Posted on 06/04/2018 7:16:47 AM PDT by EdnaMode
Michael Tubbs, the 27-year-old mayor of Stockton, California, has a radical plan to combat poverty in his cash-strapped city: a no strings guaranteed basic income of $500 a month for its residents.
Starting in early 2019, Tubbs plans to provide the monthly stipend to a select group of residents as part of a privately funded 18-month experiment to assess how people use the money.
And then, maybe, in two or three years, we can have a much more informed discussion about the social safety net, the income floor people deserve and the best way to do it because well have more data and research, Tubbs told Reuters.
The city has not yet decided how many people will receive income from the trial project, which is funded by The Economic Security Project, a philanthropic network co-chaired by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes.
The idea of governments providing a universal basic income to their citizens has been gaining traction globally. The Finnish government is running a two-year trial to provide 2,000 unemployed people with monthly payments of approximately $660.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
LOL. Why not raise it to $500,000 per year for everyone? They can all be rich!!!! And they won’t have to work to do it!!
The nanny state and progressive ideology can only thrive with a printed, fiat, manipulated monetary system that encourages massive debt (ie. courtesy of the Federal Reserve)
How exactly is adding $6,000 per year supposed to do anything for people at the poverty level living in a place like Stockton? Talk about crumbs!
The same city that went bankrupt a few years ago.
Someone might want to tell the guy on that Finnish ‘experiment’. They announced back in March that it would conclude sometime this summer, and NO program would replace it. Their discovery was that it didn’t make any remarkable changes, and the cost impact, if delivered across all of society would be increased taxes for everyone.
So far, no one can prove this guaranteed income concept works except on paper or in the classroom.
Phony fraud. It won’t work. The moment everyone gets $500, then $500 becomes equivalent to zero, and you have to start over again. So they ask for $1000, which rapidly loses its value so it’s worth nothing, and they demand $2000, which becomes worthless ..... repeat until doomsday.
If recipients actually allow their expenditures to be tracked through EBT cards or the like, then this may be an additional useful data set, assuming that we can gain access to the data in a prompt way and there is a way of cross linking the information to other benefit programs and other public data bases.
As for the Finnish experiment, this article suggests that it has not generated the results that its advocates hoped for but those that skeptics believed likely. Including it in this article without fuller details is misleading to say the least.
This just skews more money into being lost or wasted. Too much money, whether chasing goods or not, just dilutes the purchasing power of all money.
Depending on how rapacious the already wealthy are, this only funnels even more money into their coffers.
The poor remain poor, the already wealthy grow even more wealthy. Poverty is a state of mind.
Where in the US Constitution does it allow for taxing one person to give to another??
> Why not raise it to $500,000 per year for everyone? They can all be rich!!!! <
No more half-measures, please. I would instead suggest that Stockton go all-out socialist: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”.
Simply pass a law stating that anyone can take whatever they want from stores, according to his needs. And if you don’t have the ability to pay, take the stuff for free.
... Gee .... Now they will be able to afford to buy that new gun they have been dreaming about.
Hahaha....and you KNOW market economics will dictate that
FREE MONEY !!
It’ll work until the state runs out of other people’s money.
Money is fungible. How do you know what money is being spent on what?
The recipients will continue to spend the money on stupid stuff, just more of it.
What about the rest of the people?
While this “experiment is privately funded” entitlements at the State and local level usually start when someone else picks up the bill and when that someone stops funding, the the State or local government is forced to continue.
I guess Stockton has not learned its fiscal responsibility lesson from its 2015 Bankruptcy.
http://www.stocktongov.com/government/departments/manager/bankruptcy/default.html
I want to buy stock in the pot dispensaries in Stockton. A guaranteed income from their taxpayers to me!
> ...Tubbs plans to provide the monthly stipend to a select group of residents...What about the rest of the people? <
In Stockton all residents are equal, but some residents are more equal than others.
This is nothing more than welfare ... it’s NOT ‘guaranteed basic income’ unless everyone gets it... rich and poor alike. This idiot is stealing a ‘new concept’ to make his welfare scam sound better...
Typical lying liberal...
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