American Service Credits

This proposal for “American Service Credits” is driven by two premises. First, the well to-do who pay most of our income taxes hate to see their money go to people who don’t do  anything for it. 

Second, most people want to do something constructive with their lives, but may not  know how in a world where stunning advances in artificial intelligence are eliminating much  traditional human work. 

American Service Credits would be a locally administered, federally funded program of credits redeemable in money, in return for approved services rendered to others, to one’s  community and even to one’s self. 

Services would be reimbursed at the local minimum wage up to a maximum of, say,  $25,000 for the individual and maybe $40,000 for a couple. 

Persons eligible for the credits would be the unemployed and underemployed. Those  having some paid work would be able to earn credits, but only up to a total of $25,000 in total  per person income.  

Credits that might supplant compensated work would not be approved for activity. A very partial list of redeemable credit work might include service on a volunteer fire  department, park and highway cleanup, nursing home visits to the lonely, growing urban gardens  of produce for the poor, playing in a municipal band, assisting with recreation programs.

Nonprofit organizations could seek credit approval for activity in support of their  missions. 

Credits would be awarded for steady progress and completion of education and training  programs, though not for simple enrollment. 

Credits would also be awarded for successful, certified cessation of smoking, getting off  drugs and eliminating one’s obesity. 

Credits earned would be entered digitally with the local administering agency by the  person supervising the approved activity, and sent also to the person earning the credits. Obviously, there would have to be continual auditing of the program, to limit fraud. To keep the heavy hand of the federal bureaucracy weighing as lightly as possible, the  program would be managed at the county level. For sprawling metropolitan areas such as that in  Chicago, program oversight might be at the urban neighborhood and suburban municipality  level.  

The local Selective Service draft boards might be a model for administration and setting local policy. 

[There would be no identification of persons earning credits. No one would know that  underemployed Margie in the clarinet section of the local municipal band was earning American  Service Credits to boost her income toward the $25,000 max. 

[There would be no sliding scales that give with one hand and take away with the other,  as in many welfare programs. Persons with less than $25,000 in annual income could simply  earn up to that floor amount through the credits program.]

In low-income neighborhoods or rural areas where supply of credit-seekers might be  greater than supply of approved activity, persons could travel to better-off parts of town where  supply might be below demand. 

Federal funding to localities would be on an income basis, with more to poorer  neighborhoods. 

[I am thinking the feds might award bonus credit dollars to states, like Tennessee, that  offer free community college. These two-year programs of career and transfer education are the  equivalent of the high school diploma of not many years back, and should be free.] 

Persons able but unwilling to earn credits by contributing to their communities would be  on their own, helped only by non-governmental charities. Life would be hard. It always has been  for most people. 

The roots of this proposal are found in FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps and with libertarian thinker Charles Murray. 

From 1933-42 in the Great Depression, the CCC billeted three million young men age  18-25 at camps around the country, where they conserved forest and soils, and built roads,  bridges, parks and water supply systems. 

[The men earned a dollar a day plus room, board, clothing, about as much in relative  terms as the $25,000 today.] 

More recently, Murray has proposed a flat minimum federal payment to every low income person, to be paid for by eliminating the 83 federal welfare programs. [The Murray proposal stems from Richard Nixon’s negative income tax idea and the  present Earned Income Tax Credit.] As Murray would probably admit, his proposal requires  nothing in return for payments, which is debilitating.

American Service Credits would be paid for, as in Murray’s proposal, by eliminating  most federal welfare programs.  

As for costs, my back-of-the-envelope figures are these: 

Roughly 20 percent of the 150 million in our workforce are un- or underemployed and  making less than $25,000 a year. This would make 30 million eligible for at least some service  credits. 

If the 30 million drew down an average of $15,000 in credits per year, that would be  $450 billion in cost, plus administration. 

Federals spending on welfare, excepting Medicaid, which is a column for another day, is  about $400 billion. This would include Supplemental Security Income, the Earned Income Tax  Credit, food stamps, housing and about 80 more programs. 

So, the net cost wouldn’t be at all out of reach. 

And, as Bill Gates has suggested, job-killing AI devices could and should be taxed to  support a program such as this. 

[I think taxpayers would be more supportive of paying for this earned-credit program, as  opposed to the panoply of existing governmental welfare programs, which require no quid pro  quo.] 

The basic income floor of $25,000 per person would provide the bottom of society, in  income terms, with the wherewithal to buy more of the goods and services that are being turned  out by the creative class at the top of the societal heap. 

We have to do something. A world without life-affirming activity for many would be  dystopian.

An addendum of sorts, if editors were willing to put the following in a box, run cheek-by jowl with the column: 

This column about “American Service Credits” is really not ready for prime time, yet I  wanted to run it by my readers in this paper to generate feedback. Is my idea cockamamie, or is it  worth developing, and why?  

One reader of an early draft said the idea might work in rural America but that  administrative problems in high-poverty urban areas would be impossible to overcome. Another doubted there would be enough creditable activity available to meet the demand  for such. 

Beyond the incomplete list of creditable activities I illustrate in the column, can you think  of additional activities that might merit service credits?