 I'm Annie Lowry. I am a staff writer at The Atlantic. And I also wrote a book called Give People Money, which is about universal basic income, which came out, I guess, two years ago. And I'm delighted to be joined by my friend Sebastian Johnson, who is a philanthropic strategist. He's a great thinker on social policy. He's a writer. And we are really happy to be here to do a social distancing social. You guys are tantalizingly close to happy hour there on the East Coast, but not yet, and definitely not here on the West Coast. And this is by Future Tense, which is, of course, a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University. And today, we're going to talk about universal basic income. And specifically, whether UBI makes sense even in the context not of a pandemic. But I kind of wanted to start off, Sebastian, by talking about whether it makes sense in this pandemic. Like, how would this extraordinary, horrific crisis in public health and economic terms be different if the government had already been sending folks checks of $500 or $1,000 a month? I don't know if that's something that you thought through. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for that question, Annie. I think that one of the first things that we kind of need to grapple with when we're thinking about the current economic crisis is that this is the first recession that has started in the service sector. And why is that different? Why is that different from the last recession that started in the financial sector and previous economic downturns? If you look at the 100 million workers in the private service sector, they make up 70% of our total non-farm employment. And for every $1 million in real spending in our economy, there are 15 employees in the service sector versus four employees in the durable goods or manufacturing sector. So what that means is that the contagion in terms of the economic crisis coming from the service sector, taking all those people out of work, is going to trickle down and cause slack in demand across other productive sectors who you might not think would be hit by this crisis. So thinking about right now the glut in the oil market, part of that is the total drop in demand in this sector. The other part of why UBI and cash transfers are so needed in this economic downturn is that this is not similar to the Great Recession where the issue was that there was a liquidity trap or that credit had dried up and that there just wasn't enough money moving around in the economy. The Fed has already, through monetary policy, brought our interest rates to zero. They're encouraging, borrowing at record speeds and backstopping a lot of loans. But if there is no productive place for those loans and those dollars to go because demand has fallen, then the Fed is going to be really hamstrung on how it can respond. And so fiscal policy, making sure that we get money into people's hands, is really one of the best things that the government can do right now to prevent a lot of the economic downturn from being permanent and the dislocation from being permanent. But also because you would think that demand will go back up once the health crisis has passed and some of the freeing up of dollars for borrowing and lending is not really the right response. Yeah, I think that that is a really important and interesting way to put it. And so one thing that people who think about UBI as a policy a lot, one of the distinctions that they draw is that it's not really a welfare policy. It is an insurance policy. So something like TANF, so the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program, that goes primarily to moms with young kids and it tries to keep them in the labor force but provides them with small amounts of cash. That's a welfare policy, right? Like that's aimed at policy, poverty alleviation. But UBI is an insurance policy sort of like social security. It's meant to be there as a buffer to help people through all sorts of circumstances. And one thing that I think is interesting about this is a $500 check is not gonna get anybody, it's gonna do a lot for a lot of people but it's not really a poverty solution. You could take a very low income family or a homeless person or anybody else going through really hard times. 500 bucks is not, it's not enough to do it. But it would act as that kind of buffer against the sort of worst, worst things that can happen. Sorry, we're being joined by my co-authors, Calvin, Crassie, who evolved a sudden. Now that I'm doing this, I've become very active down here. And that's a thing, we don't have a tremendous amount of social insurance in this country as a general point just to help people keep the lights on. And I think that that is something that we're seeing right now as you point out with these workers who, these jobs are great and they were in pretty tough economic conditions even before this utterly unprecedented crisis. No, no, no, there's anything in there that you wanna pick up on. Yeah, I mean, I'll pick up on two of the points that you made. I think the overarching theme of that is that the pandemic has really exposed the precarious nature of work and our economy that was always there underneath the trends. We've all heard the stat that 40% of households can afford a $400 expense. And I think we're seeing that very clearly. And then the early evidence from how the stimulus payments that have already gone out are being used is that they're being used for the essentials as food, medical payments and gas. But in a larger sense, I think that two arguments in particular that UBI advocates have made that are being borne out by this current crisis. One is that it really doesn't make sense to mediate our social safety net through employment. We have an unemployment system that is difficult to navigate. It's different from state to state. Some states have created burdens to accessing unemployment in an intentional way to keep the eligibility and roles down. People have lost their jobs which means that they've lost their health insurance which is catastrophic in the middle of a public health crisis. And so really thinking about why we mediate our programs through employment needs to be kind of as we rebuild after this, one of the things that Congress really takes to heart. And then I think the other argument that a lot of UBI experts and advocates have made is that there is a lot of essential work that is done in our economy that is totally not valued by the economy. Most of it in the care and service and domestic sector. So when you look at the jobs that have been lost, most of them have been in leisure and hospitality. 60% of those job losses are borne by women. 52% of people under the age of 45, this was something that you lifted up last week in the Atlantic. 52% of those people under the age of 45 have lost their job or been put on leave or had their hours reduced. And so there's a generational aspect of this. And then there's also of course, the racial dynamic here that we can't ignore which is that many of the essential jobs are held by women of color in particular, also low income families, also the immigrant community. And if you contrast that also with the essential workers, the people who haven't lost their jobs, they are also disproportionately women, disproportionately people of color. And the third of those people are over the age of 50. And so they're exposing themselves to these health crises every day, taking it back to their families, disproportionately low income, disproportionately without health insurance. And so I think that that dichotomy between who's losing jobs and who still has to work that really shows that there's a lot of essential work in our economy that is not valued by the economy and that we need a social safety net for those folks. And we need to have a social way that we can value that and put a fair dollar amount on it. Yeah, I think that that's right. And to pick up on, to sort of piggyback on the point that you're making, I think that there is this idea out there that these jobs that have either gotten wiped away or that people are being asked to do, even though those jobs are dangerous now, so whether that is picking up trash or working in a hospital or doing food service work where you're exposed in a way, there's this kind of argument or working elsewhere in the food supply chain. So in places like slaughterhouses, on farms, picking vegetables, doing all of that, there's this argument out there that, the reason that those are low wage, low benefit jobs is because they're not jobs with a tremendous increase in skill over time or care work. These are not jobs that are affected by technology. You don't tend to need a higher education degree and that that justifies them being bad jobs. So this is just econ 101. This is how the economy works. It is just a given. And I really feel like that absolves us and absolves policy that these jobs are bad because we choose to let them be bad, right? Or we choose to let them be dangerous. It's not a given. We do all sorts of things through policy. And so, and I think that your right to draw out that intersection of race and gender as well as the immigration angle, that this is a reflection of structural inequality as well. And we have a tremendous number of policies that we know can address that structural inequality, but for complicated and not fun reasons, we choose not to, right? And I think that you're right, like thinking about divorcing insurance from employment is something that most, almost all other OECD countries have chosen to do, right? We are pretty unusual in that we have an extremely health, expensive health system that is not better than most other countries' health systems in terms of outcomes and is also employment dependent, which there's a real perversity to that. Yeah. And so, one thing, and I wanna go actually back to something that you had said before, which is people are talking about cash transfers now as being kind of stimulus, but it was something that you were saying at the beginning that like it's not even actually really stimulus given that the economy is so shut down, right? It's this life, it's this lifeline, like we're not gonna get the economy back to where it was, right? Like this is just helping people kind of keep the lights on. And I feel like, I mean, it's something that I'm really worried about is in a couple months, as you point out, when we just have this sort of self-generating recession coming from all of these families being really insecure, you know? And I'm wondering, have you thought about whether you feel like, you know, we have this kind of one-time cash infusion that Congress passed that goes up to middle-income families, but, you know, what it would look like to, you know, do we need to send more cash than that? Should we be doing it on an ongoing basis? What would that look like? What kind of policy goal would we achieve with that? Yeah, absolutely. I wanna pick up on a couple of things that you just mentioned. One being kind of the structural inequality. It is both a fact of our economy, but it's also, we're now starting to understand how it's by design. When you have policy makers on both sides of the aisle who are saying, we can't make it too comfortable to be on unemployment or make the benefits too generous because people won't come back, that's an implicit acknowledgement, I think, that the overwhelming power that employers have over workers to set the terms of their employment, to engage them in precarious low-wage work that is conditional and when you don't have any set number of hours, the low wages and the structure and nature that work are intentional. And so when we do start to unpack, why is it that we mediate our social safety net to employment, I think that's a huge part. The other part, I think, is that we have a real allergy to universal programs and we really, and I think that this is progressives and conservatives alike. We want to target the programs to the folks that we are politically aligned with. And so I think you saw this in the first CARES Act. So we spent $2 trillion and yet there were some administrative challenges and some other issues with how that money was given out. It left out college students, which was a huge gap, left out adults with disabilities, huge gap there. The Republicans tried to target their dollars to small businesses, but because of a loophole, that big businesses fly before, they pretty much exhausted those dollars that were meant for struggling small businesses to survive. And so I think that another thing that we really need to address is kind of this emphasis on having benefits we targeted and kind of a lie that that's always a much more effective way to get benefits out. But to your point about whether or not we need additional dollars, I think it is obvious that we're gonna need additional money to people above and beyond the stimulus check and the unemployment insurance that's been extended. There is the emergency money for the People Act that Representative Rokana has introduced, supported by the Economic Security Project, which calls for expanding relief to $2,000 and a monthly payment for every qualifying American over the age of 16 with the trigger that it is gonna be sent out every month until employment returns to normal. And then I think that this bill also does a couple other things in terms of the administration and making sure that you are passing as wide that as possible and it's making it possible for immigrants who don't have social security numbers but who do file their taxes to be eligible for that payment. It makes it so that you can receive your stimulus dollars in different ways other than just a check or deposit to a specific bank looking at ways that cash transfer apps can be utilized. But I do think that a much more robust stimulus is necessary and I think that Congress is gonna find that without that, we're looking at a prolonged crisis. So I just wanna pick up on two things that you said there. So the first is on the administrative burden on the government. So I think one thing that this crisis revealed is that the government doesn't have great ways to push money out to people really quickly. We can send checks that goes through the IRS but then you run into all of the issues of people who have unstable addresses who don't file their taxes for whatever reason. A lot of folks don't have to file taxes and therefore it's hard to reach them. We don't have immediate cash payments. We don't have postal banking and countries that are much poorer than the US that have far less state capacity have really figured this out. I think it's a thing that Americans don't realize but it was in 2008 that Britain decided that it needed a way to send cash payments to everybody and that they wanted the cash payments to be immediate. And so they just through their equivalent to the Federal Reserve decided that they would give themselves the capacity to do this and many, many, many lower income countries have done it. So I think you're right that this question of do we just need a way to get money to everybody going forward? And because especially the people who want the money to get the most. So we are saying that the people who are lowest income who are dealing with disabilities who have kids in their household we really wanna get money to them. Those are also the people who in a lot of cases are gonna be less likely to have up to date direct deposit information on file with the IRS for a whole host of reasons. But this is not, it's a technical policy challenge but it's hardly that big of one if you put your mind to it. And then the second thing is I go back and forth and I think this is such a complicated policy question but on the left there has been for decades now this rift on targeted programs versus universal programs. So on one hand in a high inequality country where a lot of our problems stem from the fact that we don't do enough to remedy inequality there's a need for probably more redistribution and more progressive policy which necessarily means means testing. Yet on the other hand, we also don't have universal programs which means that huge numbers of people fall through the cracks and I think that there is a tension there and that people can really debate. And I guess it's one of the central features of UBI that everybody is getting it. And so you get these kind of inevitable questions about well why does it make sense for Bill Gates to be getting the same amount of money as a single mom with three kids who's working two jobs? And I think the answer is it doesn't but maybe it makes sense for everybody to be getting something. So I don't know how you feel about that about that tension between living in a high inequality country that remains high inequality after the tax and transfer system is done and also the kind of pressure for universality given that as you point out, right? Like we splice people into really small groups into the deserving and undeserving and that has all sorts of policy consequences. Yeah, and that I think really kind of is the crux of the debate over UBI particularly as you point out with here in DC policy circles and progressive policy circles. I think that for me, it's both an issue of policy design but also political though. That when you create targeted programs, it makes those number one, the program is not gonna meet, it's not gonna be extensive enough to meet everyone who's eligible for the program because there's going to be some kind of gate that you're using to determine who is and who is not eligible. And just the act of having that gate or that need to show that you're eligible is gonna keep people out who for whatever reason lack the capacity to make it pass that gate. And I think that also when you target programs in political standpoint, it's easy to describe the person who is receiving the benefit as somehow deficient or undeserving. And I think that is particularly true here in the United States where we have a very deeply ingrained cultural narrative around deserving and undeserving poor. The second part kind of grappling with why should someone who is wealthy get the benefit of a program. I think that it's a matter of the argument you're making. So everyone can go to the library. There's not a means test for being able to visit a library. But some people pay more in their local taxes, property taxes or income taxes for that service than others. And so I think that making it understood that when we talk about UBI, we're talking about a public utility like a library. We're talking about public or social insurance like something that is available or accessible to everyone. And then coupling that with the progressive tax system that says the things that we pay for together we're all going to contribute according to our means is one way to get around that. But I do, to your point like it, it is a question of political will. It's does that resonate with people? I think what's encouraging is in this moment of crisis which is really a moment where solidarity is needed now more than ever. There's a recent poll that showed that direct cash transfers are popular across the political spectrum. So we're talking about 88% of all voters and 87% of Republican voters. Like there's a reason that Mitt Romney was able to outflank House of Democrats on calling for cash transfers. And that is because people understand in this moment of crisis that there's going to need to be some level of solidarity and that we're all in this together. And so I hope that this is part of the way in which our political conversation is transformed after this crisis is that we understand what are the things that we all need to contribute to? How do we make sure that everyone in our society is safe, is healthy and has what they need in terms of basic necessities to survive? And then how do we pay for that in a way that is fair? Yeah, so one thing that I really like that you said is that, yes, there is a tension between universality and means testing perhaps, but those are not necessarily polar opposites. You can in fact have the provision of public goods, social insurance, universal programs and also have a system that's ameliorating the worst effects of high inequality and that maybe it's a bit of a policy puzzle, but again, it's not an unsolvable equation at all. And I think that you're right that one thing I'm curious to know and I really don't know the answer to this and I don't think anybody does yet is to what extent does this crisis change hearts and minds on the need for public goods, for universal programs, for the government to get better at doing counter-cyclical policy for this to become more automatic for it to be easy to file for things like unemployment insurance and food stamps because and this is something that you pointed out, we've by design made these programs complicated, difficult. We've underfunded the agencies that implement them. And so in the worst case scenario, you end up with what Florida is going through right now where in the midst of a terrifying pandemic that is killing people, you're asking people to submit paper applications and you're having them line up. It's complete madness. And again, just in terms of other countries have nice things that we don't, there's no reason that this stuff can't be done online, that it can't be more automatic, that you can't get a policy determination in 24 hours. But it takes investing in these systems that have been really underfunded. And one thing that I would draw out here is, we're generally talking about federal programs, but the fact that these programs often get devolved to the states. On the one hand means that some states have really great innovative, aggressive policy, but it means that many states don't and they purposefully don't. And I think that that ties in with the racial valences to this, which are really, really important. There's obviously a really vital history of racial exclusion that sort of explains why we have these systems and the way that we do. But yeah, coming back around to it, I do, I just wonder how much this is going to change things and kind of a good government, like let's get government to work so that the next time this happens, we don't have people lining up in Florida for hours to submit UI, whether that change will happen. I mean, I hope so. My worry is that, for me, it always comes back to, who does it benefit for things to be broken? And I think that this moment where we're seeing social safety net programs kind of fall apart, I think that there's an ideological commitment to that, that government can't do this. And I think that there's also a financial incentive because if government can't do it, then someone else has to do it. And that's usually a prominent entity. And so I think you're seeing some resistance from conservatives on the Hill who are saying, if we implement all of this stuff and it goes well, then we're gonna have a hard time pulling it back. And then I also think that there's a preference in policy to want to, as we mediate through employers, to also mediate any government help through private firms. I think so, you can take something, for example, like higher education. We used to just collect tax dollars and give those tax dollars to universities and colleges to pay their budgets directly to public universities and colleges. Now we ask individuals to take on a massive amount of debt which is managed by private debt collection agencies to go to college and then your income is then a funding stream for that entity. And they can chop that funding stream up and sell it on financial markets. And so I think looking at why it is that our public services need to, number one, be mediated by private services but also why they are often dysfunctional when they are purely public, I think is kind of big. Unspoken ideological commitment and a lot of our provision of public welfare at the federal and state level. And I think that you're right that, you know, it's an argument implicit in what we've been talking about that the great thing about cash transfers and you can look at the social security system which is enormously cheap to run and extremely, extremely efficient. I remember when my son was born we received his social security card without having to do almost anything. It just showed up, right? Like we didn't have to pay anything, nothing. It just did. They knew our address somehow and they sent it along. The cash is easy and universality is easy. You don't have to be splicing people. You don't really need to be involving tons of private firms. There's no securitization necessary. And, you know, that it's easy for the IRS or another agency to do. So we just, we're just about 130 here. So I just want to encourage folks to use, if you have questions for me and Sebastian, you can use that Q and A function and send them along. And then we'll both be responding to them. So go ahead and do that if you, if you have questions that you would like us to respond to, I'm just going to look and see what we have for questions here. And just give me one second to pull this up. Okay. So we have some questions from zoom. So UBI proposals are often discussed in the range of $1,000 a month. For this reason, they are often deemed outrageous due to the high price tie. Might a small UBI say a hundred or $200 a month be a better place to start. What sort of difference would a hundred or $200 a month make on the lower end of the income sale? Although such a small amount of money wouldn't go far. It would work as a less costly experiment and open the pipeline to a higher UBI in the long run, maybe. So do you want to address that question, Sebastian? Yeah. I think that the $1,000 a month came from the federal poverty line of about $12,000. And I think that's why a lot of folks have kind of lashed onto that, that number. Yeah. I mean, I think that any, any UBI is better than no UBI. And if, if there was appetite on, on the hill right now on, on the left and the right to pass $200 universal based income, that will be phenomenal. And I think that that would make a huge impact on the margins, strictly for families who are struggling to put food on the table, struggling to, to buy gas, despite the astronomical price of gas. I do, I do think it is going to be insufficient. You know, I think that we just recently had a stimulus check of $1,200 that most people either, you know, they pay for basics or they pay their mortgage and then they were exhausted. And so if we're really talking about meeting people's needs, it's probably going to be, need to be closer to the $2,000 number that the emergency money to the people act is, is advocating for. But, you know, I think that any, any amount is, is, is better than none. Yeah. So, um, I think that those are all really smart points. I feel like the question is, what do you, what, what problem are you trying to solve with UBI? Right. Are you just ideologically committed to UBI, in which case the $1,000 a month is not so much money that you're going to disincentivize work too much. If that's important to you. Um, but, you know, the basic and basic income is that it's supposed to keep you out of poverty, right? Just provide for basic expenses. So notably, you know, for family of four, uh, $4,000 a month, right? Like that goes quite a long way. Um, I would just like to point out that there are kind of two proposals that are sort of UBI adjacent, but that I think are really good ideas. Um, so one is the, the much touted UBI for kids. So, um, children are enormously economically vulnerable in the United States. The U.S. has a child poverty rate, which is about four times the rate of some of our peer countries, like Denmark, um, and other countries provide cash to parents to spend on kids. Kids are very expensive. Again, they're very economically vulnerable. This would be a lot cheaper and it would be, I think easier to sort of frame as an investment, right? Like we don't want kids to grow up in poverty. We've said as a country that, you know, we want to make sure that, that children are not punished for, um, uh, you know, the family that they grow up in. So that's one kind of cheaper option. I also note, you know, if you just want to do straightforward poverty elimination and see how that works out, there's something called negative income taxes where we could basically make sure that everybody is getting up above the poverty line. Luke Schaefer at the University of Michigan has a great proposal for this with some of his co-authors. And the math on that is not, it's not terrifying. It's something like, it depends on obviously how the economy is doing, but it's something like $200 billion a year, which I'm not saying that's not a lot of money. Um, but it's, it's nothing like the back of the envelope math that you get with a UBI. So I would say if you're looking for ways to make UBI less scary, um, cash transfers for kids or the straightforward elimination of poverty, it's probably a good way to go. Um, the economist Claudia Somme among other people also has a proposal. So once the unemployment rate starts going up, you just send cash to people. So it's just a counter cyclical policy. And I also really like that proposal. So there's lots of ways to do this. Um, because, you know, right now the cash transfer, you know, policies that we have, they're either social security, which is untouchable and works really well. And it's great. Or they're TANF, which is heavily stigmatized, unbelievably underfunded, deeply punitive, terrible for people who participate in that program and doesn't even work that well. Um, and so, you know, I think that there's something to learn from that. So I'm going to go look at, we have some more questions here. So, um, some countries with a UBI have a sovereign wealth fund. Alaska has its oil revenue fund. Should the United States designate some kind of separate funding source for a national UBI. Or should the United States designate some kind of separate funding source for a national UBI. Does it make more sense for our large economy to fund one, the normal way, which would just be through the tax system, I imagine. Um, so yeah, do you have thoughts on that, Sebastian on, on funding? Um, I mean, I'll say personally that I'm, I'm agnostic on, on the way to fund UBI. I think that there was a lot of innovative ways out there that people have proposed. Um, I think that the UBI has, has worked enormously well in Alaska and Norway. Um, the issue with that is, is it depends on, you know, is that sovereign wealth fund based on a commodity? Uh, you know, we've seen in previous downturns from the price of oil drops that the payment from the Alaska permanent fund also could have a corresponding decrease. And so that's something to think about. Um, if you're doing a sovereign wealth fund, are there tax revenues that you can be using as the basis of uh, Andrew Yang has, has promoted the value added tax? Are you, are there ways in which you can devote tax revenues into specific funds other than reinvested in, in private markets to earn a return? I think that's another way rather than doing just a, a, a classic kind of tax and transfer program. Um, I think that, you know, all of that does really kind of have to be on the table. Um, I think that you could have a robust sovereign wealth fund with a variety of diverse funding streams to protect against any kind of downturn and one commodity or one funding stream or another. Uh, but I think that, you know, again, it kind of comes down to like, what is the political will? If, if we decide that we want to, you know, I think, if anything, this Christ has shown that when people want to spend money, they have no problem borrowing the money to, to do so. One of the things that people are angry about is the fact that we spent $2 trillion on a tax cut, you know, just two years ago, most of that went to the very wealthy and incorporations. And then they still turned around and needed another $2 trillion bail out just two years later. And so, you know, I, I'm sympathetic to, you know, the pay for argument and that, and the fact that we do need to have a healthy kind of, kind of fiscal ledger for, for the country and for, for our states in particular, who are, who have to balance budgets. Um, but I do think that, you know, we have all of this borrowing capacity right now. That's been the primary way that we have responded to this crisis. Why don't we use that borrowing capacity to support working families, to support communities who have found their only means of livelihood right now, instead of doing what we usually do, which is funnel that money into tax cuts or funnel that money into, into unproductive sectors of the economy. Yeah. Um, I feel like the question of whether we should have a sovereign wealth fund is somewhat distinct from the question of whether that sovereign wealth fund should be used for UBI. I think as you point out, if we want a UBI, and we want that to be part of our social policy spending mix. I kind of think that you, you know, an economist would say that, you know, it's this illusion that we tax and then we spend, right? Like we spend and then we tax and those are actually kind of distinct processes. And I think that there are a lot of ways we could do both things in a smarter fashion. Um, and so kind of complicatedly tying the two together, I feel like is perhaps unnecessary, although again, I do think this question of whether we should have kind of a sovereign wealth identity is a really interesting one. And it isn't one that I've thought about. There are a number of a new gesture to a number of interesting proposals about. Do we want to carbon tax and dividend? Do we want to financial transaction tax and dividend? Um, and thinking about policies framing them as, as dividends. But again, I tend to think of that as being more about how you're communicating about the policy than about actually how you're financing it. Um, but, um, I think it's a really interesting question, especially going forward. Um, okay. So we're going to go to some more questions. Um, so, uh, Going back to what one of you mentioned, the American mindset that poor people need to work like the rest of us and the free loaders that we pass out checks, what's a way to nudge that mindset? That's a question from zoom. Yeah, I mean, that is. Um, I think that if whoever figures that out is we'll probably be present. Because I think that that is so, uh, fundamental to I think what the core of how people think the economy works, which is that you work hard. You're successful. Um, and if you're not, if you haven't been successful, if you don't have resources, if you don't have a job or something wrong with you, and that's why. Um, and I think I alluded to it. Um, I, I, I saw, um, A tweet that was like, you know, these people who are just sitting at home gathering unemployment. Um, you know, they're making more money than the people who are doing essential work. So, you know, how is that fair? And I think that the point the person was trying to make was that essential workers should be paid more. Um, but people, plenty of people make that argument to say that we need to be providing less in benefits. Um, and then there's also this corresponding belief that, um, I like to, I like to say that, that work. If the disincentive is the work, if, if, if, if sitting, if staying home and, and not working and earning income in that way is better than working than the disincentive is, is the work that's being offered. Um, and, and so really trying to understand like, what is it about these jobs? Um, being so precarious and terrible that they, and also look, hey, that we have to have no safety net. So people are forced to do them. Um, I hope that at the end of the day, you know, in the spirit of solidarity and understanding that we're all in this together, that people's mindsets will be shifted. You're already seeing, um, a real emergence of some class consciousness, particularly around essential versus non-essential work. Who gets to stay home. Who, who has to go out. Um, whether that is, you know, kind of, uh, a leftist or progressive class consciousness, the kind of interrogates, uh, corporations and the economic elite, or if it's a right wing based class consciousness, that's more about the other and, and, and who, who is undeserving and, and draining our, our national greatness. You know, that, that remains to be seen, but, um, I do think that there will be some kind of shift politically, um, after this crisis. Yeah. Um, I think that this is a really hard thing to do. Um, I think especially, um, you know, um, there's a tremendous amount of scholarship, um, around why it is that we have such punitive social programs. Um, and I think again, you don't, there's no answer that doesn't kind of come back to the racial history of the country and the racial makeup of the country. Um, so there's a really good book on, on this, um, by Joe sauce and a bunch of co-authors called disciplining the poor. Um, and I think it's just a really hard, I don't, I don't think that you can kind of reason your way out of this because we do have a tremendous amount of scholarship that shows what happens when you give people money. Um, which is that they don't tend to spend more on vice goods. Uh, they just tend to spend more on what they were spending on before. Um, and in some cases it can really act as, um, an investment, um, especially in the lives of their kids. Um, I wish I had a good answer, but I think that fundamentally you're trying to answer the question of how do you make people less racist. And I, my guess is that a lot of people who are not me have really great thoughts on how to do that and not do that, but that's not, um, that's not something that I feel like I necessarily have a great answer. Um, but I do think that one thing you can do, one argument for universal programs is that they don't become racialized in the same way that targeted programs do. Um, you know, there's this, despite the fact that the majority of recipients of Tana for actually white, it's a program that is coded as being, uh, for black moms, young black moms, single black moms. Um, and I think that, you know, the 96 Tana for form doubled down on that. It didn't alleviate that. Whereas if we had a universal child grant, I don't think that it would be so heavily racialized, so judgmental. Instead, it would just be for all parents. And so, you know, I don't know that that kind of solves the, the problem of racism at the heart there, but it does vault over it. I guess. Um, so anyway, I think it's a really good question. An extremely good and difficult question to be asking. I wish I had better answers for it. Um, okay. So, uh, next question. For countries that have implemented UBI, what have been the results? Um, so to my knowledge, no country has implemented UBI. Um, but we have lots of things like UBI and we have tons of data on the results. Um, there's a really great, there's a really great, uh, that looks through all of these, but you know, you can look at the Alaska. Um, oil dividend for results. Um, all sorts of transfer programs and I don't know, Sebastian, are there results that you like to point to as being particularly interesting from UBI type programs or UBI pilots around the world? Yeah. Um, I think one that, uh, has is, is, is, is pretty rigorous is, is the give directly, uh, cash transfer experiments in Kenya. Uh, in East Africa, uh, which, which to your point showed, uh, no increase in spending on vice goods, increase in productive activities that are going to lead to long-term economic growth, like going back to school, starting a business, uh, better health and education. Uh, to, uh, pilots that are in effect here in the United States, uh, supported by the economic security project. There's the Stockton seed demonstration, which, uh, a number of families and Stockton are receiving $500, uh, checks each month. No strings attached. Um, all of the, the data thus far has shown that those dollars are not, they're not, uh, they're not, uh, all of the data thus far has shown that those dollars are being spent on food, clothing, necessities, um, better outcomes in terms of reduced stress levels. Uh, the other one that is, it's possible, uh, ESP, uh, is the Magnolia Mothers Trust, which is a program that supports low income families headed by single African-American women in Mississippi. Uh, there are, uh, uh, similar results, uh, better outcomes in terms of, uh, uh, health and education. Um, there, uh, you also see a lot of paying down a credit card debt and, uh, educational debt from, uh, uh, the, these, uh, for profit colleges, the kind of prey on low income folks who are trying to enter, uh, the higher education market. Um, and so I think that, you know, there's a lot of, uh, there's a lot of, uh, there's a lot of, uh, there's a lot of, uh, there's a lot of study of, of UBI and any kind of program that's shown any negative effects. There's either been, uh, kind of nil or positive. Yeah. So, um, with that, it is, it is, uh, unfortunately time for us to sign off. Um, but I'd love to thank, uh, everybody who set this up. Um, uh, and everybody who joined us. Um, so thanks to future trends. Um, and, uh, to Slate. Thank you to Sebastian and, um, thank you to all of you.