Ajcongress Cites Pentateuch in Calling on Congress to Support Guaranteed Income

The American Jewish Congress has called on both houses of the United States Congress to produce a “viable” plan for a guaranteed annual income for all Americans and cited ancient Torah law to back up its support for such a plan. A Federally-financed system of cash payments to families and individuals whose incomes fall below the subsistence level was urged in a statement submitted by Howard M. Squadron, co-chairman of the AJCongress’ national governing council to the fiscal policy sub-committee of the Joint Economic Committee of the Senate and House of Representatives.

“The Pentateuch, the core of Jewish law, proclaims that the poor have both the moral and legal right to be supported,” Mr. Squadron’s statement said. “In fact, the Pentateuch speaks in a sense of a ‘guaranteed annual income’ for the poor when it decrees that the poor shall receive as a matter of right ‘that which grows in the corner of the field, the forgotten sheaf or fruit, the produce of the fields every seventh year, and the tithe of the harvest every third year.'”