Recently, there has been much talk about having a Universal Basic Income (UBI) for everyone in the US. On the Left, one presumes this would be in addition to the rest of the welfare state. On the right one hopes it’s proposed to replace most of the welfare state.

I already oppose the UBI (even as a replacement for welfare) for sound economic and political reasons, but that’s not what this post is about. Rather, it’s about how our focus on income has ceded much of America’s public discourse about poverty to the Left. We can (and should) do better than that.

It’s easy to see how we’ve gotten here. The data on income is readily available, so it’s simple to pull charts and graphs and to test theories. And since income is the major source of tax revenue, it’s natural to focus on income when contemplating changes to government policy. The problem is when we use income as a proxy for quality of life, which is presumably what the debate about poverty is really about. If we’re interested in how people live — we do call it “welfare” — we should be looking at net consumption rather than net income. You can’t eat money and, unless you’re Scrooge McDuck, you don’t derive nearly as much enjoyment from having physical money as you do from spending it. Money is only worth what we can buy with it. How much Americans live on tells us far more than their tax return.