12/29/2023 0 Comments Compton effect americann![]() Kovi Konowiecki for TIME ‘There were no cockroaches’ Asked whether being selected to receive money from Compton Pledge was that miracle he was searching for, Leo replies with a grin: “Cien por ciento.” He feels 100% certain that it was. ![]() “I asked the Virgin Mary for some sort of miracle,” he says from the covered patio outside his home that doubles as his stepson’s bedroom. Earlier this year, the mounting anxiety brought Leo to a Catholic church in downtown Los Angeles where he begged for a reprieve. That stress has been building for a long time. Leo, who does not have health insurance due to his immigration status, now also faces the daunting prospect of paying down a $10,612.80 hospital bill after a recent emergency room visit for chest pains that a physician linked to stress. The extra financial padding hasn’t kept him from needing to work, even through severe pain caused by his gout flare-ups. While he used few bucks from Compton Pledge for a fried rice dinner, the rest of it went to more pressing causes: a $250 car diagnostic tool enabling him to take on more mechanic jobs, a college textbook for his 23-year-old stepdaughter Lesley, a few hundred dollars sent to his ailing mother in Guatemala, and payments towards a $3,000 payday loan that has accrued nearly $1,000 in interest fees in less than two years. And despite the proliferation of guaranteed income pilots, cementing them beyond experiments funded through charity is proving tremendously politically challenging amid fears that such policies keep low-income Americans on the government dole. It remains unclear whether Democrats will have enough support in Congress to make the assistance efforts they passed this year last beyond 2021. Republican lawmakers have raised concerns that Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package is feeding inflationary pressure and inciting labor shortages. ![]() ![]() poverty fell in 2020, largely thanks to federal aid aimed at helping people weather the worst financial crisis in decades, the Census Bureau reported in September.īut the window to enact major change closes quickly. Even if guaranteed income never catches on, economists and public officials may glean lessons about giving poor families financial breathing room from 2020’s pandemic relief packages and Joe Biden’s $3.5 trillion budget proposal, which includes a permanent expansion of the child tax credit and a paid family leave program for new parents. Many of the country’s most significant social reform movements have been provoked by national crises, from the Great Depression’s birth of the New Deal to the 2008 financial crisis paving the way for the Affordable Care Act. “This is an inevitable future,” argues Nika Soon-Shiong, the executive director of the Fund for Guaranteed Income. But after a year and a half of the pandemic, three rounds of stimulus checks and a newly expanded child tax credit, proponents of cash-based programs feel the tide turning. The country’s social safety net in recent years has offered more limited relief through a patchwork of difficult-to-navigate programs, like food stamps and Section 8 housing vouchers, which often have stringent rules and leave many poor families ineligible. Less restricted forms of cash assistance largely ended in the 1990s with President Bill Clinton’s welfare reform, as both Republicans and Democrats argued government benefits were disincentivizing work. If any form of a national guaranteed income were to advance beyond a talking point, it would mark a striking shift in how Americans view the role of government in society. Most other proponents of a guaranteed income in the U.S., however, resist being lumped in with his plan, believing instead that the cash benefit should supplement other forms of government assistance and target individuals who need it most. Andrew Yang, who popularized the idea of UBI during his long-shot 2020 presidential campaign, wants the proposed benefit to replace most existing government welfare programs. There is limited polling on support for nationwide guaranteed income programs, but 45% of Americans supported giving every adult citizen-regardless of employment or income-$1,000 per month, through a subtype of guaranteed income called Universal Basic Income (UBI), according to an August 2020 survey from Pew Research Center.
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