A guaranteed basic income is Not a universal Plus basic income – their author specifically distinguishes them.

True racial equity will require that generations of racialized harms be met with a sustained commitment to race-conscious solutions. Guaranteed income programs not only provide a platform for a long overdue narrative shift around public benefits recipients, but they could also provide a mechanism to materially reduce racial income disparities by providing higher payments to Black and Indigenous people. In some ways, the racial justice contributions of smaller scale privately-funded guaranteed income demonstrations are easier to conceptualize because some have been explicitly targeted based on race or within historically disadvantaged neighborhoods. However, there has been some examination of how permanent, publicly funded cash transfers programs could be designed to achieve economic justice and racial equity. For example, Dorian Warren’s Universal PLUS model of basic income which “calls for an additional payment to be dispersed to Black families on top of the standard benefits given to all families over a period of time.” As described in a report by the Roosevelt Institute, “The ‘plus model’ acknowledges that the wealth created in the US is inextricably linked to Black labor, sweat, and tears, and this community has never received the benefits created from that labor.” This type of “targeted universalism” recognizes and seeks to redress the negative accumulation resulting from generations of racial inequities in income, wealth, and opportunity.97 Unlike the Universal PLUS model – which would pay some income to everyone and engage in race targeting to provide more income over time to Black families, a guaranteed income would not achieve the same goal of much needed reparations, repairing a history of slavery and race-based exclusion. A guaranteed income program prioritizes channeling money to low-income, no-income, and middle-income people; while there could be additional payments based on the race of eligible individuals, higher income Black and Indigenous people who are entitled to reparations, would not receive a guaranteed income. Racial justice demands that some form of material economic justice be achieved, and there is room for states to think creatively about how a guaranteed income could play a role.