Thread: REPORT: California town becomes first in nation to give away free money to residents

REPORT: California town becomes first in nation to give away free money to residents in experimental welfare program

July 10, 2018



Stockton, California is set to become the first city in the nation to embark on an experiment of Universal Basic Income, paying 100 residents $500 a month without any conditions.

The program’s purpose is to eventually ensure that no one in the city of 300,000 people lives in poverty. The receivers of the cash will be able to spend the money on anything they want without any strings attached.

It will launch by 2019 and the 100 fortunate residents will receive the cash for a full 18-months as part of its testing phase before deciding whether to roll it across whole Stockton.

The article goes on to state the following:

The city, which was once known as America’s foreclosure capital, has recently fallen on hard times, with one-in-four residents living below the poverty line and the median household income is nearly $8,000 lower than the national median.

The city also racked up millions in debt from expensive development projects that led to the city’s bankruptcy in 2012.

“We’ve overspent on things like arenas and marinas and things of that sort to try to lure in tourism and dollars that way,” said Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs.

Luckily, the experimental program won’t deplete the city’s coffers as it benefits from financial backing by wealthy Silicon Valley moguls. One of those backers is Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, whose the Economic Security Project contributed $1 million to the project.

http://dennismichaellynch.com/report...lfare-program/

HA HA HA

POVERTY...give them a voucher for a FREE vasectomy and tubal ligation.

What fools! Set up tent city on Facebook compound!

Unload the illegal alien buses on Zuckerburg doorstep.

This settles it
Liberalism is a Mental Disorder

History[edit]

Basic income around the world

The idea of a state-run basic income dates back to the late 18th century when English radical Thomas Spence and American revolutionary Thomas Paine both declared their support for a welfare system in which all citizens were guaranteed a certain income.

In the 19th century and until the 1960s the debate on basic income was limited, but in the 1960s and 1970s the United States and Canada conducted several experiments with negative income taxation, a related welfare system.

From the 1980s and onwards the debate in Europe took off more broadly and since then it has expanded to many countries around the world.

A few countries have implemented large-scale welfare systems that are related to basic income, such as the Permanent Fund in Alaska and Bolsa Família in Brasil.

From 2008 and onwards there has also been several experiments with basic income and related systems.

Especially in countries with an existing welfare state a part of the funding assumably comes from replacing the current welfare arrangements, or a part of it, such as different grants for unemployed people.

Apart from that there are several ideas and proposals regarding the rest of the financing, as well as different ideas about the level and other aspects.
The idea of an unconditional basic income, given to all citizens in a state (or all adult citizens), was first presented near the middle of the 19th century.

But long before that there were ideas of a so-called minimum income, the idea of a one-off grant and the idea of a social insurance (which still is a key feature of all modern welfare states, with insurances for and against unemployment, sickness, parenthood, accidents, old age and so forth).^{[citation needed]}
The minimum income, the idea to eradicate poverty by targeting the poor, is in contradiction with basic income given "to all", but nevertheless share some underlying ideas about the state's or the city's welfare responsibilities towards its citizens.

Johannes Ludovicus Vives (1492–1540), for example, proposed that the municipal government should be responsible for securing a subsistence minimum to all its residents, "not on grounds of justice but for the sake of a more effective exercise of morally required charity".

However, to be entitled to poor relief the person’s poverty must not, he argued, be undeserved, but he or she must "deserve the help he or she gets by proving his or her willingness to work."^[7]
The first to develop the idea of a social insurance was Marquis de Condorcet (1743–1794). After playing a prominent role in the French Revolution, he was imprisoned and sentenced to death. While in prison, he wrote the Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain (published posthumously by his widow in 1795), whose last chapter described his vision of a social insurance and how it could reduce inequality, insecurity and poverty. Condorcet mentioned, very briefly, the idea of a benefit to all children old enough to start working by themselves and to start up a family of their own. He is not known to have said or written anything else on this proposal, but his close friend and fellow member of the Convention Thomas Paine (1737–1809) developed the idea much further, a couple of years after Condorcet’s death.
The first social movement for basic income developed around 1920 in the United Kingdom.
Its proponents included Bertrand Russell, Dennis Milner (with wife) and Clifford H. Douglas.

• Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) argued for a new social model that combined the advantages of socialism and anarchism, and that basic income should be a vital component in that new society.
• Dennis Milner, a Quaker and a Labour Party member, published jointly with his wife Mabel, a short pamphlet entitled “Scheme for a State Bonus” (191. There they argued for the "introduction of an income paid unconditionally on a weekly basis to all citizens of the United Kingdom". They considered it a moral right for everyone to have the means to subsistence, and thus it should not be conditional on work or willingness to work.
• Clifford H. Douglas was an engineer who became concerned that most British citizens could not afford to buy the goods that were produced, despite the rising productivity in British industry. His solution to this paradox was a new social system called "social credit", a combination of monetary reform and basic income.

In 1944 and 1945, the Beveridge Committee, led by the British economist William Beveridge, developed a proposal for a comprehensive new welfare system of social insurance and selective grants. Committee member Lady Rhys-Williams argued for basic income. She was also the first to develop the negative income tax model.^[8][9]
In the 1960s and 1970s, there were welfare debates in United States and Canada which included basic income.

Six pilot projects were also conducted with negative income tax. Then US president Richard Nixon once even proposed a negative income tax in a bill to the US Congress. But the Congress eventually only approved a guaranteed income for the elderly and the disabled, not for all citizens.^[10]
In the late 1970s and the 1980s, basic income was more or less forgotten in the United States, but on the other hand it started to gain some attraction in Europe.

Basic Income European Network, later renamed to Basic Income Earth Network, was founded in 1986 and started to arrange international conferences every two years. From the 1980s, some people outside party politics and universities took interest. In West Germany, groups of unemployed people took a stance for the reform.^[11]
From 2005–2010 and onwards, basic income again became a hot topic in many countries. Basic income is nowaday discussed from a variety of perspectives. But not least in the context of ongoing automation and robotisation, often with the argument that these trends will mean less paid work in the future, which in turn would create a need for a new welfare model.

Several countries are planning for local or regional experiments with basic income and/or related welfare systems. The experiments in India, Finland and Canada, for example, have received international media attention. There have also been several polls about basic income, investigating the public support for the idea in different countries, and in 2016 a basic income proposal was rejected in Switzerland by 76.9% of the voters in a national referendum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income