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Stockton, California to give $500 a month in basic income to some residents
- lolsal 8y ago> Stockton will give 100 residents $500 a month for 18 months, no strings attached. This does not seem like enough people to really learn anything about the effectiveness of UBI, but who knows - maybe they'll learn something and some folks will be better off at the end of the experiment.
- clay_to_n 8y agoReally? I'd bet it will cover rent for some of the people in this study. It seems larger than other studies I've seen, but I haven't been following all of them.
- willio58 8y agoAs a college student, this would cover my rent fully and leave enough for a grocery-run. It would lift a good amount the stress off of my shoulders, that’s for sure.
- modells 8y agoNice. Rent was $300/mo in my time, 15 yrs ago. I still have $8k in student loan debt held by Edu secretary Betsy DeVos’ Navient (aka Mom Corp).
- willio58 8y agoYeah finding under $500/mo wasn’t easy in the area around my university, especially with the housing market as it is now. I’m heading into my senior year and just might eek by without taking out loans (thanks to scholarships for average-grade receiving students).
- modells 8y agoIt might cover rent. Very low-income people typically have Section 8 housing, which is subsidized.
- lolsal 8y agoOk, but I was referring to the number of people in the test, not the dollar amount.
- sitkack 8y agoMultiples of $500 a month is cheaper than one incident on the other side. Emergency room visit, police, etc. I don't think of this as UBI as a solution over a larger universe.
- lolsal 8y agoOk, but I was referring to the number of people in the program, not the dollar amount.
- modells 8y ago$1500/mo would cover most basics besides rent.
- lolsal 8y agoAlright, but I was referring to the number of people in the test, I wasn’t saying anything about the dollar amount.
- nodesocket 8y ago> Stockton will give 100 residents Is it truly 100 random residents, not looking at income, race, etc? I suspect it is not, and they will exclude high wealth individuals. Congratulations they've just reinvented wealthfare. > In Finland, a monthly stipend of 560 euros was given to 2,000 unemployed people between the ages of 25 and 58. Genius, let's only give unemployed people the stipend, thus demotivating people to work. Once again, reinvented unemployment. > "It is such a fundamental idea behind America that if you work hard, you can get ahead — and you certainly don't live in poverty. But that isn't true today, and it hasn't been true in the country for decades." This victim mentality is exactly what figures such as Jordan Peterson are pushing back against. So the thought process is, it is a rigged system, I am never going to be successful in America, so I am not going to try and do anything. What a preposterous outlook. I completely disagree with this flawed and cynical outlook of America.
- willio58 8y agoI think that it is very easy to think that giving people a baseline-income will take the motivation to work away from them, but there’s a reason there is so much interest in this area from the most philanthropic among us. Jordan Peterson would not be against the simple research and testing of this idea, in fact he would probably encourage it. The worst that we could find is that people somehow lose the motivation to be productive in a society that gives them a basic income. The best we could find is that when people have to worry less about surviving, first level of Maslow’s heirarchy stuff, that they are free to use their energy elsewhere and in different ways. Imagine the number of potentially influential people out there that are bogged down by the fact that their rent just went up 25$ per month and they can’t afford to pay it.
- DEADBEEFC0FFEE 8y agoIs one of the purposes of UBI, to take people out of the workforce, without horrendous social problems unemployment brings?
- willio58 8y ago
- dmfdmf 8y agoLet us not forget the implied inverse of this title; Stockton, California to take $500 a month of income from some residents.
- meritt 8y agoWhat? That's factually incorrect.
- dmfdmf 8y agoPlease explain. Where does Stockton get $500 to give to a resident other than taking it from someone else?
- meritt 8y agoThrough $1.2M in philanthropic funding primarily led by a Facebook co-founder, Chris Hughes [1]. It is not funded whatsoever through taxation. [1] https://economicsecurityproject.org/ https://economicsecurityproject.org/
- dmfdmf 8y agoAnd when the govt wants to expand the program beyond the voluntary largess of billionaires where does that money come from? Moreover, a more honest title would say "Chris Hughes, Facebook co-founder, to give $500 a month charity stipend to residence of Stockton, California." Whatever the source it is not income, basic or otherwise.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- pnloyd 8y agoUm I'm pretty sure the practical and legal definition of income is simply money received. Why would a stipend not count as income?
- JudasGoat 8y agoBecause of the nature of humanity, I have noticed that instead of gratitude for a non permanent income. People tend to retain the memory of being stripped of a benafit, rather than the years of help it provided. My neighbor (a former stripper) has had 8 years of rent paid by a government program. She now blames all of her problems on this subsidy ending. I don't have the courage to ask her why she isn't grateful for 8 years of housing.