Under the signature economic plan put forward by presidential candidate and tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang, everyone would get a Universal Basic Income (UBI) of $1,000 a month. It sounds like an egalitarian policy, but among progressives it gets mixed reviews.
On the one hand, such a policy would disproportionately empower the working class. On the other hand, a UBI could be inflationary and lead to more environmentally harmful consumption. But ultimately, by focusing on increasing consumer purchasing power, the policy proposes to improve the current system rather than to change it. Other critics of UBI say the policy amounts to giving a person a fish instead of a fishing pole.
But there’s a simple way to tweak UBI into a policy that transforms the entire river. By distributing the dividend in the form of an alternative currency—and making sure that currency is democratically governed—such a UBI could actually act as the engine of economic transformation that builds power and wealth in local communities.
