Do you want your ham and eggs, California?
It is one of the oldest and most enduring ideas in our state: Government should provide everyone with a minimum amount of money on a regular basis. It goes back to the 1930s, when Californians narrowly rejected the so-called “Ham and Eggs” proposals to give Californians a $30 check every Thursday.
Now, this notion is back, a subject of books and op-eds and speeches, especially in the Bay Area, and with some bipartisan political momentum. Thinkers on the left have embraced it as a bulwark against poverty, inequality, and corporate power. Feminists and children’s right advocates argue that it would offer a method to pay people for the crucial work of homemaking and child-rearing. Some libertarians and conservatives like the idea as a way to consolidate the sprawling number of government programs and replace them with a cash grant. And technologists and venture capitalists in Silicon Valley see it as vital insurance against the likelihood that advances in artificial intelligence will eliminate millions of jobs and careers.
The “Ham and Eggs” idea has different names and comes in different concepts. Some proponents talk about a universal basic income, or a guaranteed minimum income, that would be a backstop so that all citizens or families have a sufficient income to live on. Conservatives often prefer to call it the “negative income tax,” since they would expand the tax system to provide supplemental pay to those who need to reach a minimum (the federal Earned Income Tax Credit does this already to a limited extent).
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