
Stockton, California to give $500 a month in basic income to some residents - daegloe
https://money.cnn.com/2018/07/09/technology/stockton-california-basic-income-experiment/index.html
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lolsal
> Stockton will give 100 residents $500 a month for 18 months, no strings
> attached.

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.

~~~
clay_to_n
Really? I'd bet it will cover rent for some of the people in this study. It
seems larger than other studies I've seen, but I haven't been following all of
them.

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willio58
As a college student, this would cover my rent fully and leave enough for a
grocery-run. It would lift a good amount the stress off of my shoulders,
that’s for sure.

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modells
Nice. Rent was $300/mo in my time, 15 yrs ago.

I still have $8k in student loan debt held by Edu secretary Betsy DeVos’
Navient (aka Mom Corp).

~~~
willio58
Yeah finding under $500/mo wasn’t easy in the area around my university,
especially with the housing market as it is now. I’m heading into my senior
year and just might eek by without taking out loans (thanks to scholarships
for average-grade receiving students).

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JudasGoat
Because of the nature of humanity, I have noticed that instead of gratitude
for a non permanent income. People tend to retain the memory of being stripped
of a benafit, rather than the years of help it provided. My neighbor (a former
stripper) has had 8 years of rent paid by a government program. She now blames
all of her problems on this subsidy ending. I don't have the courage to ask
her why she isn't grateful for 8 years of housing.

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dmfdmf
Let us not forget the implied inverse of this title;

Stockton, California to take $500 a month of income from some residents.

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meritt
What? That's factually incorrect.

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dmfdmf
Please explain. Where does Stockton get $500 to give to a resident other than
taking it from someone else?

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meritt
Through $1.2M in philanthropic funding primarily led by a Facebook co-founder,
Chris Hughes [1]. It is not funded whatsoever through taxation.

[1]
[https://economicsecurityproject.org/](https://economicsecurityproject.org/)

~~~
dmfdmf
And when the govt wants to expand the program beyond the voluntary largess of
billionaires where does that money come from?

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.

~~~
pnloyd
Um I'm pretty sure the practical and legal definition of income is simply
money received. Why would a stipend not count as income?

~~~
dmfdmf
I would argue that ignoring or evading the distinction between earning your
money and it being handed to you or just taking it from someone is the height
of the impractical.

> 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.

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nodesocket
> Stockton will give 100 residents

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.

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willio58
I think that it is very _easy_ to think that giving people a baseline-income
will take the motivation to work away from them, but there’s a reason there is
so much interest in this area from the most philanthropic among us. Jordan
Peterson would not be against the simple research and testing of this idea, in
fact he would probably encourage it.

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.

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DEADBEEFC0FFEE
Is one of the purposes of UBI, to take people out of the workforce, without
horrendous social problems unemployment brings?

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willio58
UBI is not at all aimed at taking people out of the work force. If you had
basic food and possibly rent covered every month, would you just stop working?
Forever? If so I think that says more about you than it does society as a
whole.

