The United States: The Basic Income Guarantee — Past Experience, Current Proposals

The United States might not seem like fertile ground for the basic income guarantee (BIG). It is, after all, the place where “workfare” was born, where “welfare” became a bad word, and where “welfare mothers” became demonized. It might, therefore, be surprising that the world’s first basic income, if only a partial one, was introduced in Alaska in 1982 and has been the most popular programme in the state ever since, continuing to grow in size and in popularity. It might also be surprising that the United States was the first country to have a mainstream national political movement for the basic income guarantee. In the 1970s, the United States came closer than any other industrialized country has so far to introducing a nationwide basic income guarantee, and various incarnations of the proposal continue to be discussed.