General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums3 years ago, Stockton, California, was bankrupt. Now it's trying out a basic income.
by Dylan Matthews at Vox
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/18/16479796/stockton-california-basic-income-economic-security-experiment
"SNIP..........
Next year, a random sample of the 300,000 residents of Stockton, a port city in Californias Central Valley, will get $500 per month ($6,000 a year) with no strings attached.
Its the latest test of a policy known as basic income, funded not out of city revenues but by individual and foundation philanthropy. The first $1 million in funding comes from the Economic Security Project, a pro-basic income advocacy and research group co-chaired by Facebook co-founder and former New Republic publisher Chris Hughes and activists Natalie Foster and Dorian Warren; Hughes provided the groups initial funding. Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs hopes to launch the basic income project as early as August 2018.
The project known as the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED) will be, in a way, the purest expression to date of Silicon Valleys passion for basic income proposals, which many tech entrepreneurs and investors see as a necessary way to support Americans if artificial intelligence and other automation advances lead to unemployment for vast swaths of the population.
To the tech world, basic income is a way to redistribute the vast wealth that Silicon Valley creates to poorer people and localities left behind. And what better place to start than by redirecting part of a Facebook fortune to Stockton, an overwhelmingly nonwhite exurb of the Bay Area that became the largest city in the US to declare bankruptcy during the financial crisis?
..........SNIP"
Not Ruth
(3,613 posts)This is California, the world's 6th largest economy, try 10x that for a family
applegrove
(118,456 posts)on around the world.
bagelsforbreakfast
(1,427 posts)bagelsforbreakfast
(1,427 posts)Yupster
(14,308 posts)Some guy walks up to me and says, "I'd like to give you $ 500 a month, no strings attached."
"That's an insult, " I say. Don't you know this is California?
bagelsforbreakfast
(1,427 posts)PoliticAverse
(26,366 posts)JCanete
(5,272 posts)In the future it would come from taxes, not from philanthropy. And then that money would go right back into the economy, and over time right back into the pockets of the rich, or the newfound competitors who were able to tap a market of people who can actually finally buy stuff, and the cycle would continue.
taught_me_patience
(5,477 posts)triple the current budget. Who's going to pay for that?
JCanete
(5,272 posts)pay for that....two entirely different questions.