CA city gives $500 month to everyone with no strings attached. Here are the findings.

[Maraya1969]

A California city gave some residents $500 a month, no strings attached. Here’s how they spent it.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/10/8/20902839/universal-basic-income-stockton-trial


What would a needy person do if you gave them $500 a month, no strings attached?

Stockton, California, is finding out. The city is eight months into an 18-month experiment with basic income, the idea that the government should give citizens a regular infusion of unconditional free cash. And it just released the first batch of data about how recipients are spending the money.

It turns out, they’re mostly spending it on food, clothes, and utility bills.

The data is provisional — the basic income experiment still has 10 months to go — and the number of participants is small: 125 people (out of an estimated 311,000 Stockton residents) who live at or below the median income line (around $46,000), nearly half of whom are working full- or part-time.

But it offers a counter to critics of basic income, who often claim that people getting free money will blow it on frivolous things or addictive substances, and that they won’t bother to find work. The evidence does not support that belief.

“In this country, we have an issue with associating people who are struggling economically and people of color with vices like drug use, alcohol use, gambling,” said Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs. “I thought it was important to illustrate folks aren’t using this money for things like that. They are using it for literal necessities.”

[FM123]

1. Alaska has been giving their residents permanent income fund money since 1982.

They only give them $1000 or $2000 a year but it still has helped, "According to Big Think, Alaska’s Permanent Fund has reduced childhood obesity, increased work rates among men, has allowed women to spend more time with their family and has marginally decreased crime."

[CrispyQ]

2. Sometimes I think the rich are so rich that they have no idea how much $500 a month

can impact the lives of middle/lower class Americans. They buy a $500 bottle of wine for a celebratory lunch.

[JHB]

4. You're pretty safe to change that from "sometimes" to full time...

...because you're 100% correct, even for people whose affluence isn't at the "buy a $500 bottle of wine" level.

[Wounded Bear]

5. "If you have to ask the price, you can't afford it"...

It's been a saying for many, many years.

Add to it the idea that many of those weathy folks are also older, their idea of what constitutes a "large" sum of money is skewed by normal inflation. 30 years ago, $500 was quite a bit of money. Now it barely feeds a family of 4 for a month in an urban/suburban area.

The first two cars I bought were both less than $200, used of course, but still.

[murielm99]

7. I know a couple of people whose lives were changed by a relatively

modest amount of money.

The first guy received a $20,000 inheritance. He bought a better car. He is retired, so he took a couple of rural newspaper routes to enhance his poor income. He gave his daughter money. She bought a better car and found a job.

The second person won a $10,000 scratch off ticket. I don't advocate this as a way to better security, but in her case it worked. First she bought a computer and learned some computer skills. Then she bought a car and found a job.

I don't really consider either of those amounts "small." But the truly rich would consider them paltry.

[Polybius]

6. I don't think the $500 would count toward that

It's just there to boost, not added on taxes or incomes or W2's.

[Habibi]

9. This was my first thought too.

On SSDI and Medicaid. SSDI is my only income at the moment, and it's paltry, but it is the reason I have Medicaid. Would love to have another $500 but not if it means losing my current health insurance. Medicaid has covered every penny of my ongoing cancer treatment.

[OnlinePoker]

8. Headline doesn't match article headline

They only gave the money to a fraction of a percent of the population. For a one year period, total cost for the 125 recipients would be $750k. If they expanded it to "everyone" in Stockton, it would cost $1.866 Billion annually.

[hughee99]

12. It seems like this is a problem of scale for the city.

I’m not sure that a program for $750k to benefit 125 people is really going to reveal the problem. I’d be surprised if they had the $1.8 billion to fully implement this, though, especially given that they just filed for bankruptcy a few years ago.

[calimary]

11. CONservatives will usually blame the little guy while

giving Agent Orange a free pass for a LOT worse. The presumptions they make about the poor, foolishness, recklessness, and wastefulness, are attributes trump OWNS and OPERATES, 24/7/365.

He’s DOING all that and BEING all that and being allowed to get away with it. Yet the poor AREN’T doing it but getting blamed for it.

Projection much?