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Thread: A California city is launching the first US experiment in basic income

  1. #1

    A California city is launching the first US experiment in basic income

    Stockton, California is expected to become the first US city to launch an experiment in universal basic income, a system of wealth distribution in which people receive a set amount of money just for being alive.
    Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs said that by August 2018 he hopes to enroll an undisclosed number of Stockton's 315,000 residents in the program. Tubbs said the experiment — which is set to hand out $500 a month, or $6,000 a year — would ideally last for a period of three years.

    More at: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/calif...221700733.html

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  3. #2
    I'm going to go ahead and predict, with respect to the results of the experiment, that people will like free money.

    And that the people who have given them free money will get reelected.


  4. #3
    History teaches us that we are to learn from it so that we thus not commit the same errors in the future. Stupid asses.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-s...85S05120120629
    The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding one’s self in the ranks of the insane.” — Marcus Aurelius

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  5. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by r3volution 3.0 View Post
    I'm going to go ahead and predict, with respect to the results of the experiment, that people will like free money.

    And that the people who have given them free money will get reelected.
    I'll predict that the Stockton taxpayers will abruptly move out of the city limits.

  6. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by anaconda View Post
    I'll predict that the Stockton taxpayers will abruptly move out of the city limits.
    Sometimes I think California taxpayers have some form of battered wife syndrome. That weather must be really nice to put up with this stuff from their government and not pack their $#@! up and leave. That whole state should have turned into Detroit a long time ago, but it's the stubbornness of people who seem content to be parasite-infected hosts who keep it breathing.
    Last edited by nobody's_hero; 10-19-2017 at 06:27 AM.
    Quote Originally Posted by timosman View Post
    This is getting silly.
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    It started silly.
    T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men

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    Quote Originally Posted by Philhelm
    I part ways with "libertarianism" when it transitions from ideology grounded in logic into self-defeating autism for the sake of ideological purity.

  7. #6
    What happens when they run out of other people's money?

  8. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Root View Post
    What happens when they run out of other people's money?
    The fed print more.

  9. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Raginfridus View Post
    The fed print more.
    Not for a city in CA they won’t.



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  11. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Root View Post
    Not for a city in CA they won’t.
    To prop up this experiment, they will.

  12. #10
    i support it. But they should create a crypto currency for it. so every penny of those 500 are trackable.

  13. #11
    This the same Stockton that practically bankrupted the city while the fat cats were cutting themselves big checks?
    #NashvilleStrong

    “I’m a doctor. That’s a baby.”~~~Dr. Manny Sethi

  14. #12
    Goygle's calling Stockton "America's Most Miserable City" of 2013, so maybe there's a correlation in there somewhere. Could dangling "free" money be the tricks bankrupt States play, when the people are miserable enough to ignore them but not angry enough to revolt?

  15. #13
    Stockton was a major destination for poor people from Oakland and other Bay Area locations when they were being gentrified and converted into ethnic enclaves. Also a destination for gang-bangers from south of the border. This will revitalize the city!
    "Foreign aid is taking money from the poor people of a rich country, and giving it to the rich people of a poor country." - Ron Paul
    "Beware the Military-Industrial-Financial-Pharma-Corporate-Internet-Media-Government Complex." - B4L update of General Dwight D. Eisenhower
    "Debt is the drug, Wall St. Banksters are the dealers, and politicians are the addicts." - B4L
    "Totally free immigration? I've never taken that position. I believe in national sovereignty." - Ron Paul

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    The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own, and do not represent this forum or any other entities or persons.

  16. #14
    3 years ago, Stockton, California, was bankrupt. Now it's trying out a basic income.

    Next year, a random sample of the 300,000 residents of Stockton, a port city in California’s Central Valley, will get $500 per month ($6,000 a year) with no strings attached.

    It’s 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 group’s 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 Valley’s 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?

    An hour and half from San Francisco (if traffic is forgiving) and thus boasting the longest commute times in America, Stockton is tantalizingly close to big tech and its wealth, but just far enough away to experience significantly lower incomes and a higher poverty rate than San Francisco, San Jose, or Oakland.

    Tubbs is particularly well-suited to be the policy’s champion. Upon winning the mayoral election last year, he became both Stockton’s first black mayor and, at 26, the youngest mayor of a city of more than 100,000 people in American history. Tubbs cites as his inspiration Martin Luther King Jr., who called for a guaranteed minimum income in his last book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, as well as his own experience “growing up in poverty and seeing how much of some of the stress came from trying to stretch dollars to pay for necessities, like bills or school uniforms. When things came up unexpectedly it would cause a lot of hardships.”
    ...
    https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...ity-experiment
    "Foreign aid is taking money from the poor people of a rich country, and giving it to the rich people of a poor country." - Ron Paul
    "Beware the Military-Industrial-Financial-Pharma-Corporate-Internet-Media-Government Complex." - B4L update of General Dwight D. Eisenhower
    "Debt is the drug, Wall St. Banksters are the dealers, and politicians are the addicts." - B4L
    "Totally free immigration? I've never taken that position. I believe in national sovereignty." - Ron Paul

    Proponent of real science.
    The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own, and do not represent this forum or any other entities or persons.

  17. #15
    An inexperienced mayor will be in charge of doling out almost $2B?

  18. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by Raginfridus View Post
    The fed print more.
    Then why should us lowly taxpayers need to be taxed at all?

    Don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows



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  20. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by shakey1 View Post
    Then why should us lowly taxpayers need to be taxed at all?
    It is a way to remind you about the role you play in your relationship with the almighty government. Without it, you might forget about it. It also a great job program. Think about the number of people who make a living scrutinizing the income of Joe Sixpack.

  21. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by timosman View Post
    It is a way to remind you about the role you play in your relationship with the almighty government. Without it, you might forget about it. It also a great job program. Think about the number of people who make a living scrutinizing the income of Joe Sixpack.
    If I'm to be taxed, then I'll need my own printing press to make the money to pay for it... what's good for the goose, an' all.

    Don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows

  22. #19
    I can support a UBI. But ONLY as a replacement for ALL other forms of welfare.
    "And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works." - Bastiat

    "It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere." - Voltaire

  23. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by shakey1 View Post
    If I'm to be taxed, then I'll need my own printing press to make the money to pay for it... what's good for the goose, an' all.


    You might want to think about moving.

  24. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by CaptUSA View Post
    I can support a UBI. But ONLY as a replacement for ALL other forms of welfare.
    Yea, seems better if this were to replace the other welfare programs. At least this way there would be less bureaucracy (hopefully)

  25. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by Influenza View Post
    Yea, seems better if this were to replace the other welfare programs. At least this way there would be less bureaucracy (hopefully)
    EITC is a form of a UBI, (so this isn't really a "first"), but they never use it as a replacement - only as an addendum. Which is just stupid and pointless.
    "And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works." - Bastiat

    "It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere." - Voltaire

  26. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by CaptUSA View Post
    I can support a UBI. But ONLY as a replacement for ALL other forms of welfare.
    I support a UBI of $0 AND the abolition of ALL other forms of welfare.
    If you find this to be a worthwhile message, spread it throughout the land.
    Ron Paul

  27. #24
    How long will it take all the homeless to move there?
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment



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  29. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    How long will it take all the homeless to move there?
    And tax payers to move out.

  30. #26
    Quote Originally Posted by phill4paul View Post
    And tax payers to move out.
    That's already been happening. How many Silicon Valley crony Fabians does it take to fund one town's UBI? The funny thing about extraordinarily wealthy people is that they will get something like this started, then they want the mundanes to pay for it afterwards,
    "Foreign aid is taking money from the poor people of a rich country, and giving it to the rich people of a poor country." - Ron Paul
    "Beware the Military-Industrial-Financial-Pharma-Corporate-Internet-Media-Government Complex." - B4L update of General Dwight D. Eisenhower
    "Debt is the drug, Wall St. Banksters are the dealers, and politicians are the addicts." - B4L
    "Totally free immigration? I've never taken that position. I believe in national sovereignty." - Ron Paul

    Proponent of real science.
    The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own, and do not represent this forum or any other entities or persons.

  31. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by nobody's_hero View Post
    Sometimes I think California taxpayers have some form of battered wife syndrome. That weather must be really nice to put up with this stuff from their government and not pack their $#@! up and leave. That whole state should have turned into Detroit a long time ago, but it's the stubbornness of people who seem content to be parasite-infected hosts who keep it breathing.
    Part of the thing that puzzles me is that Stockton is over in the agricultural economy of the Central Valley and so, while I don't know, it doesn't seem like it would necessarily be terribly liberal. Although there's probably a lot of Mexican workers and a small handful of wealthy people.

    On the other hand, Stoctkon got whacked in the housing meltdown, and according to Wiki, was the second largest U.S. city to declare bankruptcy at that time.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockton,_California
    Last edited by anaconda; 10-19-2017 at 06:51 PM.

  32. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by Influenza View Post
    Yea, seems better if this were to replace the other welfare programs. At least this way there would be less bureaucracy (hopefully)
    And if the $500 payment is in Bitcoin only...

  33. #29
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    How long will it take all the homeless to move there?
    They will probably require proof of residency. how long until somebody goes into the business of renting out personal mail boxes for residency purposes?

  34. #30
    Quote Originally Posted by specsaregood View Post
    They will probably require proof of residency. how long until somebody goes into the business of renting out personal mail boxes for residency purposes?
    Or some lawyer will claim that proof of residency is discriminatory against the homeless.
    Last edited by Swordsmyth; 10-19-2017 at 09:05 PM.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

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