ACT Reading — Comparative Passages — Drill 3

SOCIAL SCIENCE — COMPARATIVE PASSAGES: The following passages are adapted from two essays about universal basic income published in Public Policy Perspectives (©2023). PASSAGE A The case for universal basic income rests not on charity but on architecture. Modern economies generate enormous aggregate wealth while distributing that wealth in increasingly unequal and unstable ways. Automation displaces workers not gradually but in sudden, sector-wide shocks. A universal basic income — a regular, unconditional cash payment to every adult citizen — would provide the floor that markets cannot. It would allow people to leave abusive jobs, pursue retraining, care for children or aging parents, and weather economic disruption without catastrophic loss. Critics call it unaffordable, but the relevant comparison is not to nothing — it is to the existing patchwork of means-tested programs whose administrative costs, eligibility cliffs, and stigma impose their own enormous price. Redesigning that patchwork into a universal floor is not a utopian gesture. It is an engineering problem. PASSAGE B Universal basic income has the appeal of simplicity, and simplicity is genuinely valuable in social policy. But the evidence from pilot programs, while promising in some respects, is too limited to support the sweeping claims advocates make. Most pilots ran for one to three years, involved small samples, and were conducted during periods of economic stability — conditions that may not predict how recipients behave when a permanent income floor is in place. More seriously, UBI as typically proposed would cost trillions annually, requiring either steep tax increases, cuts to existing programs, or both. Advocates who wave away these fiscal concerns underestimate the political economy of actually implementing such a system. The idea deserves rigorous study and carefully designed experiments. It does not yet deserve the confidence with which its proponents advance it.