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 Universal Basic Income is gaining momentum. Previously, Andrew Yang, a financially successful candidate for president of the United States, ran on a platform that our government has the funds to pay each person $12,000.00 per annum, a thousand dollars a month for adult citizens. This monetary fund provides a basic living wage for the meager existence we need to coexist with better community health. 

A member of our House of Representatives recently introduced a similar bill to Congress. A website on UBI, https://www.ubicenter.org/what-is-ubi/why-ubi/, has information we can gather to understand the basics.

It might just be the cure to get people to trust and work towards better communities in each community. The physical agility, mental clarity, and emotional state of a person’s well-being make all the difference in the world to how one can be productive or add value to one’s own life and that of our communities. If a person down on luck focuses on how to get a meal, how to stay warm and dry during a sudden rainstorm, where to locate a bathroom, where to sleep safely, and worry for the entire day, each day, how will that person ever get out to find potential in existing? With a proper amount of security in the community, people should be able to get out from under the weight of the burden of living in a world where everything costs money to exist. I believe that some people like to live as Nomads or pioneers, traveling through the land camping here and there to live and breathe with nature. That should be allowed. Others have ended up in situations too challenging to manage and suffer in defeat, hurt, fear, and sorrow. 

For whatever reason, sometimes people get stuck, and we look to our government to help us get unstuck. Rightfully so, because it is how we keep the peace. Since our government is made for, made of, and made by the people, it should not be as complicated as they say to help the people—our people, our humans, in our country. When we are flourishing, we do not usually ask what our government is doing for us, our problems, our states. We feel confident that all is well because we are well. However, even those who are barely making a living get into a bind when helping others who are worse off for whatever reason, some due to the global pandemic, others to unexpected death, a sudden illness, and loss of income. Why? Because of the times. Because we, as a species, are trying to survive. When it becomes too much, we once again look to our government. If respected politicians and civil servants feel that our government can afford to help all citizens and help us help each other, we should try it. The Universal Basic Income has the potential to improve many things faster than expected. Our government should try this expanded experiment and give this solution a try before denouncing it. The implementation of a basic universal income for at least one year could greatly benefit our country. It could boost up many aspects of our economy. It would relieve many stressors that our citizens are coping with together. It would reduce the visible suffering of the unsheltered in the cold when driving to work. It does not seem far from the life you know to the life of that group in a tent on a corner, struggling to survive.

Don’t YOU hear them silently screaming by pushing carts and tents with bicycles and belongings, saying that they can’t figure out how to get out of this? Or do you think they are saying they like living that way? A mixture of both? One can consider that some people do not have the skills to ask for help. Some people are severely tasked by being almost self-sufficient yet not having enough mental or emotional skills to survive alone yet not ill enough for our government to provide shelter.

Simultaneously, we as a species have, along with those unbelievable defeats, the global pandemic of a coronavirus, COVID-19, we have had some successes. Certain events caused us to have a collective interest in the state of our health, the progress of science, justice, and life and death. We watch, listen, and inquire with different concerns because of geography. We have some people inspired by Earth. SpaceX team launched a rocket into space to meet with the satellite in outer space, an incredible event. The machinery, powered by computer science, human imagination, initiative, and perseverance, is awe-inspiring. It’s fantastic to see the live camera feed of views of the Earth from within the rocket and from surrounding outer cameras. I don’t know the precise measurement of time that it took for them from taking off from the launchpad to flying through the sky into orbit to dock on the international space station satellite, except that it was extraordinarily fast.

The rocket travels through the air at more than 17,000 miles per hour. 

Identifying the velocity of moving methods of travel by aircraft, boats, ocean liners, bullet trains, monorails, cars, motorcycles, bikes, skis, skates, snowboards, skateboards, running, and comparing the timed distance traveled by each, makes rocket science even more exciting to understand. Perhaps the experiment of a monthly Universal Basic Income for one year could slow the poverty rate as fast as the rocket travels in space. We know it takes bravery, imagination, and sometimes, a lot of money to accomplish remarkable feats.