How Nixon was dissuaded from introducing a universal basic income

A basic income (Beveridge was cradle-to-grave: who could sell that these days?, Polly Toynbee, 26 February) came close to fruition in the US in 1969 through the unlikely offices of President Nixon, who wanted every American family of four to have, from the state, at least $1,600 dollars a year – that’s $10,000 today.Nixon’s advisers, including one Milton Friedman, recalled this and the idea was swiftly dropped.As Rutger Bregman says in his excellent Utopia for Realists, un