Wanted: A BIG Change in U.S. Social Policy

Diane Pagen, Fordham University, MSW ‘04  

Editor’s Note: This article provides a glimpse at one student’s view about connecting individual social work practice and public policies. In highlighting this connection, Ms. Pagen also realizes the relevance of NASW’s Code of Ethics.

I went to Washington D.C. over the weekend of February 20-22 to attend the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee’s (BIG) third annual conference. I have come home to New York filled with optimism and excitement because of the potential I see in a BIG for the future of people’s well-being.
I thought I would have to learn to live with the frustration that comes from being forced to do social work within a social system that flies in the face of our Code of Ethics’ values which upholds the dignity and worth of the individual’s and client’s self-determination. Our current system makes unrealistic demands on my clients (ie: “get a job” when jobs are disappearing due to technological advances; “find an apartment that doesn’t cost more than your Section 8” when New York housing commands the most inflated rents in the nation). These and similar demands are all but absurd and leave my clients demoralized and hateful of the system that “helps” them.
 But I may not have to learn to live with that frustration. People are poor because they have low or no income. The Basic Income Guarantee would deliver a basic, realistic minimum income-enough for food, shelter, and necessities-to every U.S. citizen with no work requirement and with work incentives, but without any “means-testing”.
 With a BIG as the foundation of U.S. policy, the threat of starvation, homelessness and similar catastrophes would no longer exist. Yet a majority of social workers are unaware of BIG and its uncanny relevance to social work. I was also unaware until just recently.
Those social workers who advocate for a Basic Income Guarantee for the U.S. will be in good company. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen, Professor Stanley Aronowitz of CUNY, author and activist Theresa Funiciello, welfare rights activist Michele Tingling Clemons and social worker Michael Lewis of SUNY are all advocates of a BIG.
It is essential that social workers come together in 2004 to elect a new President who will respond to the needs of people. If we begin to talk about a BIG now, we can influence agendas by presenting a BIG as a policy with the potential to finally assure the well-being of Americans, in a just new system that is perfectly compatible with our values. r