Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There

Studying history is important, in part because it reveals the contingency of present arrangements. Seeing how things used to be expands the possibility of changing things as they currently are. Furthermore, different people can draw very different lessons from looking into the past, which has profound implications for policymaking. A compelling example is President Richard Nixon’s interest in a universal basic income. Nixon was an unlikely champion of such a policy, as a conservative Republican at a time when the War on Poverty was a distinctly Democratic policy. Just as Nixon was about to publicly announce a plan for subsidizing poor families, however, an advisor handed him a brief report on a similar experiment in 19th-century England, alleging that it had a ruinous effect on the people it was meant to help. Nixon shifted to emphasizing the necessity of employment as a precondition for assistance, linking a progressive policy to a conservative sensibility, and the work requirement reinforced the idea that the poor were lazy and unwilling to work, so Nixon’s policy proposal collapsed.

Because the example of a 19th-century England experiment helped defeat a welfare proposal in the modern US, Bregman reexamines that earlier case. In the late 18th century, England was reeling from social unrest, and the French Revolution suggested that the entire social and political system was at risk. In response, the town of Speenhamland in southern England offered aid to the poor as a way to blunt more radical programs. The program succeeded, but a noteworthy objection from Thomas Malthus warned that providing aid to the poor would cause the population to outstrip the food supply, ultimately leading to famine and disease. After an uprising against agricultural landowners, the government decided to crack down on the poor instead of assisting them. Official government reports insisted that Speenhamland’s program made the poor lazy and that only withholding aid spurred them to become productive again. Many years later, it became apparent that the government report was more concerned with promoting a particular narrative than analyzing data. The uprising in fact occurred not because of the poor receiving more money and thus becoming reckless in their demand for more, but rather because of a proposed policy to end the program and return to the “gold standard.” The myth of Speenhamland’s failure helped justify a brutal system of workhouses that exploited the labor of the poor based on the idea that only harsh measures could prevent laziness. Similar ideas endured well into the 20th century, blaming the supposedly deficient morals of the poor for their lack of economic mobility. With Nixon’s failed proposal, the US lost a golden opportunity to change the script and move toward alleviating poverty, but attitudes can change, and a better understanding of history can play a major part in changing them. The current system is not working by any standard, liberal or conservative. Neither the material nor moral conditions of the poor are improving, because the current system is designed to keep them in penury, withdrawing its benefits the moment they achieve even a modicum of financial independence. An obsession with employment rather than quality of life is ensuring that the poor stay that way.