognition of the then considerable overlap between the two parties. There were once conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans; that, of course, was before the GOP turned into today’s proto-fascist MAGA.

Today, the put-down is different, along the lines of “a plague on both your houses.” Every day, pundits and pollsters tell us that Americans hate the GOP and disdain the Democrats. I’m not sure where that leaves us ordinary voters, but I am sure it ignores the very real policy differences between the parties.

Those differences become far clearer when you contrast life in Red and Blue states. it turns out that, when Americans elect Democrats to manage their states, the people who live in those states do better.

Some examples:

Democratic states like California, New York, Massachusetts, Washington have raised their minimum wages to $15/hour or higher.

Blue states take measures to protect people’s health coverage (Washington State even created a public health insurance option—the only one in the country to the best of my knowledge) and pass laws requiring paid family and medical leave.

Blue states—including Oregon, California, Washington, Colorado and New York—make it easier to vote, expanding early voting and passing election reforms like automatic voter registration and same day registration.

Blue states support public education, and Blue states like New York, California and Oregon even offer tuition-free college programs.

Indiana’s next-door neighbor, Illinois, is an example of the difference between Democrats who govern for We the People and Republicans who govern for the donor class. This July, Governor Pritzker signed the state’s Prescription Drug Affordability Act, limiting unfair pricing practices and supporting independent pharmacies, along with four bills to help high school students afford to pay for college. In January, Pritzker signed a bill forbidding payment of less than minimum wage to disabled workers.

And the Red states, like Indiana?

Well, we’ve kept the minimum wage at 7.25 since 2009, and only raised it then because of a requirement to match the federal rate. Our Republican overlords are busy throwing people off Medicaid with stricter eligibility checks, work requirements, and enrollment caps–any mechanism to hurt the most vulnerable populations.

Red States like ours have worked hard to make it more difficult to vote; they’ve cut early voting, required specific government-issued IDs, and thrown out ballots with minor errors. Polls in Red Indiana and Kentucky close at 6– earlier than any other state—making it harder for working people to cast ballots.

From education to gun safety, from climate and the environment, from education to worker protection, Democratic lawmakers have, on balance, worked to make citizens’ lives better and fairer. Meanwhile, Republicans continue to wage war against women, gays and non-Christians, while making it harder for working-class Americans to earn a decent living.

Democrats are far from perfect, but the contrast is certainly illuminating.

Which approach really makes America great?

Comments

When Cowards Are The Guardrails

I know it can be dangerous to draw large-scale conclusions from personal, anecdotal experiences, but I think it can also be misleading to ignore what those experiences may signal.

As readers of this blog know, I spent some 35 of my adult years as a Republican, and–as the saying goes–I didn’t leave the party, the party left me. (These days, I wonder whether my political allegiance “back then” was based on a flawed understanding of what that political party really stood for, or whether, as Stuart Stevens has written, it was all a lie. In any event, that party no longer exists.)

There are, of course, the high-level “Never Trumpers” who–like Stevens– have shared their horror at the current MAGA fascism of the once “Grand Old Party.” As he recently wrote, “as someone who worked in five presidential elections and helped Republican governors and Senators in over half the country, my conclusion is that what we [Republicans] called values turned out to be mere marketing slogans.”

After a diatribe about the embarrassing recent “summit” with Putin, Stevens took out after the cowardice of Congressional Republicans.

Like every turning point in the ongoing Trump humiliation of Republican leaders, no Republican has stood up to defend American dignity and Decency. In February 2025, the Republican Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Roger Wicker, said on CNN: “Putin is a war criminal who should be in jail for the rest of his life, if not executed.” He’s right, of course, but what has Roger Wicker said publicly since the president he campaigned for invited the mass murderer to American soil? Not a word.

The devastation being wreaked by an ignorant and corrupt madman simply would not be possible without either the profoundly unAmerican acquiescence or the despicable cowardice of elected Republicans, as the Never-Trump former Republicans are right to remind us.

But it isn’t just high-level dissidents who have come to that recognition.

Closer to home, I’ve been incredibly impressed by my own sister’s activism–an activism I would not have anticipated “back in the day” when we were both young housewives and occasional precinct workers. (An artist, she’d help the local GOP when elections rolled around, and she always voted, but otherwise she was politically inactive.) These days, she and my brother-in-law (formerly considered the family’s most politically conservative member) have attended multiple protests, written and called elected officials, and otherwise made their displeasure with MAGA very visible.

My sister has been especially critical of Indiana Senator Todd Young, who has replied to her messages with unresponsive form letters and absented himself when she and other constituents visited his office. Her most recent missive to Young  was succinct and entirely appropriate. She wrote:

I just wanted to let you know that I will always hold you personally responsible for all the deaths and suffering caused by the ignorant, incompetent, venal candidates you confirmed for vital positions in this administration. You knew better, but you were too cowardly to stand up for your constituents and your country. Please don’t insult me by responding to this message with one of your canned replies.

To which I say: Bravo!

It’s one thing when Stuart Stevens and other high-profile Republicans reject what the party has become. When the GOP loses people like my sister and brother-in-law–informed citizens who are anything but rabid leftists, citizens who simply care deeply about this country and are unwilling to stay silent, unwilling to “go along to get along”–I believe it’s a sign that the tide is turning.

Perhaps even in Indiana…

Comments

An Inexorable Decline

It gets harder and harder to read (or listen to) the news. Every day, there’s a new outrage–a new front in Trump’s war on reality, a new offense to the Constitution and the rule of law. When federal troops are, in essence, being sent to invade cities with Black mayors, when museums and cultural centers are being stripped of historical facts offensive to the Mad King, when a once-storied and proudly independent Justice Department has been turned into the personal tool of a would-be dictator, when the National Institutes of Health reject sound science in favor of voodoo medicine, when the Presidency has become a mechanism for corruption and graft…When everywhere you turn, something horrific is happening, it begins to seem as if we are all living in a dystopian nightmare.

Given the “firehose” nature of the information we waken to daily, it’s easy to lose sight of some of the most important losses we are suffering, or the thread that connects the assaults. When you stand back, when you try to assess the overall motivation of this retrograde MAGA movement, you do see a pattern. There is, of course, the deep-seated racism that forms the basis of Trump’s appeal and that prompts the administration’s daily efforts to erase information about the contributions and tribulations of women, gay people and Blacks. But MAGA’s animus against social progress is even more deep-seated.

MAGA is an all-out assault on knowledge. “Owning the libs” is shorthand for “we’ll get rid of those smarty-pants elitists who think they’re superior because they know stuff.”

That deep-seated resentment against scholarship and knowledge–against things like evidence and fact and the scientific method–is what has motivated the war on America’s universities. And if that war is successful, America’s decline will be inexorable.

A recent article from Time Magazine was prophetic. It was written by an academic who is leaving an America that is no longer hospitable to intellect and sound research.

I was returning from Marseille, France after participating in a workshop in March that I co-organized at the Iméra research institute on climate change and religious conflict during the Little Ice Age. The topic is now effectively banned from federal funding after the Trump Administration stripped support for scientific research that mentions the word “climate,” amid a broader purge of “woke” keywords in the federal government….

For months, I have watched coordinated attacks on the National Endowment for the Humanities, Smithsonian Institution, Institute for Museum and Library Services, Fulbright Program, Woodrow Wilson Institute, U.S. Institute of Peace, Kennedy Center, USAID, Department of Education, National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and other federal agencies that support academic research and education.

As the author notes, when politicians—rather than professionals— select the research to be funded, the entire pursuit of knowledge is corrupted.

So when Aix-Marseille Université (amU) decided to launch a “Safe Place for Science” program, I became one of the 298 researchers who applied. After all, I was already due to spend one year there as a visiting professor, and the initiative promises three years of research funding. The university has invested €15 million for the program and is lobbying the French government to match that amount, so it can double its planned hires to 39 people.

Europe has seen an opening and is taking advantage of it. The European Commission recently unveiled a €500 million program to make the continent a “safe haven” for researchers. France has committed another €100 million. And American scholars–including many of our very best– are applying in large numbers. As the author writes,

Packing up and relocating to France, or any other country, will be an adjustment. But it is clear that an era of U.S. brain drain is beginning, as researchers and scientists seek opportunities in places where academic freedom and research are still valued.

If MAGA’s war on knowledge continues–if it succeeds in ridding this country of those detested “elitists”– America’s decline will be irreversible.

Comments