Reply To: Left and Right Unite! – For the UBI Fight!
Another UBI experiment begins
Stockton, Calif., is sending debit cards loaded with $500 to a select group of residents starting Friday. Each month for 18 months, 130 adults living in the city’s lower-income neighborhood will receive $500 to spend however they want. Researchers with SEED will track, study and analyze how the income boost affects residents’ spending and saving habits, and how it influences other factors such as quality of life and financial stability. The program will run until August 2020.
Researchers will regularly check in with recipients to conduct quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews – “How are people feeling? How are people spending money? Are people spending more time with families? How are health outcomes changing?” SEED hopes to feature the stories of some recipients beginning in March.
Presidential hopeful, Kamala Harris, proposed a bill last year what would provide middle class and working families a tax credit of up to $6,000 a year that could be accessed as a monthly check of up to $500.
Tech incubator Y Combinator conducted a feasibility study in Oakland that gave a few dozen residents between $1,500 and $2,000 beginning in 2016, and will soon conduct an expanded trial involving 1,000 people across two U.S. states.
UC Berkeley public policy and economics professor Hilary Hoynes said interpretations of what constitutes success for a universal basic income pilot program vary. Will more individuals be able to shift toward jobs pursuing their interests with fewer worries about living paycheck to paycheck, or will fewer people work in the labor market all together – and is that a good thing? Moreover, to implement a feasible universal basic income program, Hoynes said, policymakers and advocates would need to grapple with whether payments should be pegged to income levels – whether, when “you earn $20,000 or $60,000 or $100,000, (governments) start tapering out benefits,” for example.
“A universal payment of $12,000 per year to each adult U.S. resident over age 18 would cost roughly $3 trillion per year.”
Still, Hoynes said, there could be benefits to a pilot program such as SEED to better understand what recipients spend their money on, and the long-term effects of modest income increases on educational or employment decisions, in spite of its sample size and short duration.
Hoynes isn’t convinced universal basic income will be the solution to mass unemployment spurred by an artificial intelligence revolution, but she does believe the concepts are helpful in discussions about wage stagnation among low-skilled workers.
Both programs in Finland and Canada have ended, with no plans to continue or expand.