How does basic income interact with the various programs that make up the welfare system?  To what extent does basic income solve some of the same problems that the welfare programs are designed to solve?  What does an effective welfare system and/or social safety net look like in a world with basic income?  When does it make sense to adapt existing income support programs to more closely resemble basic income?



Michael Lewis and Steve Nuñez join us to discuss.



Michael is a professor at Silberman School of Social Work, Hunter College.  He has published widely on the topic of basic income and he was a co-founder of the US Basic Income Guarantee Network (USBIG) in 1999.



Steve is the lead researcher on Guaranteed Income at the Jain Family Institute where he models and empirically investigates the social and economic effects of guaranteed income.  



The reading for this week is a recent white paper entitled "Reweaving the Safety Net: The Best Fit for Guaranteed Income" that Michael and Steve wrote with Sidhya Balakrishnan.



Previous related Boston Basic Income topics have included:

BBI #69: The BOOST Act

BBI #99: Maricá

BBI #118: Social Safety Net



Original YouTube Recording



Image by Jonathan Meyer on Noun Project