In a letter published Oct. 13, Thomas Higdon mocked my call for a Guaranteed Livable Income (GLI) (letter published Sept. 22), saying I "think people should be paid because they're alive and breathing." But let's think about what that actually means.
If a person "shouldn't be paid for being alive," then what's really being said is that a human being has no right to exist unless they generate profit for someone else. In today's world, survival requires money — for food, shelter, and basic dignity. That mindset doesn't defend capitalism; it defends a morally bankrupt form of feudalism. It assumes everyone starts with equal resources and opportunity, which is simply untrue in America today.
Our current economy doesn't reward productivity; it suppresses it. When people are forced into jobs they dislike just to survive, they aren't working efficiently; they're merely treading water. And if your labor force isn't efficient, neither is your market. A GLI wouldn't eliminate work — it would eliminate desperation, while spurring innovation, efficiency, and a more resilient open market.
Capitalism only works when there is real choice and fair competition. With a livable income floor, people could pursue jobs that match their skills and motivations or create new value through innovation, caregiving, or community work.
Employers would compete for engaged, capable workers instead of relying on those with no other options. Wages would naturally rise as the market revalues labor. That's not Marxism — that's capitalism finally functioning as a free market.
Automation and AI are already replacing workers while productivity soars and wages stay flat. The profits are real, they're just captured at the top. A GLI says the benefits of progress should lift everyone's baseline, not just shareholders'. Instead of fearing technological change, we should prepare for it, socially and economically, before the gap becomes irreversible. A GLI can go a long way toward accomplishing that.
GLI isn't anti-capitalist. It restores capitalism to how it was meant to be: free, fair, and functional. The irony is, the people who oppose ideas like this often benefited from the very systems of stability — affordable housing, pensions, accessible education — that no longer exist for the rest of us. They mistake their luck for virtue and confuse systemic advantage with personal discipline. But this isn’t about envy. It’s about efficiency, fairness, and a moral economy that values human potential as much as profit.
Mr. Higdon ends by name-dropping Karl Marx and telling us not to sleep through economics class. But it seems he's the one who slept through Econ 101. What I'm proposing isn't Marxism; it's much closer to Milton Friedman’s free-market principles. It’s not about state control, it’s about trusting people to make their own economic choices efficiently and freely.
Simply stated, the economy isn't working for the people who make it run, and it won't fix itself. We all need to wake up to reality and start building the systems that will guarantee our shared future.
Jordan Slach
Longview
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