The Atlantic staff writer Annie Lowrey joined PBS’s Amanpour and Company on Tuesday to allege that the reason why the United States does not have “universal, simple benefit systems” like universal basic income or single-payer health care is because of the legacy of Jim Crow.
At one point co-host Bianna Golodryga wondered, “You mentioned the socioeconomic factor. You also pick up on race as well. What evidence did you find on that front?”
Lowrey was to promote her book, The Time Tax: How the Government Wastes Our Time and How to Fix, which naturally argues that it costs too much time and money in order to receive benefits in this country due to excessive bureaucracy. While attacking unnecessary bureaucracy may sound nice, Lowrey’s attempt to identify a source was way off track, “Part of the reason that we do not have universal, simple benefit systems in this country, like some of our peer countries have, is because we were creating those programs often during Jim Crow. And we wanted to have ways to get benefits to some people, but not others.”
The Atlantic's Annie Lowrey tells PBS that "Part of the reason that we do not have universal, simple benefit systems (UBI, Single-payer health care, ect.) in this country, like some of our peer countries have, is because we were creating those programs often during Jim Crow. And… pic.twitter.com/yfX8z6fxKH
— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) September 3, 2026
By “universal, simple benefit systems,” Lowrey mostly means UBI, even though she has admitted that any benefits it might hypothetically produce could be wiped out by inflation. Lowrey has also sung the praises of British-style, government-run health care, despite its notorious waiting lines, but has conceded that implementing such a system is not politically realistic. Therefore, while Lowrey laments administrative overhead costs driving up the cost of health care, ironically, her solution there is to implement even more regulations.
As it was, Lowrey continued, “But now, we still have this legacy of these non-universal, very complicated systems that are meant to suss out who is deserving and who isn't deserving because of our racial makeup. And other countries, when they're designing these systems, they often, you know, they're smaller and they're more racially and ethnically homogenous than the United States.”
In “universal” systems, the government still ultimately decides who receives health care and who does not. Nevertheless, Lowrey lamented, “And I think that diversity is obviously our strength, and we are a grand experiment in multiracial, multiethnic democracy. But it does, it affects service delivery. And we still have a legacy of those same rules applying today.”
The reason why the U.S. does not have UBI or single-payer health care is because the American people don’t believe in giving away free money or that the government is competent enough to manage one-sixth of the economy, not because of Jim Crow.
Here is a transcript for the September 2 show:
PBS Amanpour and Company
9/1/2026
BIANNA GOLODRYGA: You mentioned the socioeconomic factor. You also pick up on race as well. What evidence did you find on that front?
ANNIE LOWREY: Part of the reason that we do not have universal, simple benefit systems in this country, like some of our peer countries have, is because we were creating those programs often during Jim Crow. And we wanted to have ways to get benefits to some people, but not others.
Jim Crow, of course, was a time when we invented a huge number of administrative burdens to make sure that black folks in the South couldn't vote, but white folks could, when we couldn't legislate a rule saying that you cannot vote if you're black. So, instead, they come up with all of these bureaucratic procedural things to make sure that white families can vote, black families cannot, along, obviously, with a campaign of racial terror that was occurring in the South at the time.
But now, we still have this legacy of these non-universal, very complicated systems that are meant to suss out who is deserving and who isn't deserving because of our racial makeup. And other countries, when they're designing these systems, they often, you know, they're smaller and they're more racially and ethnically homogenous than the United States.
And I think that diversity is obviously our strength, and we are a grand experiment in multiracial, multiethnic democracy. But it does, it affects service delivery. And we still have a legacy of those same rules applying today.
