I haven’t been a regular reader of Steve Randy Waldman, which I now realize was a big mistake. I just discovered a post of his from last year that relates to one of my political preoccupations: the idea that everyone should receive a “Basic Income” to which they are entitled as citizens and which is not in any way conditional on whether or how much they work. In the process of figuring out his argument, I also realized that the debate we’ve been having between “fiscal” and “monetary” solutions to the employment crisis is kind of a distraction from the real issues.

The Basic Income is, obviously, a fairly radical demand, and one that may seem implausible in the context of American culture and its Protestant work ethic. However, there are reasons to think that you could build a diverse political coalition around it. One reason is that the Basic Income is embraced not only by left-wing socialists, but by some right-wing libertarians. Of course, the right wing version of the policy is different, because right-wing proponents want it to do different things; in particular, they don’t want a basic income so high that it discourages people from working, whereas I regard that as a feature rather than a bug. Nevertheless, there is potential for alliances in the short run.

But thanks to Waldman, I now see that there is another argument for basic income; this one comes neither from the socialist left nor the libertarian right, but from the technocratic liberal center. For as Waldman explains, a form of Basic Income could be used by the Federal Reserve as a tool of macroeconomic stabilization and regulation of the business cycle.