subsidy • \ˈsəb-sə-dē, -zə-\ • noun
: a grant paid by a government to an enterprise that benefits the public
The word subsidy has appeared in 189 New York Times articles in the past year, including on May 31 in “A Universal Basic Income Is a Poor Tool to Fight Poverty” by Eduardo Porter:
Why doesn’t the government just give everybody money?
Figure out a reasonable amount — the official poverty line amounts to about $25,000 for a family of four; a full-time job at $15 an hour would provide about $30,000 a year — and hand every adult a monthly check. The minimum-wage worker stretching to make it to payday, the single mother balancing child care and a job — everybody would get the same thing.
… Perhaps we could expand the earned-income tax credit, the country’s most successful antipoverty tool, which increases the earnings of low-income workers. Or take the idea pushed for years by Edmund Phelps from Columbia University: Instead of providing a subsidy to workers that phases out as their income rises, why not subsidize workers’ wages instead?
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