Andrew Yang speaking at the Poor Peoples Moral Action Congress in 2019.
Today, the US witnesses the launch of Project100: a $100 million effort to rapidly send $1,000 in direct cash payments to 100,000 SNAP (food stamp) recipient families, who have been hard hit by the COVID-19 crisis.
Recipients include individuals like Maureen — a recently unemployed mother of two looking for housing and grieving the loss of her 39 year-old husband, who passed away due to COVID-related complications on March 6th. She signed up for the $1,000 gift (after overcoming fears it was a “free money” scam) via technology company Propel’s Fresh EBT app, and received the full amount in a matter of hours. “Antiquated government technology has delayed assistance for tens of millions of families. We all need to pull together and serve as many families and children as we can reach” said Stacey Abrams, one of the many conveners of Project100.
In addition to Abrams, the project is backed by Andrew Yang, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Ariana Grande, Halsey, Chris Meloni, and the NFL Players Coalition, among others. Piloted by the nonprofit GiveDirectly and Propel, the effort has already exceeded half of its donation goal with the help of the Schusterman Family Foundation, Blue Meridian, Flourish Ventures Partners, Google.org
While this is the first effort of its kind, the idea may ring a bell: universal basic income (or UBI) was a policy idea vocalized by former Democratic Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang, to get guaranteed cash out to Americans. I (virtually) sat down with Yang to learn more about the Project100 launch, and why rapidly getting no-strings-attached cash out to families is so important at this moment.
Project100 is set to support 100,000 low-income families struggling during COVID-19. What has been failing in America at large to make these families so vulnerable in the first place?
We have been clinging to the idea that the economy today works the same way it did in the 1970s — where if you had companies that were successful, they would need to hire lots of people, give them benefits, and invest in their local communities. That created a virtuous circle — what was good for businesses, was also good for the economy writ large, and people, families, and communities.
Unfortunately, that relationship has become less true over the decades, and financial insecurity is now totally normal. Seventy-eight percent of American say they are living paycheck to paycheck, and over half can’t afford an unexpected $400 bill. Policy makers are decades behind the curve in understanding how the economy is working for most Americans.
This initiative really resembles your UBI proposal while campaigning for president — albeit this is a one-time payment of $1,000 for some, rather than the monthly $1,000 to all Americans that you proposed. What do you think we can learn from this program about what UBI could potentially do for American families?
I see this as a form of UBI: this is a direct payment to individuals who will use it to put food on the table, put a roof over their heads, and give them more confidence about the future.
One approach to trying to solve the problems of poverty has been to build a new infrastructure and set of programs that may or may not work: but what we know would work, would be to put money into people’s hands. It’s the easiest, most straightforward way to get people the ability to get through this crisis, yes, but it would work after the crisis as well.
We have the ability to lift millions of people out of poverty, just by coming together as a country and by saying this is the right thing to do. Putting money into peoples’ hands is an idea whose time has come, and I’m thrilled that Project100 is making it happen for thousands of American families in a time of desperate need.
What other policies like UBI could the next administration use to better secure the welfare of families in the future?
Most Americans know that we’ve had record high corporate profits and stock prices over the last number of years, but we’ve also been setting record highs in mental health problems, depression, anxiety, substance abuse, drug overdoses, even suicides. This is even as we set records in GDP... our life expectancy has been declining.
We need to define how we are doing, based on how our people are doing, not on GDP and stock prices. We started using GDP 100 years ago around the Great Depression, and even the inventor said it wasn’t the right metric for society — we need to now start measuring our economic progress based on mental health, environmental sustainability, and “how our kids are doing.” We would see that we’re facing a very human crisis in communities around the country. It’s hard to solve a problem if you don't understand what the problem is.
We’ve had a measurement problem for decades. If we measured it properly, we’d get better outcomes.
So what should we use instead of GDP for measuring American wellness? How about Gross National Happiness, like in Bhutan?
We should use, for instance, average purchasing power — essentially an index of affordability and financial security. When you look at student indebtedness or other indebtedness, wages haven’t risen whereas the prices on childcare, rent, and other basic needs have risen substantially.
I love the idea of “Gross National Happiness,” but you don’t even have to be that elegant about it. You can just say “Hey, how are Americans doing in terms of our ability to satisfy our own basic needs?” We’ve had an affordability crisis for years on most of the things that are most important to us and our families.
How are you continuing to push this agenda?
My organization Humanity Forward has contributed $1.4M directly to Americans. That’s why we like Project100 so much; it's stepping up to put money into struggling American’s hands at a larger scale than my organization has been able to do so far. This is a trying time for the entire country, so I’m deeply grateful to all the generous donors doing all they can to help. They are demonstrating that we can help our people by providing them with economic resources when they need it most.
Certainly, our government should be doing more in this direction. But it takes people and companies and foundations all working together to help the most vulnerable among us. I know many of the donors are interested in supporting the communities hardest hit by the coronavirus, and we know the virus infection rates amongst African American communities is several times higher, because they have higher levels of preexisting conditions and lower access to healthcare infrastructure. The great thing about Project100 and giving directly is giving funds for people to be able to stay at home and do the right thing for themselves and their families.
In celebrating the generosity of the donors who contributed millions to this initiative, it does feel a bit ironic to know that some of that wealth was originally amassed through the very extractive economic systems you critique. It’s precisely why my firm Candide Group, and many others, including Project100 donor Blue Haven Initiative, don’t just participate in philanthropy but are also social investors — to try and make money as ethically as possible in the first place.
When is it important to focus on just donating as much as possible, versus focusing on what Anand Giridharadas would say, “not taking” instead of giving?
We are in the midst of a crisis that’s killed thousands of Americans and cost us millions of jobs. Anyone who has the capacity to help should give all they can. After this crisis passes, we can look at some of the inequities that have unfortunately contributed to the lethality of this crisis to many Americans. For now, it’s all hands-on deck doing everything we can to help.
Thanks to Jasmine Rashid for her contributions to this piece. Full disclosures related to my work available here. This post does not constitute investment, tax, or legal advice, and the author is not responsible for any actions taken based on the information provided herein.
