Enact a Basic Income for All Americans

Sign the Petition:

President Obama and Congress: Enact a Basic Income for all Americans

Implementing a guaranteed Basic Income ("Social Security for All") would end poverty in the United States and provide a 21st-century social safety net to deal with looming widespread unemployment caused by advancing technology and trade policies that benefit only the top 1/10th of 1 percent. Income inequality in the United States has risen sharply in recent years and continues to get worse. Without serious intervention, we WILL face massive increases in poverty and civil unrest in the years ahead.

A guaranteed Basic Income, which will directly provide all Americans with just enough money each month to pay for food, housing, and essential bills, will shift our economy to one that doesn't require full employment in order to be healthy. It will also eliminate a huge layer of state and federal government bureaucracy whose sole purpose is to determine eligibility for current public assistance programs.

A Basic Income for all Americans would relieve most of us from the greatest source of stress, confinement, and unhappiness in our lives, namely the prospect of losing everything we have due to a termination of employment or other source of essential income. It would free up inventors, artists, and entrepreneurs to follow their dreams with abandon, unencumbered by persistent worries of how they will support themselves during the months and years it often takes for their efforts to produce a monetary return (if a monetary return will even manifest in some cases).

It would revolutionize the workplace, because in every sort of business or institution, the staff would be there because they WANT to be there or have CHOSEN the occupation, not because they HAVE to be there in order to avoid homelessness, hunger, or bankruptcy. A Basic Income would finally free all of us to live AUTHENTIC LIVES.   

Also, there have always been those among us who do not flourish well in employment situations. These individuals either lack organized thinking, or attention to detail, or they don't hold up well under the social, physical, or top-down management structures that most jobs force upon us. For them, the risks involved in employment are very high. A Basic Income for such individuals will spare them the pain and stigma of multiple firings, along with inevitable poverty and hopelessness, while they either explore self-employment options or find ways to be useful to society outside of employment.

Recent studies have indicated that poverty reduces brain power. Poor people and others with financial problems do poorly on cognitive and logic tests. Poverty also results in diminished social opportunities, which reinforces diminished brain capacity and inspiration. Do you find yourself often complaining about how hard it is to function in a "dumbed down" America? A Basic Income would go a long way in reversing it.

The management of Minimum Wage Media wholeheartedly endorses the concept of an unconditional Basic Income for all.

We urge our listeners to support this petition.