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Beyond Left vs. Right: New Directions in Political Discourse

by Steven Shafarman

Imagine that every adult citizen receives enough income to ensure basic food and shelter. And in return each of us contributes several hours a month to the community through volunteer work. These are the mutually enabling programs introduced by the Citizen Policies Institute.

The money goes to you and your spouse and other members of your family, and to your friends and neighbors, whether poor or rich, working or unemployed, married or single. Everyone receives the same amount, say, $400-$800 a month: enough to end hunger, homelessness, and extreme poverty, but not enough to remove the incentives to work, earn, save, and invest.

What could you do with that extra income? Pay off debts? Make advance payments on your mortgage? Save for your children's college education? Invest for your retirement? Start or expand a small business? You could of course spend some of it to enhance the quality of your life today. What are some things you want to buy or do?

Think about ways you could serve your community. Would you volunteer in your child's classroom or PTA? Join a group doing neighborhood cleanup or park restoration? Serve on a community board, commission, or association? Help with public safety and security as a volunteer with the fire department or police auxiliary?

And would you need some government agency to oversee your volunteer hours? Or would you participate on your own recognizance? Perhaps you already volunteer in some way-nearly half of Americans do. Many people, however, work at minimum wage jobs and are struggling to support their families, and can't afford the time. The "citizen dividend" income would, in effect, buy back a portion of every worker's time. It would make it possible for everyone to serve.

Would you shirk that obligation? Would your friends, your neighbors? A few people would, but not enough to justify the cost of some new bureaucracy or enforcement mechanism. Besides, we can accomplish a lot through informal social pressure. When we all know that everyone is receiving the basic income, we will ask each other, "What did you for your service this month?" Journalists and talk show hosts would ask celebrities. Religious and spiritual leaders would give sermons about it. And people would gossip. Bureaucracy is expensive; peer pressure is free.

A common objection to any proposed income support—and a core assumption of the 1996 welfare law—is the idea that people ought to "earn" the money. With Citizen Policies, we will. The two components, guaranteed income and universal service, pay for each other.

Another objection is that some people will waste or misuse the money-for example, by spending it on drugs or alcohol. Well, some will. Today, some people spend their money that way—hard-earned money or money obtained by panhandling or stealing. But with Citizen Policies, anyone with costly addictions would at least have enough money for food and shelter, and so be less susceptible to the lures of theft, drug dealing, prostitution, and violence. If you are concerned about these issues, you might do community service that helps educate and motivate people, perhaps focusing on those who are coping with addiction or other disorders.

Think again about what Citizen Policies would mean for you and your family, about what you could do with the extra income and for community service. Now imagine what it might mean for your community to have practically every resident serving in some way. How might that make your community more safe, secure, and attractive? How might that affect local government, reducing the demands for its services and helping make it more open and democratic? Changes in local government will also affect state and national government. "All politics is local," Tip O'Neill said, but more to the point, all politics is personal. Citizen Policies would perpetually remind us that we are all stakeholders. That could be the key to increasing voter turnout and strengthening our democracy at every level.

Conventional Political Discourse

Two approaches constrain conventional political efforts to address hunger, homelessness, racism, education, pollution, global warming, and other problems. From the left, liberals call for government programs and regulations. From the right, conservatives say government is part of the problem and solutions have to come from markets and private enterprises, which are more reliable, efficient, and cheaper. Left vs. right. Liberal vs. conservative.

There are also moderates, of course, who want government to work with and through private enterprises. In practice, however, the "third way" often combines the worst of the left and the right. Consider, for example, efforts to end hunger and homelessness. From the 1930s until the 1996 welfare law, the federal government required states to have—and fund—public assistance programs. Many states have privatized welfare, retaining profit-making corporations to administer welfare and paying bonuses for cutting the welfare rolls. Yet recipients are still dealing with a large, coercive institution—one with more incentives to drop them from the program and less direct accountability to the taxpayers. Money that might have gone to welfare recipients or to pay caseworkers goes instead to shareholder profits and executive bonuses.

Despite the real differences between liberal and conservative approaches, there is also an underlying similarity. Liberals and conservatives rely on some superior force, "government" or "the market," to solve our problems. The role and value of individual citizens is minimal. People are supposed to vote, but otherwise keep quiet and let government or the market take care of us. We are consumers or clients, but not citizens in any meaningful sense.

No politician would admit that, of course. They claim to trust us, to be willing and eager to listen to us, and they toss around feel-good words like "empowerment" and "partnership." But when, if ever, do ordinary citizens get to participate in setting agendas, evaluating consequences, selecting candidates, or engaging in any of the other work of government? Access is denied, except for the wealthy few who fund campaigns. Other individuals and organized citizen groups are mostly shut out of the process.

Imagine again that we have Citizen Policies, and each of us has extra income and a commitment to contribute some time to the community. As individuals and together, We the People will be better able to demand that government and markets serve our needs and interests, rather than expecting us to conform to their expectations.

Citizen Policies

These ideas are perpendicular to the old political axis of left vs. right. In fact, in the 1960s, the concept of guaranteed income was supported by leading liberals and conservatives alike. Milton Friedman proposed a "negative income tax," cash payments to the poorest Americans. "Guaranteed income" was the term preferred by John Kenneth Galbraith and other liberals. Under Lyndon Johnson, the federal Office of Equal Opportunity experimented with guaranteed income in place of welfare. Richard Nixon opposed the idea in his campaign, and refused to use either term, but then presented a plan that it's author, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, subsequently described in The Politics of a Guaranteed Income. In each case, however, payments only went to the very poor, and much of the policy debate focused on ways to cut payments as recipients' earnings increased.

Citizen Policies also appeals to self-identified liberals and conservatives, though we anticipate serious debates about the amount and the source of funds. Conservatives will want the dividends to be minimal, both for fiscal reasons and to maximize work incentives. Liberals will be more generous, and may want extra money for children. We can compromise, and in any case will have to adjust the amount as economic conditions change. Regardless, support is sure to be broader and more committed than in the '60s because every adult citizen will receive payments, not just the very poor.

Conservatives will want to end the existing programs that Citizen Policies make superfluous—welfare and corporate welfare and all associated bureaucracies; that will provide more than enough money for the dividends, and possibly for tax cuts at the same time. Liberals will want to preserve some government programs to provide for recent immigrants and other noncitizens. If higher taxes are needed, many liberals will want them to be on fossil fuels. Conservatives might use the debates to push for a flat income tax. Interestingly, if the dividends are tax free, the net effect of combining them with a flat income tax would be a progressive tax. Each of these debates will be complex, but productive, and will move public discourse beyond the straitjacket imposed by liberal and conservative dogma.

Universal service will also appeal to people across the political spectrum. President Bush wants every American to perform 4,000 hours of volunteer work during our lifetimes, even though monitoring and coordinating that would require a massive bureaucracy. With Citizen Policies, people will self-organize and self-select their volunteer efforts. Eight hours a month for 40 years would give almost that 4,000 hours, and most of us would continue volunteering for many more years.

Let's briefly consider some specific issues or problems. Our society is still torn by racism, sometimes arising from actual hatred, but usually a byproduct of insecurity about economic interests, such as access to jobs, housing, and education. With some income guaranteed, people won't need to scapegoat anymore. It will still take decades or even several generations to end racism, but at least everyone would have secure food and shelter while we refocus on cultural issues.

Education reform is usually debated without regard to the economic demands on working parents. Many are struggling to provide for their children and cannot manage the time to review homework, meet with teachers, or otherwise stay informed and involved. Citizen Policies will ease the financial burden on parents. Those who volunteer in their children's schools will gain more direct knowledge of the teacher, school, methods, and issues.

Reducing pollution and global warming is impossible without cutting fossil fuel consumption. The simplest way to do that, but an option most politician won't even consider, is to increase fuel taxes. With Citizen Policies payments indexed to the cost of living, higher fuel taxes may be acceptable to voters. Each of us will be free—indeed encouraged—to adjust our lifestyles in order to conserve.

In each of these areas, conventional approaches and discourse have failed. Citizen Policies would be a pivotal step forward.

Transforming Political Discourse

A majority of Americans supported Nixon's guaranteed income plan, according to Harris and Gallup polls, and so did the New York Times, Washington Post, and many other newspapers. It passed in the House of Representatives with two-thirds of the vote. In the Senate Finance Committee, however, conservatives insisted on strict work requirements and blocked liberal efforts to increase the amount. Debate stalled until after the election in November, 1970. Moderate Democrats and Republicans voted yes; the extreme left and right joined forces to defeat it. After George McGovern campaigned for a more generous alternative, the idea was abandoned. Most Americans don't even know about it.

Advocates have to transform the discourse. One suggestion is to speak boldly about ending hunger, homelessness, and poverty. Liberals today are only fighting for modest increases in Temporary Aid to Needy Families. Small demands will never attract broad support. The stakes are high, and the baby steps supported by today's liberals don't reflect that.

It may also help to explain that we are the real conservatives. After all, Citizen Policies will help America protect individual freedoms, states' rights, small businesses, and our environment, all while making government smaller and less intrusive. In current discourse, "conservative" is usually just a synonym for "anti-government," without much of a positive program to provide any value to taxpayers.

It is today an article of political faith, one liberals and conservatives swear to uphold, that government should be creating jobs and promoting economic growth. That is the stated rationale for corporate welfare, excess military spending, and all sorts of environmental destruction. The presumed imperative obstructs any meaningful changes. With Citizen Policies, when every American is guaranteed enough income for food and shelter, individuals can find or create their own jobs. Many will start small businesses, the purest and most efficient engine of economic growth.

Along with jobs and economic growth, conventional discourse makes a fetish of "the economy." With all the pundits and politicians talking about it, however, most of us overlook the fact that "the economy" is no more than a huge set of individual choices and the resulting patterns and statistics. The most misleading of these statistics is the Gross Domestic Product, which reflects all economic activity—counting the costs of war and crime and waste and pollution as positive line-items. The flaws in GDP thwart progress on many issues, and economists have devised alternative indicators; those are more complicated, however, and that's a secondary issue. More important: when people talk about "the economy," supporters of Citizen Policies should redirect our focus to the quality of life for ordinary Americans.

Conservatives say we should rely on markets, not government, because decisions are made by individual buyers and sellers pursuing perceived self interests. That was indeed true of the market Adam Smith described and praised, which was something like a flea market or farmer's market. There, buyers and sellers have relatively equal power and freedom to trade or not to trade. Yet that's only true when buyers—consumers, in current discourse—can provide for their needs in other ways. Today's markets are very different from that ideal, though pro-market fundamentalists ignore those differences, especially the role of global corporations.

We can buy many brands of bottled water, but what comes from the tap is polluted. We can buy cars made around the world, but have few choices for alternative transit. Is that a "free" market? And whose interests are being served? Yours? Or are you coerced and constrained by big corporations and their pursuit of profits? Would you feel more free with your basic economic security guaranteed?

As individuals and together, We the People are the government and the market. Citizen Policies will make it easier for us to assert our rights and exercise our responsibilities.

ÓSteven Shafarman
Citizen Policies Institute
steve@citizenpolicies.org