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FOOD ASSISTANCE FOR ALL  
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Tee Malleson
November 18, 2025
Jacobin
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_ Economic insecurity is rampant in the United States. A program of
universal grocery subsidies could help working-class families deal
with the cost of living — and be wildly popular. _

Whereas free cash is widely perceived as an undeserved luxury, free
food is not; it is more often seen as a basic human right., Joseph
Prezioso / AFP via Getty Images

 

Economic insecurity is rampant and devastating. In Canada, a
minimum-wage worker working full-time cannot afford a one-bedroom
apartment
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in fifty-three of the country’s sixty-two urban regions. In the UK,
74 percent of parents find it difficult to meet childcare costs
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and 10 percent are food insecure
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In the United States, things are even worse: 770,000 people experience
homelessness
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every night, and 40 percent of households are only three paychecks
away from falling below the poverty line.

 
Not only is economic insecurity devastating to people’s lives — it
is also a major force spurring the expansion of the far right
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has grown in leaps and bounds from a vote share of 3 percent
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Europe in 2004, to over 25 percent
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today — higher rates than any time since the 1930s. The trajectory
is clear and terrifying.

A universal basic income (UBI) is frequently proposed as a powerful
antidote. Unfortunately, it remains quite unpopular
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regular citizens on the (very questionable) grounds that it would
disincentivize work, or be spent on drugs and alcohol. In the United
States, support for a UBI ranges from about 38 percent to 45 percent
of the population, and support is only slightly higher in Canada and
the UK. Moreover, these survey results probably _overestimate_ the
true level of support for a UBI, because asking a person if they
“support” something in the abstract doesn’t necessarily mean
that, when push comes to shove, they would actually vote for it.

Only one country to date has come close to implementing a full-scale
UBI. On June 5, 2016, the Swiss had a referendum on whether to adopt a
scheme that would provide a monthly cash payment of around €2,330
per month, to all Swiss adult residents, without any means test or
work requirement. Prior to the vote, the most authoritative survey
found that 36 percent of Swiss respondents said they theoretically
“supported” UBI. Yet when it came down to it, only 23 percent
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actually voted yes,  while 77 percent voted no — a resounding
defeat.

No country anywhere in the world has implemented UBI. Only one country
has had a national referendum on its introduction (which was roundly
rejected), and no major political party anywhere officially endorses
it — the largest parties that do are the Green League in Finland,
which receives about 7 percent of the vote, Podemos in Spain at about
7 percent, and the Green Party of England and Wales, which receives
about 3 percent.

An Alternative to UBI?

Over the long term, progressives can and should try to slowly shift
the culture to persuade people that UBI is both ethically desirable
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feasible. But we can’t wait to address economic insecurity. What we
need is a UBI-like policy that successfully enhances economic security
without putting the majority of voters’ noses too far out of joint.

Here is a realistic solution: free groceries
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for all.

All citizens would be provided with a relatively small amount of money
unconditionally, say, $50 per month ($600 per year) for adults and $25
per month ($300 per year) for children. The money would be
automatically transferred to a Grocery Electronic Card registered to
each adult or parent (as is the practice for food stamps in the United
States). These cards could only be used in registered establishments
for the purchase of groceries and nothing else.

If enacted in the United States, the total cost of the program would
be approximately $177 billion, or 0.6 percent of GDP. (In Canada,
CAD$700 of free groceries would cost CAD$24 billion, or 1 percent of
GDP, and in the UK it would cost £24 billion, or 0.9 percent of GDP,
for £400 of groceries).

 

 
These are real and significant costs, no doubt about it, but they are
not extreme. $177 billion is about 15 percent of what the US
government currently spends on the military
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A program of this size could be paid for by raising taxes on the total
income of the richest 10 percent of Americans by approximately 2.86
percent. Or alternatively, it could be paid for by instituting a
wealth tax on the richest 1 percent
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at a rate of 0.41 percent (slightly more given the likelihood of some
tax evasion). Since rich families would pay more in taxes than they
would receive in free groceries, overall the program would act to
redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor.

Free groceries for all avoids the major objections that are often
raised against UBI: the money cannot be spent on drugs or alcohol;
hardly anyone would quit their job for this amount of money; and
conservative politicians would find it extremely difficult to whip up
moral outrage about $600 for free food, especially for children.

Most important, the survey data shows clearly that regular people here
and now would be keen on this type of program.

The Populus survey on UBI is the closest example that I am aware of
directly asking people to state their preferences for free money
versus free food. The survey asked 2,070 British adults their opinion
on the following statement: “Rather than cash, the state should
provide citizens with basic food supplies and social housing to meet
their needs.” In response, 43 percent agreed
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and 27 percent disagreed (20 percent were neutral, and 9 percent
didn’t know).

Additional evidence comes from the fact that although many Americans
are staunchly opposed to “welfare,” they tend to be much more
supportive of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP,
colloquially known as “food stamps”), which provides poor people
with money to buy food, and only food. While large numbers of
Americans believe that “government aid to the poor does more harm
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than good by making people too dependent on government,” surveys
simultaneously find that 61 percent of people _oppose_ reducing
funding for SNAP
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Another study found that while 54 percent of Americans believe that
too many people are dependent on the government for financial aid,
only 36 percent are critical of food stamps
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Interestingly, when Americans are presented with the objective facts
of how much money for groceries SNAP recipients truly receive (an
average of about $5.70 per family member per day), 66 percent of
registered voters say that it should be _increased_, and only 4
percent say it should be decreased.

Strikingly, even 53 percent of _Republicans_
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believe that SNAP benefits should be increased. There is thus a broad
bipartisan appeal to free food for the poor, even in a highly
polarized political climate. (The Trump administration recently
suspended payment of SNAP benefits for over two weeks, provoking an
angry backlash
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This belief in the importance of food security for all is widely
shared. In Canada, a recent survey found that 85 percent agreed that
the government should ensure that no child in Canada goes hungry, and
82 percent agreed with the statement that “people going hungry in
Canada goes against our values
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Taken together, this evidence suggests that many people have very
different moral intuitions about the government providing free _cash_
versus free _food_. Whereas free cash is widely perceived as an
undeserved luxury, free food is not; it is more often seen as a basic
human right. Providing free cash strikes many as morally questionable,
but providing free food is just basic human decency. The upshot is
that free groceries has potential for wide cross-party appeal in a way
that a conventional UBI does not.

Free Groceries for All

We know that a policy like this is perfectly technically feasible,
since there is already a working example in the SNAP program.
Originally set up in 1974, SNAP is now a tried-and-true program,
benefiting 41.2 million people
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via an Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) card. Most groceries are
eligible, but alcohol, tobacco, gasoline, and other such things are
not. Grocery stores must register with the government before they can
accept EBT payment, but it is quick and easy to do so (the process is
free and online), and almost all are registered, including most
convenience stores and all the major chains.

SNAP proves the viability of a policy like free groceries for all. We
know how to provide people with electronic cards; we know how to
register grocery stores; most important, we know that when people get
extra money for food, it helps their lives and improves their health
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Of course, $600 will not dramatically change anyone’s life.
Nevertheless, millions and millions of people will receive it,
appreciating the help from the government and their neighbors. Life
will become a bit easier and a little less scary. And when life feels
safer, the trans person or immigrant down the way will also seem less
threatening. A large body of research bears this out: when economic
insecurity worsens, support for right-wing populism typically
increases
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when economic security improves, support for right-wing populism tends
to decrease.
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One final, vital point: studying the evidence of welfare states over
the last century, social scientists have discovered that once
universal entitlements are established, they typically _grow_
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time and are only very rarely abolished. Sociologists refer to this
phenomenon as the “stickiness of universal programs.”

A striking example is the case of pensions (known as Social Security
in the United States). Once reviled as a socialist abomination in the
1930s, they are now extremely popular and taken for granted as a basic
American right. Their stickiness is such that _even after forty years
of neoliberalism_, conservatives have had very little
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success in reducing pension generosity. Of course, this is not an
unbreakable law of nature. But it is an important tendency: once
democratic majorities achieve universal policies that benefit them,
and once they become accustomed to them, they will be highly resistant
to losing them.

 

Getting a universal policy on the books in the first place is the most
difficult part. But if this can be accomplished, then there are good
reasons for thinking that, over time, the populace will enjoy the
benefit, take it for granted, push for it to be expanded, and refuse
to tolerate reductions.

I first started thinking about free groceries for all for my home
context of Canada, but the policy would work well for many countries.
The United States is the one place where things are trickier, because
a different kind of program already exists in the form of SNAP (SNAP
provides more money than the policy discussed here, but to only a
small fraction of the population). The fact that SNAP recipients are a
relatively small pool of poor and disproportionately non-white people
means that SNAP is stigmatized and lacks the political muscle to fight
for its expansion in the way that a more universal program would. So
in the US case, the goal should be to slowly expand SNAP
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making it more and more universal.

At the end of the day, $600 of free groceries per year is not enough
to remedy the titanic insecurity that currently exists. But as a first
step, it has a lot of potential. The social scientific evidence
regarding the tendency of existing universal social programs to
ratchet upward implies that it is strategically smart for the Left to
start small in order to get such a program on the books in the first
place. As a universal policy, truly huge numbers of people would
receive the benefit — roughly 330 million Americans, 38 million
Canadians, or 68 million British citizens. These enormous numbers mean
that once instituted, free groceries for all would quickly become
normal, familiar, and completely unstigmatized
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And once it’s seen as normal, it will quickly become normative: seen
as good and natural, with the result that any attempt to remove it
will be fiercely resisted. Once millions of people are tangibly
enjoying the benefit, it is likely that it will expand over time. In
this way, free groceries for all may well serve as a practical
stepping stone toward the achievement of a more robust and radical UBI
down the road.

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Tee Malleson is an associate professor of social justice and peace
studies at King’s University College at Western University, Canada.
Their recent books include Against Inequality: The Practical and
Ethical Case for Abolishing the Superrich.

 

* Food Security; Politics; United States; Canada;
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