Another collaboration with the chicken-fat-mad Mike Lawrence! That trap-filled hopscotch board was entirely Mike’s idea.

This is something I’ve suspected for a while—that the core reason many liberals don’t support a universal basic income (UBI) is that it just sounds too wonderful to happen. Especially when many of us have been conditioned, over the past decade or so, to expect nothing but the worst.

It turns out I’m not the first to have this thought (although I wonder if I’m the first to do a cartoon about it). In 2017, Alyssa Battistoni wrote:

The problem isn’t that basic income doesn’t sound good enough—it’s that it sounds too good to be true.

But James Surowiecki, writing in 2016 in The New Yorker, pointed out that utopian ideas sometimes surprise us by becoming mundane:

The most popular social-welfare programs in the U.S. all seemed utopian at first. Until the nineteen-twenties, no state in the union offered any kind of old-age pension; by 1935, we had Social Security. Guaranteed health care for seniors was attacked as unworkable and socialist; now Medicare is uncontroversial… It’s easy to imagine a basic income going overnight from completely improbable to totally necessary.

If you’re interested in the research on giving people money, a good overview is “A Summary of Existing Research on Guaranteed Income,” published by the University of Chicago Inclusive Economy Lab. The section on employment effects is on pages five and six. Generally, studies find “that cash transfers had either no effect or a positive effect on adult labor force participation,” although one study found a 2 percent-point decrease in labor market participation and a five percent decrease in earned income.

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels. Each panel shows two friends walking through a wooded park. One is a man wearing a baseball cap and an orange T-shirt, so I’ll call him ORANGE. The other is a woman wearing a red plaid shirt, so I’ll call her PLAID.

PANEL 1

Orange smiles as he reads something on his smartphone. Plaid looks interested.

ORANGE: Look at this! Another study found that basic income works!

PLAID: What’s basic income?

PANEL 2

Orange explains while Plaid hops through a hopscotch grid drawn on the path.

ORANGE: It’s the government giving everyone a basic income, so we’re all guaranteed enough to live on.

PLAID: That sounds amazing. But… if we had that, why would anyone work?

PANEL 3

Orange gestures emphatically with his free hand. Plaid walks with one hand thoughtfully against her chin.

ORANGE: That’s been studied so much… Over and over, when people are given basic incomes, they don’t stop working!

PLAID: Hmm… I’m still against it.

PANEL 4

Orange looks baffled. Plaid shrugs.

ORANGE: But why?

PLAID: I just can’t believe anything that good is possible.

CHICKEN FAT WATCH

“Chicken fat” is an obsolete cartoonists’ term for unimportant but fun details slipped into the art.

PANEL 1: A little gray alien is flying a flying-saucer-shaped kite.

PANEL 2: The hopscotch grid is full of traps, including a spider, tacks, a Lego brick, a mouse frantically waving its arms as if to say “Don’t step on me!,” a pile of poop, a whoopee cushion, a mousetrap, and a bear trap. A “wanted” poster for a raccoon with an eyepatch is nailed to a tree.

PANEL 3: A sasquatch and an Ewok are hiding behind trees; the sasquatch signals to the Ewok to be quiet.

PANEL 4: The raccoon from Panel 2’s “wanted” poster is hiding in the bushes.

CLOTHES: Orange’s T-shirt shows a smiley face in Panel 1, an alien smiley in Panel 2, the blood-spattered Watchmen smiley in Panel 3, and the Hitchhiker’s Guide smiley-faced planet in Panel 4.

Plaid’s T-shirt shows an ear of corn in Panel 2 and a human ear in Panel 4.

Orange’s cap has a picture of a fly (insect) in panel 1, and a picture of a fly (pants) in panel 2.

The Basic Barrier | Barry Deutsch on Patreon

Drawing the “Muppet Gothic” in the background was so much fun!

It’s funny when the extremist rhetoric I make up for my caricatures of rich right-wingers is less extreme than what some real billionaires say. In 2014, billionaire Tom Perkins wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal:

I would call attention to the parallels of Nazi Germany to its war on its ‘one percent,’ namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the ‘rich.’ …Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendent ‘progressive’ radicalism unthinkable now?”

Billionaire Sam Zell rushed to defend Perkins, adding: “The 1 percent are being pummeled because it’s politically convenient to do so.”

Billionaire Leon Cooperman, reacting to Elizabeth Warren’s proposed wealth tax, said “this is the fucking American dream she is shitting on.”

To be fair, not all billionaires are such bad people (although it’s bad that any exist at all). In 2024, over 250 million- and billionaires signed a letter called “Proud to Pay More,” calling for taxes on extreme wealth and saying such taxes would not change their standard of living.

We ask you to tax us, the very richest in society. This will not fundamentally alter our standard of living, nor deprive our children, nor harm our nations’ economic growth. But it will turn extreme and unproductive private wealth into an investment for our common democratic future.

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels. The first three show a wealthy, middle-aged couple in their luxurious living room with their poodle. I’ll call them MAN and WOMAN.

PANEL 1

The man leaps up from the sofa, staring with horror at his phone. The woman, sitting beside him, looks concerned.

MAN: Oh my God!! How could they do this?

WOMAN: What? What’s happened?

PANEL 2

A close-up of the anguished man holding his phone toward us. The phone displays a news page with the giant headline “NEW TAX.”

MAN: They’ve passed a new tax on billionaires!

PANEL 3

Back in the living room, the man sits hunched forward with his face in his hands. The woman throws her arms into the air, wailing.

MAN: Why are they doing this to us?

WOMAN: Because billionaires are the only minority it’s still acceptable to pick on! They won’t stop until we’re absolutely crushed!

PANEL 4

A large caption says “TWO YEARS LATER.”

The Woman from the first three panels is with a friend, relaxing in swimsuits on cushioned lounge chairs on a yacht, beside a swimming pool. A waiter approaches with a tray.

FRIEND: So how did that “billionaire tax” turn out for you two?

WOMAN: Devastating! We still haven’t recovered.

WAITER: Hors d’oeuvre?

CHICKEN FAT WATCH

“Chicken fat” is old-fashioned cartoonists’ slang for little unimportant but hopefully fun details in the art.

Panel 1: The painting on the wall is American Gothic, but with Statler and Waldorf from The Muppet Show. The coffee-table books are titled “RICH: YOU DESERVE IT!,” “POOR: THEY DESERVE ZIP!” and “MIDDLE CLASS: WHO CARES?” A poodle naps beside the couple, while a Koons balloon-dog sculpture is on the coffee table. Outside the window, a giant hand atop a building flashes a peace sign.

Panel 2: Other stories on the phone include “ABE VIGODA FOUND ALIVE,” “SHOCKER! RICH IDIOT BUYS $40,000 PHONE!” and (in a partially cropped off thumbnail) “CROP truncate shorten cut off.” The “$40,000 phone” image shows the same phone the man is holding up —and even the same hand. (And yes, that phone — the “Agent Q Himalaya Alligator Gold & Diamond” — is real.)

Panel 3: The coffee-table books now refer to Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First?” routine: “WHO — FIRST,” “WHAT — SECOND” and “DON’T CARE — SHORTSTOP.” A framed photo of the Monopoly Man sits on the end table. A rat in a tux holds a cocktail. The poodle pees on the Koons sculpture.

Panel 4: The poodle wears sunglasses and reads a magazine. The Loch Ness Monster (but with a duck head) swims in the ocean. The rat from panel 3, wearing swim trunks, is doing the back float in the pool.

Those Poor, Poor Billionaires | Barry Deutsch on Patreon