Stockton, California to give $500 a month in basic income to some residents
money.cnn.com
money.cnn.com
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.
I still have $8k in student loan debt held by Edu secretary Betsy DeVos’ Navient (aka Mom Corp).
Stockton, California to take $500 a month of income from some residents.
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.
> Why would a stipend not count as income?
For the purposes of the IRS perhaps it does count as "taxable income" per the IRS code but that is not what we are talking about here. There are only three possible cases regarding money you receive; you earn it through voluntary trade of goods or services with others, you take money from others without their consent, i.e. theft or you receive a voluntary gift from others for reasons and standards determined by the giver, i.e. charity. That is it.
UBI tries to obfuscate these important moral distinctions.
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.
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.