Episode 17 – Leveling the Playing Field. Reparations & Baby Bonds with Darrick Hamilton

Macro N Cheese – Episode 17 
Episode 17 – Leveling the Playing Field. Reparations & Baby Bonds with Darrick Hamilton 

25 May 2019 

Darrick Hamilton [intro/music] (00:02): 

If you compensated for the previous harms by simply giving everyone a check of a certain order, you actually could enhance inequality in an ironic way, because it would become a stimulus. It could disproportionately benefit those that own the means of production thereby leading to even greater inequality. 

Darrick Hamilton [intro/music] (00:21): 

But what is pernicious about this rhetoric of pull yourself up, work hard, strive, is that that rhetoric itself in the face of continual barriers has got to manifest in some negative health consequences. 

Geoff Ginter [intro/music] (00:39): 

Now let’s see if we can avoid the apocalypse all together. Here’s another episode, Macro N Cheese with your host, Steve Grumbine. 

Steve Grumbine (01:34): 

All right welcome to Real Progressives everybody. My name’s Steve Grumbine with somebody who you probably don’t know, and that is Darrick Hamilton. I was turned on the Darrick Hamilton through the MMT conference and learning about Sandy Darity and others. And I can tell you right now, having talked with him, having read some of the stuff he’s put out, some of the great articles in Jacobin and others.  

This is a man who is got vision, who is someone who can really, really, really bring about the kind of change, the kind of thought that will help us go to other places, places we didn’t even dream possible. So what I like to do without further ado is bring on my guest, Darrick Hamilton. Welcome to Real Progressives, sir. 

Hamilton (02:20): 

Thank you, Steve. Glad to be on board and with introductions like that, I get goosebumps. Who is that guy that does so much good work? 

Grumbine (02:29): 

All joking aside, man. I love it because you know, hanging out with different academics, you know, I get to follow you on Instagram and I see you’re a fun man, too, on top of being a smart man, you’re a fun man. You enjoy your life. And I really, really think that’s a fantastic blend because you get to feel what regular people feel.  

You may be in the ivory tower of knowledge, but you’re one of the people, too. And that’s just a fantastic thing because that means when you’re doing the work you do, you’re listening. You’re not just telling, you’re listening. And everything that I’ve read by you, I mean, some of the greatest stuff from Jacobin and that one article that you Sandy and Mark Paul wrote is just fantastic.  

I mean, I’ve used that thing everywhere I can. But what I’d like to do is allow you to explain where you come from, what you do and what your primary objective is. 

Hamilton (03:22): 

So before we got on here, we were having a conversation about varied experiences in life. And I guess I would say that I have the good fortune as well as some unfortune in that I’ve had varied experiences in life. You know, I grew up in Bedford Stuyvesant before it gentrified and I went to elite schools throughout my life.  

And so I think I’ve had an inordinate amount with people from various walks of life than what would currently occur for somebody given their class background and their surroundings. And as a result, one thing that I’m clear on is that across people, there’s certainly individuals and varied experiences and ideas that shape us, but fundamentally we’re not that different.  

Fundamentally the things that motivate us, the things that interest us, the desires to do good are the same. And that leads me to the type of work I do because I’m very interested in addressing the so-called narratives of dysfunctionality amongst poor people or black people that say, “Only if they would seize opportunity, they could change their walk in life.”  

I understand that opportunity, effort, those things are obviously important, but it goes beyond just individual effort that they’re structured, and as a result, my work is driven by trying to understand the structures that inhibit groups of individuals from having decency in their lives, as well as the opportunities to be their best selves. 

Grumbine (04:52): 

So it’s a wonderful story, man, because as I read the stuff about the job guarantee that you guys worked on, and I read about baby bonds and our Twitter discussions have been pretty fun watching others jump in there, especially about reparations and the like, I mean, I know where you’re coming from, you know, the position, the angle that you’re addressing this from again very much for the people, you have a heart for it.  

There’s just no getting around it. Let’s talk about something. You’re at the New School. You’re a full blown professor there now, correct? 

Hamilton (05:28): 

Yeah. Somebody said on Twitter, I’m no longer a half professor. I’m a full professor. I got a raise. 

Grumbine (05:38): 

You can do a good work before that. So let me ask you, I think that one of the important factors, and we’re going to talk about three key things today, the first one is going to be the big one because I think it’s going to fuel the other ones, and that is reparations. We haven’t talked about reparations enough.  

I don’t feel qualified to speak on it completely. I have ideas; we’ve shared them; but I don’t think I’m off the reservation with where my heart’s at, where my mind’s at. You’ve done an incredible amount of thinking on this. And obviously you have a passion for it as well. Can you lay out to our audience what exactly it means for reparations, and what reparations might look like as we gain enlightenment, and we begin to try to heal a broken nation? 

Hamilton (06:26): 

Well, let me also say that they are many people who’ve done a lot of work on this topic well before I’ve even thought about reparations. I should also give a shout out to a book that’s coming out from William Darity and Kirsten Mullen. I think it’s coming out by the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Press, which is going to be a comprehensive understanding of the issues that led up to the need for reparations.  

So they’re going to document well the atrocities that have been committed as well as identify the mechanisms by which a program could be implemented and its impact. But broadly speaking, reparations can be separated into three spheres. One would be first, there has to be acknowledgement. There has to be an acknowledgement of the harms that were committed, the explanations and reasons why Black people have not had the same levels of economic outcomes as well as health outcomes and virtually every other outcome in life because of these atrocities.  

And that would begin with slavery when Blacks literally were the capital, the chattel capital for a capitalist white class and they served as their property. But of course it extends beyond slavery. When we start thinking about Jim Crow, we can come up with examples of white terrorism, where property that had been amassed by Black individuals was either burnt down, taken, or just seized through government or mobs.  

And then we can move on to some more middle of the 20th century type policies around the red lining, the ways in which the GI bill was distributed, FHA. So intentional ways in which federal policies that built an asset based white middle class excluded Blacks and are largely responsible for a lot of the wealth inequities that exist today.  

So there needs to be acknowledgement. So that acknowledgement would not only provide some dignity to some harm that was done by acknowledging that harm, but it also would change some of the narratives that exist in our society about inequality in general. We could get away from the blaming the victim type narratives that again, the result is because Blacks choose to not engage in hard work or working on education, all these mythologies that aren’t empirically substantiated, but rather part of our national consciousness of trying to understand racial inequality, that could be at least largely put to rest by the acknowledgement of how we actually got here.  

So acknowledgement certainly is not enough. Acknowledgement would be pretty much an apology, but an apology without redress is empty. So coupled with the acknowledgement, there would need to be some redress, some compensation for the harms that have been done in the past. And, you know, we can talk about the ways in which that compensation can manifest.  

And I won’t go into it unless you ask me questions because I feel like I’m running on and talking a lot right now. There was a question . . . alright sorta redress . . . would it take the form of literally giving every Black American who can trace roots back to a period of time in which that harm was committed – some financial compensation?  

The answer to that is at least in part that would be good. And our system of individualism that exist today, some individual acknowledgement I think is at least warranted, but it doesn’t stop there, nor should that should that be the only form of redress. I mean, in fact, if one thinks about the fact that Blacks don’t own the means of production in the American society, you might have an unintended consequence.  

If you compensated for the previous harms by simply giving everyone a check of a certain order, you actually could enhance inequality in an ironic way because it would become a stimulus and it would become a stimulus. It could disproportionately benefit those that own the means of production thereby leading to even greater inequality.  

So you don’t want that. I’m not of the group that argues that well if you gave Black people a check they’re simply going to go out and buy Cadillacs. I’m not of that pejorative yoke, but if Blacks wanted to buy Cadillacs, there’s nothing wrong with that anyway; but my issue isn’t that Blacks would be irresponsible if you gave them a check; but rather because they don’t own the means of production, you could have that unintended consequence.  

So what else could you do? Well, you could include some redistribution or some government intervention so that a form of payment could literally be ownership and some of stock ownership. So ownership in some corporate ownership, that could be one form of payment. I mean, there are other forms of payments as well.  

We could address the fact that HBCU’s were not able to grow to the same extent that white universities were as a result of the GI Bill due to local housing discrimination and the ways in which the GI Bill was distributed. So HBCU’s as an institution could receive some compensation to build them up.  

That’s another way we could address reparations. We could think about a host of institutions that we could build, directed towards building capacities amongst the Black community. So we could think about reparation distribution on an individual basis, and the form of payment can be both cash as well as other types of compensation, like stock ownership.  

But we can also think of community assets as a form of distribution. So we could think about a Marshall Plan for building Black institutions as a form of redistribution or reparations. Those are other ways. And then once we’re able to do the acknowledgement, as well as the redress, then America would be ready to heal.  

The race problem that was at our founding through slavery, if we’re ever going to get beyond it, we really need to come to grips with addressing those two things, the acknowledgement, as well as the redress. And then we move on and that would entail some responsibility amongst Black individuals as well.  

If the redress was properly initiated and the acknowledgement properly initiated, then the rebuttal from the Black community would be “America would move on.” Then that doesn’t mean that if there’s continual racial discrimination, we don’t address it. But what happened in the past, we would have to move on and be ready for closure. 

Grumbine (13:09): 

One of the things that I was curious about, because obviously the United States is guilty of a host of atrocities, not the least of which the American Indian. Would it be appropriate to bundle such reparations or should they be totally separate because you got to the redress and you’ve got the reparation itself, et cetera? How do you view the two? Would there be any case for that to be combined or should they be separate initiatives? 

Hamilton (13:39): 

The case can be made for reparations of Native Americans. In fact, there have been examples of reparations paid on a tribe basis. Unfortunately right now, I can’t think of these specific examples, but we do have historical precedent of reparations to Native Americans, obviously not to the extent that would be deserved.  

Obviously we’ve fallen well short of that, but I don’t want to give that misperception, but I do want to give the acknowledgement that there is precedent. So the answer to your question is you could come up with a comprehensive reparations program to include natives. But one thing to emphasize is that with reparations, there should be specific harms that are identified for redress.  

So it isn’t an open ended compensation. We need to identify what is the harm that we’re actually redressing. 

Grumbine (14:31): 

Very, very good. I appreciate that. So let me ask you the next question. I think this plays into the role. Obviously jobs have been a key component to controlling individuals’ ability to prosper and to live free and to lead a life of abundance. And obviously the unemployment rate in the African American community is significantly higher than that in the white community.  

And it obviously shows up in the inner city, it shows up in places where there’s lots of generational poverty, and people don’t have the same access to employment. We have long seen folks like in Flint, Michigan, even who are trapped, they’re literally trapped in these hell holes where they’ve got no mobility.  

They’ve got no ability to get out of there. And yet the area’s not serving them. There’s environmental racism. There’s an incredible amount of odds stacked against them from jump street before they even get a job, they may not even get to get a job because they don’t have an address, et cetera. You have talked, Sandy Darity has talked, and Mark Paul, you guys have worked as a small little group, writing big things.  

Tell me about this idea that you guys have, seems like you’re approaching it from a new deal perspective about a job guarantee and how that would play into possibly reparations, and now that might also play into lifting the ships at the bottom and ending generational poverty. 

Hamilton (16:01): 

That’s right. So, you know, let me also mention that, as I mentioned with reparations, there’s a lot of people that have been working on a federal job guarantee and I’m always weary of short changing big contributions. And sadly, I won’t be able to mention them all, but just a couple of people to mention: certainly Mark Paul has done yeoman like work, working with Sandy and I on developing these ideas.  

I would include Alan Aja, Daniel Bustillo, Ann Price at the Insight Center. Obviously the Levy Institute has done a lot of work on this. University of Missouri, Kansas City, as well as various other institutes, National Jobs Coalition for All. And so I’m not going to spend all my time thanking them all, but there are lots of people that are engaged in this work that should be acknowledged.  

But to answer your question. . Also, I just want to point out that whenever we think of urban and rural, we oftentimes think of them as being synonymous with black and white. And I’m certainly not accusing you of that. But one thing to think of is that there’s a whole lot of rural poverty that’s Black also.  

In fact, in some ways, if you are not in a city and you’re facing poverty, that’s particularly harsh. And if you add the stigma of being Black as well, then there’s a great deal of suffering of people in rural communities. The woman, Catherine Flowers, who was on the panel, she did a fantastic job of highlighting some of that rural poverty that existed.  

I think she cited Mississippi as an example for Black individuals. But that said, I also want to make a distinction that federal job guarantee and reparation, those are things that I would see as separate. I wouldn’t certainly wouldn’t link them together, but a job is vital in our wellbeing in many ways, obviously it is the primary source of income for the vast majority of individuals.  

So that in its own right is important to provide income. But even beyond that for our mental health, for our sense of purpose, it’s not the only way that human beings get a sense of purpose and mental health. But I do think it is in our nature to engage in productive activities in a communal setting.  

That that is part of who we are and when we don’t have access to those things, I do think that is detrimental to our psyche. So, you know, the primary thing that a federal job guarantee or the assurance of a job does is it provides livelihood. It provides dignity, it provides wages. And what I mean by dignity is economic dignity, but it also provides psychological benefits, and that part doesn’t often get emphasized enough when we talk about a federal job guarantee.  

And the time has come for us to come up with mechanisms so that, that is indeed a right, the fulfillment of an economic bill of rights, a federal job guarantee would be essential. And historically, and currently the private sector has fell short in providing everyone with a job. And in addition, when they do provide everyone with a job, they oftentimes will try to offer wages as low as possible.  

It is in their incentive to offer benefits as low as possible. And if you are pursuing profit, that makes sense. So I don’t begrudge them for that per se. I mean, obviously I would hope they would do better and do better, but there is a societal role to come up with mechanisms to make up for that shortfall and the government should be the vehicle by which we do so. 

Grumbine (19:33): 

When I look at this, I see a situation like I use Flint, Michigan, a lot for my story. And I think to myself, years ago, before I even thought of a job guarantee, before I had come into the Modern Monetary Theory world that I spend most of my time, I had this idea of providing people these remote access work from home kits that could be handed out to these areas that have been left completely behind – businesses picked up, they left, they abandoned these areas.  

These folks had no means of getting out and now they’re trapped basically. And so, and this was years ago. I mean, no academics behind it, just, I was thinking, “Hey man, here’s a great opportunity to get people employed,” but also to allow businesses to not be stuck hiring in their local community, but to branch out and find new people to work.  

But as I look at this now that I’m very on board and championing a job guarantee of whatever variety we can put out there, I see this as a means of mobility also when they talk about class mobility and they talk about mobility from harsh circumstances, I think of domestic violence. I think of communities that are underserved and people could pick up and leave because they know that when they land in Denver or they land in New York or the land wherever they feel like going, that there is a federal job awaiting them.  

That’s guaranteed to them as part of this new bill of rights or whatever we’re fighting for and however we phrase it. So to me, I see this larger macro picture that at least that’s the way I look at it, that it provides safety. I think about the insecurity of wondering where your next meal’s coming from, how you’re going to afford your home.  

How are you going to afford your electric bill? How are you going to take care of your children? And you’re feeling horrible. You’re already feeling like a loser. You feel like nothing good is going on in your life. This eradicates the fear of destitution. This literally, I mean, I can’t tell you. I was unemployed for 18 months when the global financial crisis hit.  

And I had two master’s degrees, three semesters into my PhD. And you know, I couldn’t find a job. I was overqualified. And the ones that would hire me were like, “You’re going to quit as soon as you find something better. So we’re not going to give you any time either.” Like, “Guys, I got to work. I got child support.  

I got a mortgage. I’ve got car payments. Help me.” Nope. And so while a job guarantee may not have been adequate to keep my lifestyle as it were up and floating, it would have prevented me from severe destitution. And I think about that all the time, how vital something like this would have been during the great financial crisis; and who knows whether it we’ll screw up again.  

They’re already deregulating banks again. They’re already doing really silly things that look like they could create another bubble, create another situation of student loan debt part of the problem. You name it. I mean, we’ve got a lot of things stacked against us. We don’t get a job guarantee soon, I’m afraid there’s going to be a lot of death and a lot of pain in this country.  

Can you talk about the residual effects of what this does just to communities? I mean, I’m still paying for 10 years ago, 10 years ago, I’m still caught behind the wrath of that crash. What are your thoughts there? What does this do? 

Hamilton (22:57): 

Yeah. I mean, one key feature of a federal job guarantee is that it provides an automatic stabilizer. So the depth and the duration of a great recession or the next financial collapse, won’t be as severe because there’s an automatic stabilizer in place. People will have job opportunities and that will obviously lead to a stimulus through aggregate demand, but it also keeps us from falling below a certain point, so that the macroeconomic perspective.  

But you talk a lot about the individual perspective, what it does to individuals and what it does to community, and I think you’re spot on. I mean the spillover effects go well beyond just the direct benefits to a recipient of that job. But we know that lack of a job is going to have an impact on one’s psychological well-being, one’s likelihood to engage in abuse or whether it’s abuse of others or abuse of themselves.  

It will reduce crime. If we don’t have opportunities for people, they will oftentimes turn to various other mechanisms and crime would be one. So the social benefits of a job, of having a federal job guarantee, go well beyond the individual. And then one other point to bring up that was related to the question you asked is you talk about how we are dispersed throughout the United States, but the federal job guarantee would be building useful goods and service for our public well-being as well.  

So one big feature of a federal job guarantee would be transportation. So the ways in which communities have isolated, well, we could the first wave of WPA, a CCC, we built roads and bridges. We built a United States infrastructure. We need another surge in that endeavor. And then the new type of modern industry, my imagination can’t even envision what is possible.  

There are people with a lot more vision than me that can think of a 21st century physical infrastructure to connect us in ways that we haven’t been connected before, and even beyond the physical part, the human infrastructure that we can build. So you also talked about, again, going back into some of the social concerns we have.  

A lot of the work from a federal job guarantee could be around care work, could be around addressing issues of depression, addressing transition for people who might have an addiction or people who might be formerly incarcerated. How do we come up with mechanisms and structures that enable them to be their best self? Well, part of the work could involve that. 

Intermission (25:47): 

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Grumbine (26:36): 

I want to tell you, I do this all the time. The show I’ve had so many people on here, and I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be amongst great people, but I gotta tell you when I’m sitting there talking to you, I don’t know if you feel it. I feel like this momentum building, I feel like people are waking up and I feel like these things even really could happen if we can just stay focused and really start realizing that the big picture is prosperity for all and not like some capitalist version of it, but just the human version of it.  

I mean, I remember sitting there looking out the slats in my window, waiting for the guy to come to repossess my home and my car. And I remember literally shaking like a dog that has nerve problems. I remember the shakes that I would have fearful of having my home taken from me and seeing the process server come to the door and put it on the window or whatever.  

The terror! They say that stress is a killer, but I can only imagine that the austerity that we live under today, this false scarcity that we live under, it’s got to be eating us alive. There was an article out there not too long ago talking about how neoliberalism is a lethal killer in terms of it creates depression.  

It creates mental illness because it creates a sense of desperation and solitude. You’re your own person. You live and die and that’s not the way it works. A job guarantee is the least our country could do for us – the very, very least. What are your thoughts in terms of the average fear mechanism that goes from desperation of not knowing where your next meal is coming from?  

I know you talked a little bit about the desperation in terms of going to like alternative economies, like drug dealing or other forms of crime. But taking it back . . . you’ve got children who are born into this. You’ve got parents and relationships severing. The domino effect of this has got to be greater than people understand.  

Can you kind of bring this from your experience because I’ve never been in these communities that you speak of? I’ve been there, but I haven’t been there. What is it like? What does that look like? What does it feel like? Help people see the picture as it is? 

Hamilton (28:59): 

Yeah, that is a important question. I’d say what is perhaps even more pernicious than the destitute, maybe not more is not the right word, but what is pernicious about this rhetoric of pull yourself up, work hard, strive, is that that rhetoric itself in the face of continual barriers has got to manifest in some negative health consequences.  

So the irony is that the rhetoric itself is leading to probably health disadvantages for various communities. Arjumand Siddiqi, who is a professor at the University of Toronto, she’s doing a lot of work looking at this neoliberal rhetoric and what it does to community. She’s doing cross national comparisons between the United States and Canada.  

And I’m working with her. I’m also working with Jim Cohen, who is a professor at the University of Miami, where we’re investigating why is it that black, white differences in mortality not only are large to begin with, but with education, those disparities persist or even widen. Well we think that that disparity is in some way linked to the rhetoric of work hard, try hard, overcome your obstacles.  

That it is that added effort of trying to overcome stigma and barriers that is probably leading to detrimental health outcomes for various people. So when you know, you hear the old thing of work twice as hard to get by the question is at what cost? How are we paying for that? And again, I don’t want to tell people not to work hard.  

That’s not the message I’m giving, nor am I telling people not to go get education. Hard work and education are important in their own right. But unless we are going to redress the structures that inhibit people, then that hard work and that trying hard is gonna manifest again in a more pernicious problem, which is those that are really trying hard are going to have some negative consequences, and it oftentimes manifest with regards to health – that I find troubling.  

I’ll say one other thing. And even when we think about people from low incomes or certain backgrounds, and we tell them things like, “Get up off that couch, go make something of your life.” Think about for profit college advertising, how do they target? I’m paraphrasing a little bit, but it wouldn’t be out of the norm to see an ad to come on TV and say, “What are you doing with your life?  

Are you tired of sitting on the couch? If you get up and come sign up with us on Thursday, you can be enrolled in classes on Monday.” But what are the consequences of that? You end up with debt, you end up with an education sometimes it’s not the best quality. So you might end up not only with taking out debt and loans to do this, but no degree.  

So, you know, the sad irony is that those people that are really trying to work hard, what we need is a society that really rewards that effort, but doesn’t lead them open to predation and doesn’t leave them more vulnerable than when they started. 

Grumbine (32:07): 

So I’m glad you brought up when they started, because I think that, you know, we’ve seen various effects of trying to impact early education and trying to set aside social security. We believe we’re paying into it. And we believe that this thing will be there and so forth, but you came out with something and I really am interested in hearing about this because I think this could be something really incredible – the concept of baby bonds.  

What does this mean? Why we do it? What problem does it solve? And what are your thoughts on how we would implement such a thing? 

Hamilton (32:45): 

That’s right. So Sandy and I have talked a lot about baby bonds and we have architected a plan that we’ve labeled baby bonds, but it’s really a child trust account at birth. And again, I should give shout outs to others who have done it. For example, the UK has tried a version of the child’s trust account.  

It ended because of austerity. Their plan is nowhere near the conception of what we have in mind, in terms of the amount in which the accounts have seeded. We can go as far back as Thomas Paine, when he talked about America, having, I believe he used this word “a stake in their well-being,” and he talked about providing everybody with some seed capital so that they can build their work.  

There’s also the great book called “The Stakeholder Society,” which talks about trying to come up with mechanisms so that everybody has a stake in society. So the idea around baby bonds is that we know that wealth begets more wealth and that if we want to provide the paramount attribute for economic security, which is wealth, wealth provides a buffer stock so that if you have an emergency, you can turn to it.  

You know, if I had wealth and wanted to start being a vegan cook, not that I could cook anything, but if that’s what I wanted to do, if I had wealth, I could leave my university job and pursue that passion and perhaps be the best vegan cook there is around. Wealth allows you the opportunity to take chances.  

It allows you opportunity and it allows you basically the ability . . . It allows you freedom, choice and the financial agency to do a variety of things in life. So that’s the power around wealth. And like I said, “Wealth begets more wealth.” One thing we noticed, at a key point in your life, if you don’t have any wealth to allow you to purchase a vehicle towards savings, like a home, like a debt free college education, like access to a job that’s going to provide you with a 401k so that you can have retirement security, like some seed capital to start a business, you will not be able to grow your wealth, unless you’re lucky somehow, if you win some random lottery, but that’s far from the rule.  

And like I said, those are just anecdotes. So the idea around baby bonds is really addressing the mechanism by which Americans build wealth. And that is initial endowment in the first place. So at birth, if everybody is seeded with account and why don’t we start with birth? That’s the political mechanism.  

Because at that point, all that rhetoric around behavior, attitudes, and entitlement – it’s a baby. Who’s opposed to, the baby didn’t choose to come into this world. So at birth, we seed an individual with an account so that they have a stake in this society that . . . Now here’s something that’s different than our typical American conception that divorces them from their family, whether it’s good or bad, the choices their parents would make.  

And what I mean by that, it’s not literally divorcing from their family, but with regards to that account, the account would grow in a federally managed account. The child could access when they become an adult, and that would be free from any decision making on the part of their parents. And everybody should have a stake and have access to that.  

And the accounts at birth would be based on the wealth position in which an individual is born. So if you’re born into the most poor family, you would get the largest account. And we estimate that that account would be from 50 to upwards to $60,000. The average account would be about $20,000. If you’re born into the most wealthy family, then you would also have an account because again, it’s a stakeholder society and it’s universal, but the endowment of that account would be more nominal with about a $500 endowment. 

Grumbine (36:28): 

Very, very great. This is such an incredible thing. Cause you know, you look at generational poverty and that right there, to me, the lottery of birth, you know, I mean, that’s what you were saying. You talking about divorcing it, but really what you’re saying is, “Hey, it doesn’t matter whether you pick the wrong lottery ball, you’re going to still have an opportunity in life.”  

But I have a question. I think this is something that I’m concerned about. So a child who loses their family, let’s say their parents die, or there’s some issue of emancipation and so forth. It comes mature, if you will, when they’re 18 or something like that. What happens between zero to 18? Is there some other mechanism or is there something to account for specialty cases like that? 

Hamilton (37:13): 

Yeah. So baby bonds and a federal job guarantee are not meant to displace our entire safety net nor can they solve every problem. So that would be an issue of poverty or health, whatever it is, education, whatever that child is exposed to it at that point in their life that should be addressed. The baby bonds doesn’t solve all our problems. That’s the shortest quickest answer. 

Grumbine (37:37): 

And that’s a fair answer. The point I was making was is that there is room to enact a lot of things to buffer. This is just another thing to put in the “Hey man, life is not terminal.” I mean, it is terminal. We don’t get out alive, but it’s not, in other words, something you’re just never going to have a bright side to.  

I think it’s nice to have something to look forward to. I hate to say this, but like I’ve lost some of the wonder that youth gave me, some not lost the curiosity, but lost some of the wonder because I’ve seen so much pain and suffering to make up for that would take a true amount of wonder, you know?  

And so I think, I don’t want to say I’m jaded. I just, I don’t know. I’ve kind of gotten to a point where it’s like, I recognize how bad it is and how tough it is. And we talk an awful lot about trying to revive a new deal, 2.0, an economic bill of rights. And I’m going to add baby bonds to our talks from now on.  

I really think that this is something that I want to help get behind and really lift up and get it into the global consciousness as much as I possibly can because this fits our entire ethos, it fits our model, it fits what I want. I want to be a part of things that are really helpful. And I see this as a tremendous equalizer in terms of eliminating that forever feeling of destitution that many are born into. 

Hamilton (39:04): 

That’s right. And I want to go back to another point that you raised earlier about reasons for optimism and even with rhetoric. And we may or may not agree on this. I think we need to get out of using the term radical and start using the term bold for largely political reasons at that, not that not that radical is a bad word, but the problems are bold and the solutions need to be bold.  

And I think America is ready for bold ideas and bold solutions. So that’s one of the reasons for the optimism and these are indeed bold ideas to address our problems. I’ll also give another anecdotal case to help drive this point. One of my best friends, his name is Derrick Lynch. We talk all the time.  

He debates me, we’ll be up to three in the morning and just talking. And usually he’s antagonistic telling me I don’t know what I’m talking about. So he often took the position that I had pie in the sky type ideas. More recently he’s changed and said and mentioned how proud he was that I’ve stuck with these ideas and things like that.  

He really sees movement. And to me, he’s a litmus because of his criticalness that these ideas of moving. But one thing that I’ve always been steadfast in telling him is that I really believe that if people are exposed to the ideas, without all that noise and rhetoric around them, that people fundamentally can attach themselves to them and believe in them and help advocate for them.  

We’ve come to a point in society where at least prior to this movement, and I’d say that young people are largely responsible for it, but I give them so much props that the fact that they’re not willing to take the status quo, that they’re going to go out and change things. I love it. So we had gotten to the point where we believe that this is just the way things were and they weren’t going to change.  

I think we’re challenging that and pushing back to it. And I’m really happy because really when we start bringing these ideas to the American people, I really think that they can get on board and that we ultimately can have change and get them. 

Grumbine (41:07): 

You’ve already given me more time than I thought I was gonna take but if you need me to let you go, I will. I want to close the loop on this one thing here. I understand that there are people that have all their faith and all their eggs in the basket of electoral politics. I, on the other hand am focused on movement building.  

So you’ve got two flavors, right? People want to put the legislation in there. They want to talk to legislators. They want to do this, that, and the other. I want to talk to the people because I believe that without the people demanding, standing at town halls with a sign saying, “I know you can do better,” going to their offices saying, “I know you can do better,” going to the street corner saying, go to the churches and say, go and wherever they have to go to say it.  

I don’t believe this will happen. No matter how great the legislation is, it’s going to require the people to demand it. At least that’s my perspective on this. So I prefer from my angle to educate the population and make them demand better. The reason why I bring this up is there are so many people out there that are so cynical that all they think of is the power elite won’t allow it to happen.  

These people won’t allow it to happen. And I’m saying, “I can look out the window and I can see one day a burst of energy.” People go out there and talk about guns, and then it dissipates over and over again. But if we have a sustained, demand-driven campaign for this new deal concept, and we keep growing it and building it and locking arms, white, black gay, straight, the whole enchilada, marching down for real, real honest to God movement building.  

I don’t believe they can deny us. I don’t think Richard Nixon wanted to pass the EPA, but he did. So I believe that the people that are cynical are missing the point that they have never taken to the streets over this. They have never sustained a campaign with focused, organized, direct action, where they can literally force this into being, but it takes people to believe; it takes people to put one foot in front of the other; and it takes people to the unite to make these things happen.  

That’s my perspective. How do you think these things come to be Darrick? 

Hamilton (43:15): 

Steve, the elite status quo wins with cynicism. That’s one point. The other point is that it would be naive to think that all political power is just voting. Voting is obviously important, but if you’re voting and you don’t have good choices to choose from, that’s not gonna solve our problems either.  

So we certainly need to vote, but we also need to do a whole lot more. And you described many of it. So political power is deeper than voting and we need to be active and engaged and definitely not constrained by the cynicism that maintains an elite status quo. 

Grumbine (43:52): 

I love it. That was a great way to answer it. Darrick, what are you working on? What’s next in your life and let us know how we can follow you, sir. 

Hamilton (44:00): 

Oh, man. I wake up in the morning and see what’s on my calendar. That’s what’s next in my life. Sorry. Don’t have anything more than that for you at this moment, but . . . 

Grumbine (44:12): 

That’s okay. How can we find you? What kinds of works can we find that people would be interested in? 

Hamilton (44:19): 

Oh, I’ve written a lot about baby bonds. I should mention we’ve done a lot with the national asset scorecard for communities of color. So this is a project that began with Ford Foundation funding and has mostly been from Ford Foundation, but there have been other sources as well, including the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Austin Center for Equitable Growth, the Annie Casey Foundation with William Darity and a large team of other scholars, we’ve been collecting asset and debt information in plural cities throughout the United States and writing reports about what is the actual depiction of people’s well-being.  

So we, for example, Elizabeth Warren cited this statistic when she pointed out that the typical African American family in Boston had a net wealth position of $8. Well, that powerful statistic that reverberated through the halls of Congress obviously was born about through that study. So we’ve collected this information in Los Angeles and Miami in Tulsa, Oklahoma, we were able to get native Americans, in Baltimore, where we also over sampled families that have had experience with incarceration, both black and whites in Washington, D C, and let me see am I missing anyone?  

I had LA Boston, Miami, Tulsa, Washington, DC, there’s six cities, so I must be missing someone Miami. 

Grumbine (45:47): 

That’s All right, well look, thank you so much for this. Both you and Sandy were fantastic guests. I really do hope you’ll come back. This is a great thing, and I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed it. So thank you, Darrick. I appreciate it immensely. 

Hamilton (46:02): 

Steve, I appreciate you as well. And I’m sorry, it took so long for me to get here. 

Grumbine (46:06): 

That’s okay, man. We look forward to talking soon. Thank you so much. Folks, thank you all very much from Darrick and myself. 

End Credits (46:18): 

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