Investigative Group

Keith Ellison: Government-Funded Universal Basic Income ‘Has A Lot Of Merit’

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Democratic Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), voiced support on Wednesday for a government-funded universal basic income.

“I personally do think that universal basic income is an idea that has a lot merit,” Ellison said at a public event in his home state. “There are some pilot programs going on right now and there are some different ways to work with it.”

“As people are displaced, the truth is there’s still plenty of stuff for people to do. I don’t think that universal basic income means that people sit around. I think it means do other things that are necessary, like extra folks in the classroom to help out the teacher,” Ellison continued. “But there are things that are valuable and important that don’t necessarily have a market value that we should have people doing.”

“You know, like in the 1930s, we paid artists to basically document the [Great] Depression. We went out and had writers document rural life in America. There were still people who had been enslaved who were still living. During the Depression we paid people to go interview them so we can keep that knowledge, and you can go to the Library of Congress and listen to them today because of it,” Ellison said.

“I think that it is a very important idea. I’ve written on it,” he continued. “I’ve actually thought about having a community meeting on universal basic income because I think it’s—to folks to who know anything about it, there’s a lot of unanswered questions.”

The congressman previously called for a government-enforced “maximum wage” as a way to combat income inequality.

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