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Category: covid relief

  • New Yorkers Previously Excluded From COVID Payments Win $2.1 Billion Relief Fund

    Participants of a hunger strike, advocates and local politicians attend an excluded workers rally on 3rd avenue in front of Governor's office in New York City on April 4, 2021.

    On Tuesday, the New York State legislature struck a deal with Gov. Andrew Cuomo on a $2.1 billion fund that will provide much-needed relief to people who have been excluded from receiving aid from the coronavirus stimulus relief packages passed by Congress.

    Advocates for the fund lauded the deal as a win. “This victory comes after one year of statewide organizing efforts from the #FundExcludedWorkers Coalition — led by impacted workers, culminating in two hunger strikes,” tweeted the coalition of over 100 organizations supportive of the fund. “History is made today!”

    The fund is the first of its kind. Some states and cities like California and Seattle have raised funds for pandemic relief for undocumented workers, but none of these funds come close to the excluded workers fund just passed in New York.

    The goal of the fund is to provide relief for groups that have been excluded from coronavirus relief like additional unemployment checks and stimulus payments. That includes undocumented workers and people recently released from prison.

    The fund will provide workers with relief similar to the amounts that they would have received if they had qualified under the unemployment provisions in the stimulus packages. It is retroactive to when the CARES Act was passed and currently extends to September when current federal unemployment benefits expire. Last-minute negotiations between lawmakers and Cuomo were reportedly over logistical challenges.

    Undocumented people, many of whom are in dangerous frontline jobs like agricultural work, have been excluded from COVID relief despite the fact that they pay billions in state and local taxes each year, including over a billion in New York state taxes.

    Meanwhile, people in prison often have their relief checks taken from them by prison authorities. Many people who were released from prison before and during the pandemic were also excluded from unemployment relief because they hadn’t yet built up the work history to qualify.

    Over the past year, advocates have decried the injustices against the undocumented and formerly incarcerated people. A report from the Fiscal Policy Institute (FPI) from last year found that 1.2 million people in New York were excluded from unemployment assistance and relief checks under the CARES Act.

    “A pandemic is no time to discriminate,” wrote Cyierra Roldan of FPI last May. “If the federal government chooses to promote anti-immigrant policy and discrimination at the expense of public health, New York State must step up to help these vulnerable individuals and protect all New Yorkers.”

    Organizations and advocates with the Fund Excluded Workers coalition have been fighting for the fund since last spring, staging strikes and marches, and organizing phone banking campaigns. In a final push, essential workers ramped up the pressure on lawmakers and Cuomo recently by staging a 22-day hunger strike leading up to the creation of the fund.

    Advocates worry, however, that the $2.1 billion won’t be enough. An FPI report from last year on excluded workers found that it would take over $3 billion to ensure that the estimated 120,000 people would benefit fully from the fund. Activists have been fighting for the legislature to include $3.5 billion in the budget for the fund and are concerned that logistical hurdles like not having paystubs may end up still excluding workers trying to access aid.

    For many advocates, however, the fund is still a win. “This hard-fought win is about humanity, about recognizing how we all depend on each other and must fight for justice for the communities our city and state have left behind,” tweeted Dianne Morales, a candidate for New York City mayor.

    Despite some concessions, the fund is still the most ambitious effort to provide excluded workers relief in the country. Most other efforts focus on undocumented immigrants only and are largely insufficient to provide the amount of help that is currently needed.

    In California, the state offered a relief program for undocumented immigrants to receive $500 in aid but could only fund 150,000 immigrants. California is home to an estimated 2.2 million undocumented people.

    Other places, too, like Chicago, Seattle, Austin and Washington, D.C. have created similar programs specifically for undocumented people, but many of these initiatives still fall short of providing undocumented immigrants sufficient aid. “It is clear that while these government and private initiatives are providing help where otherwise there would have been none, these efforts are no match for the scale of need,” wrote the Migration Policy Institute.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Hospitals Sued Patients Over Debt While Raking in Billions in Relief Aid

    Hospitals Sued Patients over Medical Debt While Getting Billions in Relief Aid

    We look at pandemic profiteering in the medical system as a new report by Kaiser Health News reveals some of the nation’s richest hospitals recorded hundreds of millions of dollars in surplus over the past year after accepting federal healthcare bailout grants. This comes as hospitals in New York have sued thousands of patients during the pandemic, and Northwell — which is run by a close ally of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo — has faced intense criticism for practices like billing patients at its Lenox Hill Hospital over $3,000 for COVID tests — more than 30 times the typical cost. “There’s a lot of talk in our healthcare system about putting patients first, … but this is not doing that,” says Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president of health initiatives at the Community Service Society of New York and co-founder of the Health Care for All New York campaign. “Suing patients ruins their lives.” We also discuss how Biden’s CARES Act made 3.7 million more people eligible for the Affordable Care Act’s premium subsidies.

    TRANSCRIPT

    This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

    AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

    As the United States reports over 79,000 new coronavirus infections Monday and cases continue to rise nationwide even with the vaccines, we turn now to look at pandemic profiteering in the medical system.

    A new report by Kaiser Health News reveals some of the nation’s richest hospitals recorded hundreds of millions of dollars in surplus over the past year after accepting federal healthcare bailout grants.

    In Texas, the state’s largest nonprofit hospital system, Baylor Scott & White Health, received over $450 million in relief funds, despite laying off 1,200 workers. Baylor is now sitting on a surplus of [$815 million] — appropriate I should cough during a healthcare segment.

    The report cited the Mayo Clinic, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and NYU Langone Health as other big beneficiaries.

    Here in New York, the state’s largest nonprofit health system, Northwell, received $1.2 billion in federal funds from the CARES Act. But Northwell, which is run by a close ally of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, has faced intense criticism for suing over 2,500 patients last year for failing to pay their medical bills. It only stopped suing for medical debt after a report by the Community Service Society exposed the practice. Meanwhile, The New York Times recently revealed one of Northwell’s facilities, the Lenox Hill Hospital, billed over $3,000 for COVID tests — more than 30 times the typical cost.

    We’re joined now by Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president of health initiatives at the Community Service Society of New York, co-founder of Health Care for All New York campaign.

    Elisabeth, can you start off by talking about these pandemic profiteers? Why don’t you start off by talking about Northwell and what happened? As patients were in such dire circumstances this year, the hospital sued thousands of them.

    ELISABETH BENJAMIN: Yes. So, I think it’s really important to note that two-thirds of all hospitals in America are nonprofit hospitals. In New York state, every single hospital, by law, is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) charity. And we have to remember that the first tenet of medicine is to do no harm.

    There’s a lot of talk in our healthcare system about putting patients first and social determinants of health, but this is not doing that. This is not taking care of patients first. Suing patients ruins their lives. It means you have to make decisions between paying your rent or paying a medical bill, putting food on your table or paying a medical bill.

    I think what our work has shown — and we’ve looked now at every single hospital in New York state and found that they have collectively sued over 50,000 patients, despite all being charities, and over 5,000 patients during the pandemic — is that there’s a deep problem here with our so-called not-for-profit hospitals. And I think we really need to take stock as a country and say, “Look, either you get to be a charity and you get to raise money and not pay taxes and pull down billions of dollars — for example, $178 billion in CARES Act funding went to hospitals during the pandemic — you can get all that, but you must not sue your patients. Suing your patients hurts them.”

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Elisabeth, I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit more about this whole issue of the enormous money that the hospitals have made. I did a deep dive into the finances here in New Jersey of the largest hospital chain, RWJBarnabas, and I discovered that they received about $1.2 billion in grants and loans from the federal government, far more than they lost in patient revenues, and during last year as a result of CARES Act funding. At the same time, they were making huge gains in their investment portfolios as a result of the tremendous drive-up in the market. So, they are sitting in far more — it’s almost like the coronavirus became a financial windfall for the hospital, supposed, as you say, nonprofit corporations. The federal government even gave them advanced Medicare reimbursements, which was basically a loan, a zero-interest loan, for these hospitals. And so, how are they able to get away with this?

    ELISABETH BENJAMIN: So, I think the issue is, look, we want hospitals, right? We are so grateful to the staff and everybody that works at hospitals for helping us to survive this horrible pandemic. In New York, our nonprofit hospitals got well over $13 billion in CARES Act funding. And, you know, most of the hospitals in New York, I don’t believe, ended up — with the exception of NYU and a few others — with huge surpluses by the end of the year. And perhaps that’s because New York was hit so hard by the pandemic.

    My concern is: If we’re going to invest our public dollars and our public good into hospitals, what business do they have in suing patients? And let’s just talk about what happens with these lawsuits. Most patients, you know, are sued, and what happens is there’s a default judgment. If you look at Lenox Hill, for example, the hospital with the $3,000 CARES — corona test, they sue patients — they sue patients for about 1,900 bucks. That’s the median amount that they’re suing for. So, they’re suing patients for not very much in terms of their huge surpluses. They have a nearly $100 million surplus. And they’re suing patients for about $1,900. Altogether, they’re suing patients — they get 34 times more in their annual surplus than they get in what they’re suing for patients over five years. So, what’s going on here? They’re ruining patients’ lives while reaping surpluses in revenue. This is not the way to pay for healthcare, by suing your patients. That’s the problem here.

    And so, you know, I think we, as a country, need to really look at how we’re supporting nonprofit hospitals. If we’re going to be investing billions of dollars in them through CARES Act funding, through Medicare, through Medicaid, then I think we have the right to demand certain practices just be dropped. And the first practice that should be dropped is suing low-income patients of color. And I think what’s really important is to understand that LendingTree said that 72% of the people that they surveyed said that medical debt prevents them from achieving their major milestones in life. Forty percent of people of color have medical debt. A hundred and thirty-seven million Americans had medical debt in 2019, before the pandemic.

    We really need to have some political action here that says, if you’re a nonprofit hospital, your first tenet is to do no harm. And I think that’s a reasonable expectation. I mean, after all, it was the public outcry that stopped the Humane Society from killing the animals. Hospitals should not be suing their patients. That should be a never event. It should be approved by the CFO and the board of directors if they must sue at all.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Elisabeth, aren’t most hospitals, because they are nonprofits and charities, required to do indigent care, to a certain degree, and get reimbursed by the state governments for their charity care? How do you reconcile this issue of their having to have some public good as a result of being a charity, and yet they’re continuing to sue as would any for-profit company?

    ELISABETH BENJAMIN: I can’t reconcile it. In New York state, we give our hospitals a billion dollars in what’s called indigent care pool funding, or charity care pool funding, and yet, altogether, they’re suing people for, you know, a couple $10 million in each year. It makes no sense.

    And when we review the pleadings, because we go to court and we pull all the court case files — for example, Lenox Hill — we found not one offer of financial assistance was actually made or attested to in their court documents. And the documents that they use when they sue people, they use sort of creepy law firms. For example, with Lenox Hill, they’re using a law firm that’s alleged to use process servers that falsify their service of processing. In a federal court action, they’re alleged to basically use a process server that pretends to serve patients, but they really don’t. And then they wonder why all the hospital lawsuits are won based on default. That means that the patient never shows up in court. And if the very, very few that do get their pleadings and are served, when they do show up, you know, they never have lawyers, because they can’t afford it.

    What are we doing here as a society? We need to make demands. And, you know, our political leaders need to step up and make demands and say these lawsuits should be never events. We need to have fair and transparent billing. Most patients don’t understand their bills. Consumer Reports did a survey and found that a third of patients pay bills they don’t even think they owe, because they’re so afraid of having an adverse event on their credit report. It’s out of control. And we need to demand more from our nonprofit hospitals.

    AMY GOODMAN: Elisabeth, I —

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, you mentioned Lenox Hill Hospital, which is part of the Northwell chain, headed by Michael Dowling, a very close friend and ally of Governor Cuomo. Where is the governor on these issues these days?

    ELISABETH BENJAMIN: We have met with the administration several times. And we worked — I co-chaired a committee on indigent care that the governor empaneled a couple years ago. And there were some reforms made on that charity care pool, that indigent care pool. And so that was a great thing that the governor did.

    In his State of the State, he said and promised that he would have one unified financial aid form that every single hospital must use in New York state. That has yet to be materialized. And so, we’ve gone to the Legislature and said, “Hey, we need one simple, uniform financial aid form.”

    So, every hospital in New York state — there’s over 200 — gets to design their own financial aid form. And if you see one financial aid form, you’ve seen one. In Lenox Hill’s case, you can’t even find the financial aid form on their website. You have to know exactly what to be looking for. And after like four clicks, maybe you’ll make it to the Northwell — the mothership — website, where you might be able to find their financial aid policies. They make it as hard as possible to apply for financial aid. And in all — we’ve never seen a lawsuit where they actually said that they offered financial aid and found that the patient was not eligible. So we need massive reform here.

    AMY GOODMAN: Elisabeth, I wanted to ask you about the distinction in hospitals, because people might lump them all together. You’ve got the so-called not-for-profit hospitals, the private hospitals. Then I’m looking at a piece by Politico, “New York’s safety-net hospitals were the front lines of the coronavirus. Now they’re facing ruin.” So, compare them, like Lenox Hill, Northwell, etc., to New York City hospitals that serve the city’s poorest patients facing financial ruin after being on the frontlines.

    ELISABETH BENJAMIN: Well, that’s one of the things that we did a big report in the middle of the summer, because the original allocation of the CARES Act funding was based on commercial interest — sorry, commercial insurance practices, your past performance, in terms of getting receipts from commercial carriers. So, you know, NewYork-Presbyterian, originally, and Northwell were getting hundreds and hundreds of millions, and Health + Hospitals, which has a much smaller commercial insured base of business, was getting tiny amounts. That was eventually corrected towards the end of the year, where the big safety-net institutions, they ended up sort of rejiggering the pool. But the idea that the federal government thought it was OK to allocate hospital relief packages based on commercial insurance performance, and not based on Medicaid performance, for example, is crazy making, especially given the fact that the pandemic had such a disparate impact on low-income communities of color, where our beloved essential workers live and work.

    AMY GOODMAN: Elisabeth —

    ELISABETH BENJAMIN: That was — sorry.

    AMY GOODMAN: Keep going.

    ELISABETH BENJAMIN: So, that was sorted out, eventually. And I think the allocation, by the time we re-reviewed it in the end of December, early January, it looked like it was sort of right-sized.

    But it’s interesting, going back to our indigent care pool that New York state gives out, the billion dollars to support the provision of charity care, that was never allocated as it should have been to the top 25% a safety-net hospitals, of which our public hospitals are all part of, and, in fact, had been spread around like peanut butter to these hospitals, that are so-called charities, that are suing the pants off of patients. So, there’s something deeply wrong. I don’t believe that one charitable hospital who’s suing a patient should be getting any indigent care pool funding, because clearly they aren’t actually following the letter of the law and really getting the financial aid out to the patients that need it.

    AMY GOODMAN: Elisabeth, before you go, there’s two critical issues, and we only have a few minutes. One is, we did that first segment on especially undocumented essential workers getting aid. What’s the situation in New York and in California for undocumented people getting healthcare? And then, if you could briefly address the expansion of the Affordable Care Act? I don’t think most people know this.

    ELISABETH BENJAMIN: Sure.

    AMY GOODMAN: Who has access to Obamacare, depending on their wealth or not wealth?

    ELISABETH BENJAMIN: Sure. So, two things. The first thing, on immigrant health, like the essential workers, New York state really fumbled in its budget this year, our leaders. We had put together a package of $20 million — just $20 million — to provide coverage to undocumented immigrants who have COVID. That was unacceptable to our state lawmakers, and that did not pass in our state budget, where they’re raising billions in revenue. So, that’s just a total abdication of leadership by all our lawmakers, and we’re completely upset about that.

    In terms of the Affordable Care Act, this is quite extraordinary, what the Biden administration did. They did four things that really help people right now.

    Number one, if you’re going — if you’re getting coverage through the marketplace, you are eligible for more financial assistance. So you should immediately go back onto the marketplace and reestimate your tax credits.

    Number two, you should — higher-income people are now eligible for financial aid, so if you ever applied for financial assistance through the marketplace and were turned down because of your income, go back. You might be eligible now.

    Number three, if you get even one unemployment check in 2021, you can get a zero-premium plan right now that’s super good, a platinum-level plan.

    And, number four, they were totally paying for COBRA subsidies between April and September. You get free — the government will pay for your COBRA payments, insurance premium payments. That’s when you get terminated from your job or you lose your job, and you can get the offer of insurance, your job-based insurance. You can get the government to pay for your premiums between April and September 2021.

    So, the Biden package, American Rescue Plan, has really done a lot on health coverage for Americans, and we’re super grateful to the administration for that.

    AMY GOODMAN: And where can people go to get this information?

    ELISABETH BENJAMIN: You can go to, if you’re in a federal, you can go to HealthCare.gov. Or, if you’re state, many states run their own marketplace, and you should go to your own state marketplace and call the call centers. They’re standing by. They can help you. You can also go to a local navigator. That’s a real person. They can — you know, is your champion and can help you sort through all of this.

    AMY GOODMAN: Elisabeth Benjamin, we want to thank you for being with us, vice president of health initiatives at the Community Service Society of New York, co-founder of Health Care for All New York campaign.

    This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we’ll look at President Biden’s infrastructure plan. Stay with us.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • For a better, faster recovery: €1,000 checks for Europeans

    The bloc’s recovery efforts are falling short of those in the US.

    When European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented a landmark EU recovery package in response to the coronavirus crisis, it felt like a historic moment.

    The plan was ambitious: €750 billion, financed by jointly issued debt, would give EU countries additional firepower to fuel their economic recovery and help them through the greatest crisis since World War II.

    The package — which totals around 9 percent of EU GDP — is comparable in size to the initial recovery package put together by the United States government, which mobilized a sum equivalent to 10 percent of its GDP.

    The favorable comparisons end there. While the EU is still figuring out how to unlock the agreed-upon money so that it can finally be disbursed, Washington has pulled far ahead.

    U.S. President Joe Biden’s latest stimulus package — the Biden Plan — is the government’s third stimulus bill and it increases federal support to the economy to more than three times the European response.

    To be sure, the disparity in recovery plans can partly be explained by the differences between the two governance models — the U.S. is a federal state, while the EU is a union of independent countries.

    And yet, there is also a sharp difference in the ambition of the U.S. and EU responses, even once you take into account the national measures put in place by European countries on top of EU cash.

    Not only is the U.S. response much bigger. Perhaps more importantly, it reached the real economy much faster.4

    That’s because large portions of its stimulus took the form of direct payments to households, while other measures had an immediate impact on citizens’ income and, as a result, on demand. The $1,400 stimulus check each adult is set to receive under the Biden Plan will be the third such check they will have been able to cash since the start of the pandemic.

    At the European level, meanwhile, not only do direct transfers to citizens appear to be a taboo, the rules are designed in a way that prevents most EU recovery money from being used on the ground now, when it is arguably most needed.

    As a result, the OECD estimates that the recovery measures taken by the U.S. will have a positive impact of 3.8 percent of GDP for the next 12 months, starting from April. The impact of the EU’s recovery fund, by contrast, is estimated to be between 0.5 percent and 1 percent of GDP.

    To make matters worse, projections show that the level of European support to the economy may well turn out to be insufficient. Even if the European Central Bank was fast and bold in its response to the crisis (and even if there is more it can do in the months ahead), monetary policy has its limits. And when it comes to fiscal policy, the EU is coming up short.  

    The EU needs to deploy more resources on the ground right now and not just in the long run. As the vaccine rollout gathers steam and we ease out of lockdowns, we must ensure that companies retain jobs and continue to have customers, particularly once government-supported lay-off schemes cease. That means we need a strong stimulus package that energizes the economy immediately.

    The EU must send a strong signal to national governments that they should continue with support for their economies and make sure EU money reaches its intended destination in a matter of months, not years.

    But there’s an even better way to make sure the recovery funds provide the stimulus that is needed: Use the months it will take to approve the national recovery plans to find a way to pay €1,000 to every unemployed person, elderly person and parent.

    The direct payments won’t be a silver bullet, but they would provide the economy with a much-needed shot in the arm — that is, if the EU is able to overcomes its taboo. And why shouldn’t it? The bloc made history last year with its landmark recovery deal. Surely, it can do so again on this smaller, but just as crucial way.

    _____

    Pedro Marques is a member of the European Parliament in the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats and vice-president responsible for a Green New Deal and communication.

    To see original article please visit: https://www.politico.eu/article/faster-coronavirus-economic-recovery-1000-checks-for-europeans/

    The post For a better, faster recovery: €1,000 checks for Europeans appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • 125 mothers in Marin County will begin receiving $1000 a month in basic income for two years

    The Marin program will provide $1,000 monthly grants to 125 low wage-earning women of color who are raising at least one child in Marin County.

    By Joshua Sabatini

    Marin County will become the second Bay Area community experimenting with a guaranteed income program designed to improve the fortunes of lower-income residents.

    The Marin program will provide $1,000 monthly grants to 125 low wage-earning women of color who are raising at least one child in Marin County.

    It is being run not by the county but by the non-profit Marin Community Foundation. However, the Marin County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to contribute $400,000 to the program. The foundation will contribute $3 million as well as operating and evaluating the two-year program.

    The Oakland and Marin County programs, which offer unrestricted monthly cash payments, follow on the success of a Stockton program that was one of the nation’s first. Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf announced Tuesday that the city would launch one of the nation’s largest guaranteed income programs — giving $500 a month to 600 low-income families — this spring or summer. The Oakland program will last 18 months. The Stockton program, which provided $500 every month to 125 people for 24 months, was widely considered a success.

    The Marin Community Foundation is a 30-year-old philanthropic group largely funded by the Buck Family Fund with a stated goal to “improve the human condition, embrace diversity, promote a humane and democratic society, and enhance the community’s quality of life, now and for future generations.”

    Johnathan Logan, vice president of community engagement, said the foundation decided to try a guaranteed income program after spending two years talking to 93 low-income mothers struggling to get by and improve their lives in costly Marin County.

    “We heard stories of resilience, we heard stories of hope and optimism, especially for their children but we also heard about the challenges they’re facing,” he said.

    “We decided to do something about it. Unrestricted cash came up several times as a possible approach to supporting these moms.”

    Those selected for the program will be mothers of at least one child younger than 17, and women of color, Logan said, and they’ll be chosen randomly from across the county. The foundation plans to start the program in May. While most of the previous universal guaranteed income programs made monthly payments of $500, the Marin program will pay twice as much.

    The program will also offer supportive services like job training and counseling, which is what Marin County’s contribution will pay for. Other Marin organizations will also contribute, Logan said.

    “Marin County is an expensive county to live in and to make ends meet,” he said. “We felt $1,000 would be an appropriate amount given the high cost of living and especially housing.”

    _____

    Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan

    To see original article please visit: https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/1-000-a-month-guaranteed-income-program-coming-16051268.php

    The post 125 mothers in Marin County will begin receiving $1000 a month in basic income for two years appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • San Francisco will provide $1000 a month in basic income to 130 artists for six months

    Eligible artists must be aged 18 and over, have suffered loss of income due to the pandemic and have an artistic practice “rooted in a historically marginalized community.”

    By Joshua Sabatini

    San Francisco on Thursday launched a six-month guaranteed income pilot program that will give 130 local artists affected by the COVID-19 pandemic $1,000 monthly.

    Artists in neighborhoods hardest hit by the pandemic can start applying today to participate and payments to those selected will begin in May, Mayor London Breed announced.

    The initiative, Breed said, is meant to “help our creative sector get through this challenging time.”

    “The arts are truly critical to our local economy and are an essential part of our long-term recovery,” Breed said in a statement.

    “If we help the arts recover, the arts will help San Francisco recover.”

    The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) is administering the program through a $870,000 city grant approved by the Arts Commission in December. The nonprofit will accept applications from eligible artists until April 15.

    “Artists must be given adequate resources to focus on creative output and reinvest in their communities as they navigate the ongoing challenges of living and working through a pandemic,” Deborah Cullinan, YBCA’s CEO, said in a statement.

    “Our learnings from the pilot will be used to advance the wider movement advocating for unrestricted cash payments that provide financial stability to those who need it most, including artists.”

    It is the latest guaranteed income project, also known as universal basic income (UBI), to launch in the nation. The model is growing in popularity for its potential to lift people out of a cycle of poverty, address income inequality and improve health outcomes.

    Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf on Tuesday announced a program where $500 per month will be given to 600 low-income families of color for at least 18 months. Schaaf called the model “one of the most promising tools for systems change, racial equity, and economic mobility we’ve seen in decades.”

    Next month, San Francisco’s newly-formed Guaranteed Income Advisory Group will begin to convene to advise The City on launching a pilot for up to 1,000 participants to receive at least $500 per month without restrictions.

    A final report from the body is due by Dec. 1. The group was formed under legislation introduced by Supervisor Matt Haney and approved by the Board of Supervisors.

    San Francisco is already trying other types of guaranteed income pilots. Last September Breed announced the Abundant Birth Project, where about 150 Black and Pacific Islander women in San Francisco would receive $1,000 monthly income without conditions for the duration of their pregnancy and for the first six months of their baby’s life .

    Last month, Breed and Board President Shamann Walton announced a plan to use an initial $60 million in repurposed law enforcement funding on programs to help the Black community which included $7 million for a guaranteed income pilot program. The detail for this effort have yet to be released.

    The City has talked about a guaranteed income program at least as far back as 2016 as the tech boom exacerbated San Francisco’s income inequality.

    At that time, the Office of the Treasurer and Tax Collector submitted an application for a $100 million grant to the MacArthur Foundation, in partnership with New Haven and Detroit, to pilot a universal basic income project where select low-income families with toddlers would receive $1,000 or $2,000 a month for two years, as previously reported by the San Francisco Examiner. The application was unsuccessful.

    YBCA intends to notify selected applicants by April 20 and they must confirm their participation by May 4.

    Eligible artists must be aged 18 and over, have suffered loss of income due to the pandemic and have an artistic practice “rooted in a historically marginalized community.”

    Artists are broadly defined to include music, dance, creative writing, visual art, performance art, installation, photography, theater, or film. Teaching artists are also eligible.

    There are both income and residency requirements. For a single household an artist could not earn more than $60,900 a year to qualify, while for a household of four the household’s income could not exceed $87,000 a year.

    Artists must be living in 13 of San Francisco’s 27 zip codes, which were selected based on factors including COVID-19 case counts. This includes neighborhoods like the Bayview and the Mission.

    _____

    To see original article please visit: https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/sf-launches-guaranteed-income-pilot-program-for-130-artists/

    The post San Francisco will provide $1000 a month in basic income to 130 artists for six months appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Opinion: This time too much is probably just about right

    Should the massive federal assistance have been more targeted? We should be glad it wasn’t.

    by Robert Shapiro

    Both progressives and conservatives criticized the three major COVID-19 relief laws enacted over the last 12 months for giving away too much of their $4.85 trillion in new spending, tax credits, and sweetheart loans to businesses or city and state governments that don’t need the help. While attracting fewer complaints, the three relief Acts—the CARES Act of March 2020, the Coronavirus Supplemental Appropriations of December 2020, and the American Rescue Plan of March 2021—also provided $858 billion in direct payments to most American households, unconnected to any showing of economic need related to the pandemic.  This has been a bipartisan version of Keynes on steroids, with nearly everyone receiving some form of government help.

    As it happened, most households and businesses would weather the pandemic with little direct economic loss. 

    But under both the Trump and Biden administrations, the government’s efforts around the pandemic have reflected an unspoken but decided view that a smaller, better-targeted approach could risk the economy.

    And that view is almost certainly correct: This time, as an economic matter, too much is probably just about right.

    The pandemic has wreaked personal and economic havoc with people’s lives but in very skewed ways. Some 30 million Americans, or about 9 percent of Americans, have been infected, and nearly 600,000 of them have died. Millions more have suffered real economic setbacks.

    During the second quarter of last year, 45.4 million Americans filed initial claims for unemployment benefits. For these frontline economic casualties of COVID-19 – 30 percent of everyone working — the CARES Act provided $268 billion to add $600 per week to jobless benefits from April through August of 2020.

    That raised the average weekly benefit from $320 to $920, and the two subsequent pandemic relief Acts extended the add-on at $300 per week.

    When Congress passed the CARES Act last March, the economy was in free fall: In the second quarter, GDP would shrink more than 9 percent, or 33 percent at an annual rate. So, on top of the additional jobless benefits, Congress provided $293 billion for direct checks or tax credits of $1,200 for most adults, regardless of their work status, and $600 for most children, on top of $377 billion for businesses under the Payroll Protection Program, up to $500 billion in low-interest loans for large corporations, and $150 billion for state and local governments.

    No one could have known last March that a sizable majority of the country wouldn’t need help. Jobs and incomes began to bounce back last summer; even as COVID-19 continued to spread. While the economy continued to improve through the pandemic’s terrible third wave from October to mid-January of this year, Congress responded with two more mammoth relief measures, one in late December, and then the American Rescue Plan passed this March.

    The two acts provided $310 billion for the $300 per-week add-ons to people’s jobless benefits, even as most of those who had lost their jobs had been rehired.

    They also provided $565 billion in new direct support for 85 percent to 90 percent of all households. That additional assistance came in checks or tax credits of $2,000 for most adults, $3,000 per child, and $3,600 for young children plus $84 billion more in direct support to cover up to $8,000 in childcare expenses.

    Again, the test for receiving these new rounds of assistance was not whether a household suffered pandemic-related losses, but whether its adjusted gross income in 2018 or 2019 was less than $150,000 (for a couple, less than $75,000 for an individual).

    Add it all up, and the three Acts provided a family of two adults with two children earning the median income of $68,703 in 2019, or more than double that amount, government checks or tax credits totaling $14,800 to $16,000—plus another $8,000 for childcare costs.

    The data strongly suggest that the 70 percent of working Americans who did not lose their jobs and almost all retired people did not need anything approaching that much emergency help because they haven’t borne any notable economic costs from the pandemic. The Bureau of Economic Analysis reports that total wage and salary income rose in 2020 despite the spike in unemployment—and that does not count any of the pandemic-related checks, tax credits, and jobless benefits. When we include the benefits under the CARES Act, the total personal income of Americans grew by $1,140 billion in 2020—before the additional assistance passed last December and in March 2021. In 2019, total personal income increased by $700 billion.

    The politics behind this broad-brush generosity are not subtle. The pandemic inflicted stress, anxiety, and demoralizing isolation on almost everyone. With most Americans dispirited and on edge, both parties excluded the most affluent households and opted against picking and choosing those who most needed help among the other 85 to 90 percent of the country.

    Apart from the political benefits, this broad-brushed approach makes real economic sense. It’s mainly about the saving rate. Most Americans responded to the coronavirus pandemic by saving much more of their incomes, in part because so many brick-and-mortar businesses were closed, but mainly in case conditions became even worse.

    The personal savings rate in 2019 had averaged 7.6 percent. By the second quarter of 2020, it soared to 26.0 percent, despite spiking unemployment that briefly depressed total incomes.

    Throughout 2020, Americans on average saved 16.3 percent of their disposable incomes and put aside $1.63 trillion more than they had in 2019. The last time the personal saving rate exceeded 16.3 percent was 1945.

    That’s why we needed such massive and indiscriminate support from the government. Consumer spending rebounded strongly in the third quarter of 2020, and the economy began to recover because the broad-based checks and tax credits from the CARES Act bridged the gaps between incomes, high precautionary savings, and rising consumption. By the fourth quarter, the CARES Act’s bounties were gone, the pandemic was resurging, and the fledgling recovery was at risk. Wage and salary income were rising with employment, but the high saving rate was sharply slowing consumption. Enter two more rounds of checks and tax credits for households and expanded jobless benefits passed in late December 2020 and early March 2021.

    Supporting the economy with large injections of cash linked little (if at all) to actual pandemic-related losses is also evident in the $30.5 billion in new grants for transit systems, the $82.5 billion bailout for certain pension plans, and much of the payroll protection program. Congress also provided more temporary help for low-income Americans who have long needed it, including additional rent assistance, food stamps, and health insurance subsidies.

    It is all part of the same story: The economy will remain fragile until the pandemic is over, and a fragile economy needs measures that give most people more resources to spend as well as save.

    Congress did bar higher-income Americans from its bounty of government checks and tax credits, but the Federal Reserve stepped into that breach. In much the same way that the checks and tax credits prevented economic demand from collapsing, the Fed prevented a possible financial crisis through purchases that an additional $3.4 trillion in credit for financial markets. This flood of new credit has directly supported stock and bond prices, directly benefiting the top 10 percent of Americans that own about 85 percent of those financial assets.

    Thanks to the Fed, the pandemic brought on a new bull market for affluent people, with the S&P 500 recovering all of its early-2020 losses by last August and closing most recently 17 percent above its pre-pandemic high.

    These massive fiscal and monetary interventions are as unprecedented as the sustained public health crisis that dictated them.  Ironically, they accomplished their missions—and attracted the overwhelming public support they needed to pass—by not targeting their enormous resources.  John Maynard Keynes would have expected nothing less, and we all are better off for it.

    _____

    Robert Shapiro is the chairman of Sonecon and a senior fellow at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. He served as undersecretary of commerce for economic affairs under Bill Clinton.

    To see original article please visit: https://washingtonmonthly.com/2021/03/24/the-trillions-in-covid-spending-is-what-the-economy-needed/

    The post Opinion: This time too much is probably just about right appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • 21 GOP-Led States Threaten to Sue to Use COVID Relief on Tax Cuts

    President Joe Biden walks out with Vice President Kamala Harris, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to deliver remarks on the American Rescue Plan in the Rose Garden at the White House on March 12, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    In the decade following the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Texas and 18 other Republican-led states took the extraordinary step of refusing free money — namely, rejecting an infusion of federal funds that would have allowed them to expand Medicaid coverage for many of their uninsured residents.

    Now, the GOP is attempting to orchestrate a redux of this cruel politics. This time around, in pandemic-era 2021, a coalition of 21 states is ginning up a lawsuit to prevent implementation of a key part of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan (ARP), namely a $350 billion investment in local and state governments.

    Back when it was Medicaid expansion that was on the line, there was no good reason for Republican states to block the infusion of federal cash other than sheer orneriness, and a deep-seated aversion to using government resources to improve the prospects of those at the bottom of the social and economic ladders. It wasn’t as if the Medicaid expansion envisioned by the ACA was dumping the problem on states; quite the contrary — it was providing vast federal subsidies to the states to make the lives of their poorer residents a little bit easier. In fact, Medicaid expansion was as close a free lunch for the states as exists in U.S. politics. And yet, GOP states resisted signing on — and in February 2018, many ultimately joined with Texas in suing to overturn the entire Affordable Care Act, a lawsuit the Trump administration signed onto.

    As a result of this ideological intransigence, millions of Americans who would otherwise have been under health care umbrellas were left without stable and regular medical coverage — with devastating results in poor regions, as the COVID-19 crisis has shown. Each year, even absent a deadly pandemic, tens of thousands of Americans die not because their diseases can’t be treated, but because they lack the insurance that would allow them to access that treatment. In 2019, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that more than 17 percent of Texans — 5 million people — lacked health insurance. By the middle of last year, as the pandemic ravaged the state, that number had grown by an additional 659,000.

    The ARP’s $350 billion to the cities and state wouldn’t lead to simply a few marginal investments and minor grants that remain largely “out of sight, out of mind” for the public. Instead, sums of money this large represent an infusion of so much cash that it has the potential to transform infrastructure very much in the public eye: school systems, public transport and housing infrastructure, public health systems, environmental support networks, and many other critical services and systems for decades to come. The Brookings Institute recently published a report on how cities and states could spend the money; among other conclusions, it recommended massively shoring up the country’s public health infrastructure, bulking up affordable housing, and creating regional recovery coordinating councils to bring in both the public and private sectors in reimagining local economies.

    The immediate impetus for sending such large sums of money to local and state governments was to protect services and public workers during a period when, because of the pandemic, upwards of 1.4 million of these workers had been laid off. But, beyond simply protecting existing jobs, the sums of money involved are large enough to allow for important investments that, for decades, cash-strapped governments have been unable to make. The American Society of Civil Engineers recently awarded the United States a C- grade for the quality of its aging infrastructure — and that was actually an improvement over the D grades the society has handed out in previous years. That a country as affluent and resource-rich as the U.S. can fail so dismally when it comes to maintaining or developing state-of-the-art infrastructure has nothing to do with an innate lack of resources and everything to do with political failings and an inability to raise enough tax revenues to make such projects possible.

    Biden’s ARP is ambitious in many ways, and arguably nowhere more so than in its belief that injecting enough money into cities and states will be able to kick-start these long-delayed societal improvements.

    There is, however, a catch. The ARP’s authors were aware of the political temptations states and cities would face to use the funds to pad their general funds and then seek political capital with voters by handing out tax cuts. And so, to minimize this risk, the monies distributed to local and state governments under the ARP come with a caveat: While they can be used to build private-public partnerships, they cannot be used simply to cut taxes.

    That’s where the Republican attorneys general have stepped in. Such a restriction is, they are arguing, an infringement on basic constitutional rights that states have to set their own tax rates. Last week, Ohio became the first of the 21 states to sue the Biden administration over this provision. In the coming weeks, other states will likely follow suit.

    There is more than a whiff of hypocrisy to these lawsuits. For, even though every GOP member of the Senate voted against the ARP, there’s no indication that, if the tax-provision was removed, Republican-led states and cities would reject the money. Rather, after lambasting Democrats for what they call a “bailout” of “mismanaged” blue cities and states, they now want to be able to use at least part of those funds to continue their decades-long rollback of taxes, especially those levied against high-earning individuals and companies. They want to retain the right to do so even if those tax-breaks — giveaways aimed at consolidating local support for the GOP — come at the expense of social programs urgently needed by those at the bottom of the economy. And, to that end, they are willing to ask the courts to spike the entire $350 billion unless they get their way on taxes.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Rashida Tlaib has reintroduced her bill for an emergency UBI of $2,000 a month

    The Automatic Boost to Communities (or ABC) Act is cosponsored by U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal and is a long shot to say the least.

    By Todd Spangler

    On the heels of Congress’ approval of a $1.9-trillion plan to address the fallout from COVID-19, U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib on Tuesday reintroduced legislation that, if passed, would provide monthly payments of $2,000 to every American during the crisis.

    “Our residents shouldn’t have to play a waiting game on the question of their survival,” said Tlaib, D-Detroit.

    “If the last year has shown us anything, it’s that our families are in dire need.”

    The measure, which Tlaib calls the Automatic Boost to Communities (or ABC) Act and is cosponsored by U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Washington State, is a long shot to say the least. Democrats hold only a slim majority in the House, and the Senate, where a 60-vote threshold is needed to pass most bills, is evenly divided at 50-50.

    But the legislation may continue a developing discussion in Congress over the possibility of someday authorizing direct, recurring payments such as those proposed in last year’s presidential campaign by current New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang.

    Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Detroit, speaks at a tour at Ford Field to promote the COVID-19 vaccine that will be distributed starting March 24 at Ford Field in Detroit.
    Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Detroit, speaks at a tour at Ford Field to promote the COVID-19 vaccine that will be distributed starting March 24 at Ford Field in Detroit. Mandi Wright, Detroit Free Press.

    On Tuesday, Tlaib said she was encouraged when other Democrats during last year’s debates over COVID-19 relief checks began to discuss the possibility of recurring payments during the pandemic and its aftermath, though they broke down over when they would be triggered and their amount.

    “I would love to have that conversation on what that looks like,” she said.

    Specifically, the ABC Act would call for every American, including noncitizens in the country for at least three months, to receive, through direct bank deposits or prepaid debit cards, $2,000 a month for as long as the pandemic is considered a national emergency. For a year following that, payments of $1,000 would continue each month.

    In order to pay for it — and get around rules regarding how congressional analysts calculate the nation’s debt — the legislation calls for the U.S. Mint to create two trillion-dollar coins that would then be purchased by the Federal Reserve, which helps manage the nation’s money supply. The money would then be moved into the U.S. Treasury to cover the cost of the payments — with more coins being minted if needed.

    Tlaib, who represents a congressional district with one of the highest percentage of impoverished constituents in the nation, said it would help families desperate to find work and pay bills because of the economic slowdown and provide a needed injection of cash to small businesses everywhere.

    The bill also calls for the creation of an Emergency Responder Corps to contact at-risk and vulnerable communities to make sure they get access to the funds.

    The COVID-19 relief bill passed by Congress recently provided checks of $1,400 to many Americans but it phased out as an individual’s or family’s income got higher. And while many progressives may cheer the idea of recurring payments, it’s far from clear that Democrats representing more moderate constituencies would embrace it.

    One argument that has been raised against government injecting cash directly into the economy has been that it could trigger higher levels of inflation. 

    If the government were to simply print money and give it out, that argument goes, prices and wages would increase, lowering the real value of the currency.

    But Tlaib said Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has said that rampant inflation is not a particular worry with the economy still hurting from the pandemic and the associated slowdowns. Still, Powell’s comments were given around a much-less dramatic proposal than Tlaib’s.

    _____

    To see original article please visit: https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2021/03/23/rashida-tlaib-covid-payments/6967951002/

    The post Rashida Tlaib has reintroduced her bill for an emergency UBI of $2,000 a month appeared first on Basic Income Today.

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  • Eighteen-month basic income pilot for 600 people of color to be launched in Oakland, California

    By Sarah Ravani

    Oakland plans to start a guaranteed income program this spring for 600 residents — one of the largest such programs in the country, city officials said — as Bay Area leaders search for solutions to rising poverty and inequality in the wake of the pandemic.

    Through the pilot program, residents will receive $500 a month for at least 18 months with no strings attached, Mayor Libby Schaaf said at a Tuesday news conference. Checks could be in residents’ hands by this spring or summer. Low-income families — with at least one child under 18 — who are Black, indigenous or people of color will be randomly selected through an application process to vet eligibility, Schaaf said. Officials said those groups suffer from the greatest wealth disparity, according to data on Oakland’s population.

    More than 70,000 people — or 16.7% of Oakland’s population — live in poverty, according to the U.S. Census.

    “Our vision is an Oakland that has closed the racial wealth gap and where all families thrive,” Schaaf said of the Oakland Resilient Families program.

    “We believe that guaranteed income is the most transformative policy that can achieve this vision and whose time has come.”

    In the wake of devastating job losses during the pandemic that have exacerbated housing and food insecurity, guaranteed income is gaining momentum. San Francisco is considering a similar program and voted in December to begin studying a pilot program for between 500 and 1,000 residents.

    Supporters say that guaranteed income, which provides cash payments with no strings attached, can lift people out of poverty, address income inequality, alleviate stress and improve health. Critics say the programs are expensive and could discourage people from working. They also worry that if it replaces other federal programs, as some supporters advocate, it would hurt — rather than help — low-income people.

    Oakland’s program is different than some other cities because it’s focused on people of color.

    In Oakland, residents — regardless of immigration status —who are at or below 50% of area median income — about $59,000 per year for a family of three — are eligible. Half of the spots are reserved for very-low-income families earning below 138% of the federal poverty level — about $30,000 per year for a family of three.

    “The program sounds very promising,” said Candice Elder, executive director of East Oakland Collective, a community organization that helps homeless and low-income people.

    “What we learned from the COVID-19 pandemic is how the community needs universal income… with no strings attached. And I’m glad Oakland is following in the footsteps of Stockton.”

    Oakland is paying for the program with private donations from Blue Meridian Partners, a philanthropic organization focused on poverty. So far, it’s raised more than $6.7 million and about 80% of those funds are going into the hands of residents. The Family Independence Initiative, a national nonprofit based in Oakland focused on fighting poverty, will run the program and it will begin with East Oakland residents before opening applications to other parts of the city.

    Jesús Gerena, the CEO of Family Independence Initiative, said the program will first target East Oakland because it has the “highest concentration of eligible families” and is one of the worst COVID-19 hot spots in the Bay Area.

    Prospective participants can apply now by filling out a multilingual online form with eligibility screening questions. The city’s goal is to get checks into the hands of 300 residents this spring and 300 more by the summer.

    The initiative is modeled after Stockton’s program, which provided $500 every month to 125 people for 24 months. Launched by former Mayor Michael Tubbs, Stockton led one of the first guaranteed income programs in the U.S.

    Tubbs, who lost re-election in 2020, said Tuesday when the program was first launched, opponents said people would stop working and would instead spend their money on drugs and alcohol. That didn’t happen, he said.

    “Civil rights has always been about protection — not just from police brutality but also from the brutality of poverty, the brutality of economic insecurity, the brutality of not being able to know if your bills will be paid every month and not because you’re not working hard,” Tubbs said.

    “We found that people were healthier. People were able to show up as parents, as partners and as neighbors,” he added.

    Jesse Rothstein, a professor of public policy and economics at UC Berkeley, said there is no doubt that giving people money helps. Rothstein, who co-authored a study called Universal Basic Income in the U.S. and Advanced Countries, said studies show that programs like basic income or food stamps help families and result in better outcomes for kids.

    While pilot programs are a critical first step, permanent programs are needed, Rothstein said. And that’s dependent on the federal government getting involved because it requires an “enormous amount of money.”

    “As you think about going beyond the pilot to something more general, you can’t ignore the question of how we are going to come up with the resources,” Rothstein said.

    Schaaf said she hopes that Oakland’s pilot program, as well as others throughout the country, will prove why the federal government needs to invest in guaranteed income.

    Surisa King, a 53-year-old mother who lives in East Oakland, is a disabled veteran who served in the Navy for four years. She receives $1,000 a month for disability and has been struggling financially. She has racked up parking tickets because there’s no available free parking near her apartment and a nearby garage costs $240 a month — which she can’t afford.

    King, who expressed interest in the city’s program, said it’s “very difficult living on a limited income, especially when you factor in food, car insurance, AAA and rent.”

    Phillip DeVaughn, a 66-year-old Oakland resident, said he lost his job as a track and field coach for high school students due to the pandemic. His only income is a $1,700 social security check every month.

    DeVaughn said having that extra $500 a month would help.

    “When I saw the guaranteed income program, it looked like something that could be of benefit to a retiree,” he said before asking how to apply.

    Guaranteed income has gained interest among city leaders in recent years and even some tech leaders, including Mark Zuckerberg. Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang ran his campaign on the idea and announced last May that his nonprofit, Humanity Forward, will issue $500 a month for five years to 20 residents in Hudson, New York.

    Last year, Tubbs formed Mayors for a Guaranteed Income Coalition — which includes mayors from Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Atlanta and Oakland — to advocate for these programs.

    Councilman Loren Taylor said Oakland’s program has the “benefit” of learning from other similar initiatives.

    “There is a network of public entities, institutions that are doing guaranteed income — we are building on that as opposed to starting from ground zero with a blank slate,” he said.

    Taylor said guaranteed income will most help those struggling the most.

    “It’s definitely exciting,” he said. “It’s huge for Oakland.”

    _____

    Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani

    To see original article please visit: https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/Oakland-to-launch-one-of-the-largest-universal-16045456.php

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  • Two-year basic income pilot for at least 3,000 rural residents to be launched in South Korea

    “The results of this experiment will demonstrate whether basic income is a fleeting issue or a means by which to solve problems such as future income inequality.”

    By Sarah Wray

    Gyeonggi Province is set to launch a publicly funded trial of basic income for rural residents, with a view to providing evidence for local and national expansion. It is understood to be the first universal basic income (UBI) experiment of its type in South Korea.

    The initiative, led by Gyeonggi Province Governor Lee Jaemyung, aims to address challenges such as an ageing society, declining population, job losses and falls in income, as well as the broader threat of job automation.

    Dong-kwang Ahn, a spokesperson for Gyeonggi Provincial Government, told Cities Today:

    “We deem the sustainability crisis of rural areas to be comparable to the national problem that is expected to emerge with the Fourth Industrial Revolution.”

    The details of the pilot are still being finalised but by the second half of this year, between 3,000 and 7,000 rural Gyeonggi residents will begin receiving a payment of between KRW 100,000 (US$89) and KRW 500,000 (US$443) per month. The installments will last for at least two years, regardless of the recipients’ income, assets or employment status. Data will be collected and compared to that of a control group living in a similar area.

    The pilot will study the impact of the basic income on psychological wellbeing, the economy, employment and inequality.

    In a bid to stimulate the local economy, the payments will be provided in a form of regional currency, rather than cash, with a set period in which the funds must be used.

    “We believe that this community-level rural basic income social experiment will provide an opportunity to form a national consensus on basic income, advancing it to the national level,” Ahn said.

    International trend

    The programme highlights the growing international interest in guaranteed income schemes in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and other societal shifts. As many as 25 US cities plan to launch guaranteed income pilots this year, inspired by the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED), which recently released positive preliminary results. However, these programmes are mainly on a smaller scale, privately funded and constrained to low-income residents.

    Gyeonggi Province, which is the most populous region in South Korea, has committed KRW 2.7 billion (US$2.4 million) for the pilot and new legislation is underway to support it.

    “Unlike cases in other countries, Gyeonggi Province is considering policies with sustainability in mind…rather than one-time experiments through donation or charity or unstable experiments that do not guarantee regularity,” Ahn said.

    The initiative builds on existing programmes in the province. Under Gyeonggi’s Youth Basic Income programme, all 24-year-old residents receive KRW 250,000 every quarter, totalling KRW 1 million over one year. The policy was launched in 2016 when Governor Lee was Mayor of Seongnam City and has since been expanded throughout the whole province.

    Ahn said recipients have shown “increased levels of social interest, such as greater satisfaction and positivity in life as well as more favourable views of the role of local government.”

    In addition, the Gyeonggi Provincial Government made two rounds of COVID-19 relief payments via local currency to residents and said that through this, “the economic and income distribution effects of basic income have been affirmed”.

    Ahn said: “There is an apparent limitation in determining the effectiveness of universal basic income based only on the examples given above or as one-time payments. So, we have designed an experiment to pinpoint the changes that the basic income policy will bring, as well as problems and complementary aspects, before pursuing a universal basic income policy in the future.”

    “The results of this experiment will demonstrate whether basic income is a fleeting issue or a means by which to solve problems such as future income inequality,” he added.

    Scepticism

    UBI has plenty of detractors, though, many of who question both the premise and its practicality.

    “What proponents of basic income overlook is that individuals need money and public services. And the state must provide those services. But they’ll collapse if UBI is adopted,” Woo Seok-jin, economic professor at Seoul’s Myongji University told Voice of America earlier this month.

    He argued that while he is in favour of more targeted government assistance programmes, de-linking employment and income is too drastic.

    “Pre-empting future risks is good, but changing the system because of a future that hasn’t even arrived yet is just not realistic,” he is quoted as saying.

    _____

    To see original article please visit: https://cities-today.com/korean-local-government-to-pilot-basic-income/

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  • Investors poured record $56.8 billion into stock-market funds as stimulus checks arrived

    ‘Payments may be making their way into mutual funds and ETFs’: Goldman Sachs analysts wrote.

    By William Watts

    Stock-market investors poured a record amount of money into U.S. equity mutual funds and exchange-traded funds in the past week as the Dow Jones Industrial Average topped another milestone and the S&P 500 index also touched a record.

    BofA Global Research on Friday said U.S. equity inflows hit a weekly record of $56.76 billion in the week ending March 17, up sharply from $16.83 billion a week earlier. The Dow DJIA, -0.28% on March 17 closed above the 33,000 for the first time, while the S&P 500 SPX, -0.18% also finished at an all-time high.

    BOFA GLOBAL RESEARCH

    Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs estimated that net flows into global equity funds hit a nominal record of $68 billion in the week ended March 17, which when scaled to the level of mutual-fund equity assets was the largest since December 2014.

    The rise was largely due to bigger net inflows into the U.S. market, which coincided with the initial distribution of stimulus checks of up to $1,400 for qualified U.S. citizens as part of the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package signed into law by President Joe Biden earlier this month, said analysts at Goldman Sachs, in a Friday note.

    Through March 17, the Treasury had distributed $242 billion in stimulus checks, or around 60% of the expected total.

    “These payments may be making their way into mutual funds and ETFs, as well as other assets,” the Goldman analysts wrote.

    “All industry categories saw positive net inflows on the week; the largest net purchases as a share of [asssets under management] were of industrials and telecom.

    Surveys have attempted to gauge how much of the stimulus checks were likely to find their way into the market, including via individual stock buys and purchases of other assets, including bitcoin.

    Both the S&P 500 and Dow pulled back from Wednesday’s records, as a continued selloff in the Treasury market pushed the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note TMUBMUSD10Y, 1.650% to a 14-month high above 1.75% on Thursday.

    BofA said government bond fund inflows weakened to just $60 million from $1.18 billion the previous week amid still-elevated volatility in rates, while municipals and mortgages saw inflows of $1.09 billion and $300 million, respectively, not far off the $990 million and $470 million seen a week earlier.

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    To see original article please visit: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/investors-poured-record-56-8-billion-into-stock-market-funds-as-stimulus-checks-arrived-11616177039

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  • Paterson’s basic income pilot program — 110 families will get $400 a month — moves forward

    Families will not get cash or checks, but debit cards they can use to make purchases. 110 Paterson families will receive $400 per month for one year with no restrictions on how they spend the money.

    By Joe Malinconico

    The City Council seems set to sign off on a program launched by the mayor that would provide 110 Paterson families with $400 per month for one year with no restrictions on how they spend the money.

    Residents later this month will be able to submit applications to participate in a lottery for the 110 slots, a drawing that will be conducted by the Center for Guaranteed Income Research at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice, officials said.

    Those selected to get the monthly installments of $400 would be part of a study being conducted by Penn to examine the impact of the extra money on the recipients’ lives, officials said.

    Another 44 individuals and families would be picked to be part of “a control group” that would not get the added income and would be used by the school as a basis for comparison. Those in the control group would receive things like gift cards in return for their participation, officials said.

    Paterson will be one of about 14 cities around the country participating in the Penn study.

    The money given to participants will come from a $15 million donation that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey made to a group called Mayors for Guaranteed Income, officials said.

    The City Council discussed the program Tuesday night and is scheduled to vote on whether to approve Paterson’s participation at its meeting next week. Mayor Andre Sayegh has been talking about the initiative for about a year and recently has been holding virtual community and town hall meetings about it. Sayegh said families will not get cash or checks, but debit cards they can use to make purchases.

    Councilman Shahin Khalique said some city residents have been confused about who will pick the people getting the money for the study. Sayegh administration officials said applications will go directly to Penn and that the lottery will be conducted by the university.

    “The council is not choosing; the mayor is not choosing,” said Business Administrator Kathleen Long.

    The income limits for participants are $30,000 for individuals and $88,000 for families, officials said. Applicants must be Paterson residents and ages 18 and above.

    Councilman Luis Velez expressed concern about public perception of the guaranteed income program because the city has a mayoral election next year.

    “We don’t want to send a wrong message,” Velez said. “We’re in an election cycle. It can be used for political gain.”

    Velez suggested the city should run the program through its human services department instead of the mayor’s office. But Councilman Al Abdelaziz said his colleague should focus on the positive aspects of the program and not worry about which city office is handling it.

    “It could come out of the chief custodian’s office as long as the checks get to the families,” Abdelaziz said.

    Councilman Michael Jackson questioned the income limits for the program, saying someone making about $25,000 per year would have much greater need for the extra money than families with annual incomes around $75,000.

    Sayegh administration officials said the income restrictions were based on “living wage” guidelines for New Jersey.

    City officials said residents with questions about the program should text them to 973-531-7301.

    _____

    Joe Malinconico is editor of Paterson Press.

    To see original article please visit: https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/paterson-press/2021/03/04/paterson-nj-guaranteed-income-program-moves-forward/6908037002/

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  • Biden’s Child Benefit Will Make Rent Affordable for Half a Million American Families With Children

    The newly enacted child tax credit has the potential to reduce the number of rent-burdened households with children by nearly 9%.

    By Dana Anderson

    The newly enacted child tax credit, which will put an average of $221 per month into the pockets of families earning $150,000 or less with children, would make housing go from unaffordable to affordable for roughly half a million American families.

    Just over 5 million families in that category nationwide would be rent-burdened—meaning they spend more than 30% of their gross income on rent—with the credit, down 8.6% from about 5.5 million families before the introduction of the credit.

    The child tax credit, part of the newly approved $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill that some analysts predict could cut child poverty in half, isn’t meant to directly tackle housing affordability. But because paying for housing is a major expense in raising children, this report analyzes how the bill could decrease the burden of paying rent for families with children. The credit would have a small but significant impact on helping a more reasonable portion of income go toward rent, but federal and state governments should focus on permanent strategies to make housing available and affordable for all Americans.

    It’s just one provision that will provide financial help to low- and middle-income Americans—the bill also provides stimulus checks and extended unemployment benefits, among other things. But the child tax credit has the potential to become permanent, which means it could have a bigger long-term impact than the bill’s other provisions.

    “Although the expanded child tax credit would make housing affordable for many low- and middle-income families, a huge number of them would remain rent-burdened, particularly in expensive parts of the country,” said Redfin Chief Economist Daryl Fairweather.

    “That speaks to the severity of the housing affordability crisis in this country.”

    The research in this report finds that nearly half of the American families included in this analysis are currently rent-burdened. Although that share would be reduced to about 45% with the child tax credit, that’s still a large portion of middle-class families who have a hard time paying rent.

    “The stimulus package and tax credit are a promising start and they will certainly help a lot of families pay rent and put food on the table,” Fairweather continued.

    “But it’s critical that the Biden administration implement long-term policies that substantially increase the supply of affordable housing to improve housing security for low-income families and help abate the homelessness crisis.”

    The child tax credit provides a $3,000 annual benefit for each child aged 6 to 17 and $3,600 for each child under the age of 6, with the full credit available to couples earning up to $150,000. That’s up from the previous credit of $2,000 per child. Redfin’s analysis compares the number of households that earn less than $150,000 with children that were rent-burdened before the new  tax credit to the number that would be once the credit goes into effect. The analysis calculates the average amount families will receive in child tax credits by metro area, taking into account the average number of children in each age range in that metro. The data in this report is from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 1-year American Community Survey for 2019.

    The median family included in this analysis has two children, pays $1,294 in monthly rent and earns $50,247 per year.

    The credit provision will have the biggest impact on low-income families in relatively affordable areas like El Paso and Raleigh, mainly because extra money goes further in places where rent and other costs are already less expensive. It will have a smaller impact on pricey areas like the Bay Area and Los Angeles.

    See the table at bottom of original article for metro-level detail on the potential impact of the child tax credit on paying for housing.

    _____

    As a data journalist at Redfin, Dana Anderson writes about the numbers behind real estate trends. Her dream home is either on the beach or in the mountains, but either way, it has a comfortable window seat and cozy fireplace.

    To see original article please visit: https://www.redfin.com/news/child-tax-credit-impact-affordable-housing/

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  • Child Tax Credit Opens the Door for UBI

    Biden’s stimulus plan contains an experiment in Universal Basic Income. The bill’s child tax credit has the potential to change the way that the United States addresses poverty.

    By Sheelah Kolhatkar

    On Tuesday, March 9th, Amy Castro Baker stood on her front porch and watched as her two teen-age children boarded a bus and went off to school together for the first time in a year. Her sense of relief was profound. Baker, a researcher of economic mobility and an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy & Practice, had been through a challenging period familiar to most parents—and especially to working mothers. For the past year, she had balanced the demands of a full-time job with overseeing her kids’ online schooling, while also cooking, cleaning, and running the household as a single parent.

    “We’re at the point in my home where it’s a choice between what’s higher risk, covid or my kids’ mental health,” Baker said. “I’m not sure I could have handled another month.”

    These are the kinds of difficulties that the American Rescue Plan, the $1.9-trillion pandemic-relief bill recently passed by Congress, was designed to address. Benefits in the bill could help millions of families who are facing similar challenges and are living under much greater financial precarity.

    The bill, which was signed by President Joe Biden on Thursday, offers a variety of benefits intended to address economic hardship caused by the pandemic.

    No Republicans voted for the legislation, largely based on the argument that the pandemic will end soon and the economy doesn’t need the help. And it’s true that some aspects of the legislation go beyond the demands of the pandemic, addressing economic disparities that existed before covid-19 hit. The bill includes provisions to give one-time, fourteen-hundred-dollar payments to individuals earning fewer than eighty thousand dollars a year, and to increase unemployment insurance by three hundred dollars per week until early September.

    But it is the plan’s expanded, fully refundable child tax credit—which is worth thirty-six hundred dollars for each child under age six and three thousand dollars for those aged six to seventeen—that has the greatest potential to change the way that the United States addresses poverty.

    _____

    Sheelah Kolhatkar is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she writes about Wall Street, Silicon Valley, economics, and politics. She is the author of “Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street.”

    To see original article please visit: https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/joe-bidens-stimulus-plan-contains-an-experiment-in-universal-basic-income?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_031521&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&bxid=5bd66f832ddf9c6194388f0d&cndid=21862528&hasha=4b8351c39eab9a607e0729efcc51c26d&hashb=f76512918a8feeca6884ef8539e55ed2daa041a9&hashc=89b19f33b8b780fe458223e541d60addc12272dcbac4e272bb9cfbcd8ddd1214&esrc=AUTO_PRINT&mbid=CRMNYR012019&utm_term=TNY_Daily

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  • New book, The Case for Basic Income, explores current challenges in todays climate

    “Although there is now a little library of books on Basic Income, we believe that our effort is unique in that it tells detailed, personal stories of people in Lindsay and Hamilton who received BI from 2017 to 2019 when the Ontario BI Pilot was in operation,” says Swift.

    By Jessica Foley

    The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed many discrepancies in our society. One of these inequalities, the idea of a liveable and obligation-free basic income (BI), is the subject of a new book by authors Jamie Swift and Elaine Power.

    The Case for Basic Income distills decades of research, in order to present the history of basic income and examine the issue in the context of current challenges to the job market, including precarious employment, automation, the climate crisis, and COVID-19, according to a press release from ZG Stories, who are promoting the book.

    Power came to Kingston in 2004 to begin a faculty position in what is now the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen’s University. Soon after her arrival, she sought out local anti-poverty activists and met Swift. A longtime social justice advocate, Swift took part in a weekly social justice vigil that started in 1995, standing in front of Kingston City Hall on Fridays.

    “That’s when a poor-bashing provincial government slashed social assistance by 22 per cent,” Swift said. “Those rates have never recovered. Many people live in poverty, obliged to wonder every single day about paying for food, shelter, and other basics.

    “Poverty produces uncertainty and insecurity, generating anxiety that, in a perverse cascade effect, produces stress-related disease. Millions of our fellow citizens – especially racialized people and newcomers who aspire to citizenship – are colonized by stress and uncertainty.”

    At Queen’s, Power developed and taught HLTH 101, The Social Determinants of Health, which examines the impacts of social factors, including income and education, on health. “Income is one of the most important determinants of health, operating through multiple pathways,” Swift shared with Kingstonist. “After guest speaker Rob Rainer came to Elaine’s class to discuss the idea of Basic Income to eliminate poverty, Rob joined a gathering of interested Kingstonians, including the authors, to discuss the development of an advocacy campaign to promote Basic Income.”

    Within two years the Kingston Action Group for a Basic Income Guarantee had succeeded in getting City Council to pass, unanimously, a motion in support of Basic Income.

    Kingston was the first city in Canada to do so, and many other municipalities have followed suit.

    After the Ontario Basic Income Pilot was announced (2016), the pair discussed the idea of writing a book using stories of Pilot participants. Swift was looking for a new project, having finished a book on how Canada commemorates First World War, titled The Vimy Trap. “Elaine had become a Basic Income advocate, travelling around, making presentations of the need for a BI, while amassing a fat bibliography of academic material that supported the policy proposal,” Swift said.

    “At the same time, interest in an idea that went back to the 16th century had been growing. The time seemed right.”

    They were in the midst of doing interviews for the book when the Ontario Basic Income Pilot was cancelled by the Doug Ford government (Aug, 1, 2018) after less than half of its committed three-year time span.

    “The lives of 4,000 low-income Ontarians enrolled in the Pilot in Hamilton, Lindsay and Thunder Bay were thrown into turmoil,” Swift said. “The rigourous scientific data collection plan was cancelled, a huge blow to social science- and evidence-based public policy decision making. The Pilot had attracted attention from media, social scientists, and basic income advocates around the world. Its loss was also felt globally.”

    “Our book’s dedication reads: To the 4,000 courageous people who took a chance on the Ontario Basic Income Pilot — and whose good faith hopes were shattered when a Progressive Conservative government arbitrarily and prematurely cancelled it,” he said.

    “Although there is now a little library of books on BI (sign of the spreading interest), we believe that our effort is unique in that it tells detailed, personal stories of people in Lindsay and Hamilton who received BI from 2017 to 2019 when the Ontario BI Pilot was in operation,” shared Swift.

    “So it’s the time-tested, journalistic device of using people (and place, as well) as prisms though which issues are reflected — Humanizing, personalizing.

    “We really hope these stories can help personalize issues around BI, although the book is surely chockablock with data and analysis.”

    The Case for Basic Income will be available on May 3, 2021 at book retailers everywhere.

    _____

    To see original article please visit: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2021/03/08/new-book-the-case-for-basic-income-explores-current-challenges-in-todays-climate.html

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  • UBI Gains a Friend in High Places

    He is best known for his work on a Stockton pilot project that provided $500 a month to a small group of low-income residents.

    By Carla Marinucci

    OAKLAND, Calif. — Gov. Gavin Newsom has tapped former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs, nationally known for his work on universal basic income, to become an adviser on income inequality, child poverty and California’s economic recovery from Covid-19.

    Tubbs, 30, is best known for his work on a Stockton pilot project that provided $500 a month to a small group of low-income residents, a concept that became part of the national political conversation and was promoted by Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang. A rising Democratic star, Tubbs suffered a surprising loss in his November bid for a third term.

    He told POLITICO that he will become Newsom’s “special adviser on economic mobility and opportunity” beginning Tuesday, with a special emphasis on the Central Valley, where unemployment and poverty rates have been among the highest in the state.

    The position is unpaid.

    “California is the fifth largest economy in the world, and one of the most diverse places in the world,” Tubbs said. “And the governor and I are in agreement that economic gains and opportunity have to be broadly shared.’’

    Tubbs was a Stockton success story, growing up in the disadvantaged south side of town before going to Stanford University. He was elected mayor of Stockton at age 22, becoming one of the youngest elected officials in the country. His advocacy on income equality issues and UBI efforts made him the focus of the HBO documentary, “Stockton on My Mind.”

    The decision by Tubbs to become a high-profile ambassador and actor in Newsom’s administration comes as the governor is facing the growing specter of a recall, with proponents claiming they’ve already collected more than the 1.5 million valid signatures they need to qualify the election by a March 17 deadline.

    In an upset last November, Tubbs was defeated in the wake of fierce criticism from a local blog, police and firefighter opposition and criticism from residents who said he had not done enough to solve the city’s homelessness and crime problems.

    Tubbs said he was wooed for a Biden administration job — and that he accepted it — before deciding instead to stay in California and focus on helping his home state rebound from the pandemic.

    Asked whether his move was related to the recall, Tubbs said, “Most people in this country and in the state understand the recall is utter nonsense. I really view my role as providing extra willpower and extra firepower to the governor’s initiatives that are already ongoing.”

    Tubbs’ announcement comes on the heels of a newly-released study which showed the universal basic income experiment he launched in Stockton — giving randomly selected residents $500 per month for two years with no strings attached — “measurably improved participants’ job prospects, financial stability and overall well-being,” NPR reported.

    Among the key findings of the report by independent researchers were that the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED) cash infusions slashed month-to-month income fluctuations that households face and boosted the full-time employment of recipients by 12 percentage points. The program also appeared to address key mental health issues related to poverty, including measurable feelings of anxiety and depression, the study suggested.

    _____

    To see original article please visit: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/11/michael-tubbs-gavin-newsom-economic-adviser-475375

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  • Opinion: The new monthly child benefit shuts the door on Reagan’s punitive welfare legacy

    How government-provided cash gives people the tools to solve their own problems.

    By Aisha Nyandoro and Natalie Foster

    As President Joe Biden prepares to sign the American Rescue Plan, a surprising bipartisan hero has emerged: the Child Tax Credit. The new law will nearly double this already-existing credit for one year and send $250 to $300 per child every month to almost every family in America. Biden and Democrats in Congress have expressed support for making these changes permanent. And the enthusiasm for the policy extends across the aisle, with Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) introducing his own version. 

    For those of us working in economic policy, this is nothing short of revolutionary—a guaranteed income for families with children is estimated to cut child poverty in half, bringing close to 5 million American children out of poverty.

    It is a major step forward to leave the punitive welfare system of the past four decades in the past, and instead embrace the simplicity and efficacy of unconditional cash.

    Much of the foundation for the insufficient and conditional nature of our current benefits system can be attributed to GOP idol Ronald Reagan. His administration paved the way for a generation of conservatives to eviscerate the social safety net by fear-mongering about fraud and waste by the poor, all while slashing taxes on the wealthy. Decades of policy were shaped by this false narrative, which is still evident in conservative hand-wringing over whether pandemic aid was too generous to minimum-wage workers struggling to survive through COVID-19.

    Aspects of the Reagan era can be seen in where the original Child Tax Credit fell short: it shows our limits on who we think is deserving.

    It did not go far enough in addressing the needs of the full family—for example, a disabled adult under a parent’s care, or an aunt without children whose lost her job due to COVID. What makes the new Child Tax Credit remarkable is the fact that it is unconditional—no complicated hoops to jump through or minimum income requirements of parents. Families will simply receive checks.

    With the dual crises of racial injustice and a virus response only now being taken seriously by a new White House, Americans must finally rid our politics of the poisonous ideology surrounding poverty in the U.S.

    For far too long, we’ve been sold a reductive story that people are poor because they don’t work hard and deserve to be.

    That people who are wealthy are rich because they work hard and deserve to be.

    This morality tale is a lie. Who is working harder—the CEO who leaves the office at 5 p.m. or the cleaner who spends the night scrubbing down the office? The truth is, our economic system has been engineered to funnel wealth to the very top, while the working class pay the price. The pandemic has illustrated the stark results: the collective wealth of America’s billionaires has grown by 36%—$1 trillion—while eight out of 10 U.S. households earning under $50,000 are still having difficulty meeting basic needs each week. We need to build an economy that recognizes a person’s inherent worth and ensures that we are all given the opportunity to not just survive—but thrive.

    The path to shared prosperity and common-sense policy should begin where the need does—within the community. We see how this pays off in a program like Magnolia Mother’s Trust in Jackson, Miss. It was developed through a process that was created based on the needs of the families living in subsidized housing it serves. Potential recipients had similar stories of waiting for hours at government offices to “prove” they were still poor, being penalized in lost benefits if they were able to scrape together a semblance of savings to try and get an apartment in a safer part of town. When asked what would help them achieve economic stability, the answers ranged from owning a reliable car to get to work to coming up with tuition money for their last semester of community college.

    The challenges were individual, but the solution was universal: cash. 

    The “radically resident-driven” nonprofit, Springboard to Opportunities, developed a program to provide a group of mothers $1,000 a month for a year. The results were more promising than any job training or budgeting seminar. The initial 20 recipients paid off $10,000 in predatory debt. The amount of meals made at home versus picking up fast food or takeout more than doubled. At the end of the first year, all the participants said they were able to pay their basic needs. Now expanded to 110 mothers, the second year is about to wrap up. While the data will take some time to collect, the money was crucial—the first payments went out on March 15, 2020, just as the U.S. was entering lockdown.

    One mother, Mimi, saw her hours as an Olive Garden server evaporate overnight. Unemployment insurance was slow and unreliable. She didn’t have health insurance, and worried about going back to work once the restaurant resumed service. The $1,000 from the program was the only steady source of income she had to care for herself and her children. 

    There are millions of Mimis across this country, and they deserve help—not judgment.

    Policies like the Child Tax Credit and recurring direct checks can provide them the agency and choice they need to do what’s best for themselves and their families. This pandemic has shown what we know to be true: cash gives people the tools to solve their own problems. Direct cash payments have driven poverty reduction and boosted local economies, but perhaps most important—cash has been a lifeline for people to meet basic needs and fill in the gaps in their own personal safety nets. 

    It’s time to relegate Reagan-era welfare policy to the history books and follow the new trail blazed toward equity, trust and dignity we are seeing U.S. leaders finally embrace.

    _____

    Aisha Nyandoro is the CEO of Springboard to Opportunities and the founder of the Magnolia Mother’s Trust guaranteed income program. Natalie Foster is co-chair of the Economic Security Project.

    To see original article please visit: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/covid-relief-package-lifts-millions-of-children-out-of-poverty-and-shuts-the-door-on-reagans-punitive-welfare-legacy-11615407139

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  • Conservative Party President Calls for Universal Basic Income in Belgium

    By Helen Lyons

    Working towards a universal basic income is urgent, says Georges-Louis Bouchez, president of the conservative Mouvement Reformateur party (MR).

    Bouchez spoke about the idea of a guaranteed €1,000 monthly income for Belgians that would replace all other social services, calling it an opportunity for people to “take control of their lives,” in an interview with De Tijd.

    It isn’t the first time the MR president has brought up the idea. He wrote about universal basic income (UBI) in his book, where he also said, “My generation is the first in contemporary history to consider that its future will be worse than that of the one that precedes it.”

    By using UBI to replace other social services, Bouchez says it will be affordable without having to increase taxes.

    “If the existing social security benefits and [other] benefits are replaced by a basic income, you already have about 70% of the funding. You also achieve efficiency gains,” he says.

    But people are divided over whether or not a UBI will discourage people from working. Belgian economist Koen Schoors wrote an editorial alleging that it will reduce labour participation at a time when we need more of it than ever to pay for ageing costs and coronavirus pandemic-related expenses.

    Bouchez disagrees, saying that people will still be encouraged to work because they’ll earn more money if employed. He also points out that there are already people who do not work and instead earn money through existing unemployment benefits.

    “In Belgium, you have people who are unemployed for life, who receive unemployment benefits of €800 to €1,000 per month, without having worked one day,” he says.

    “You see people in unemployment for three generations. I am convinced that social security, as it is now organised, does not allow people to take their lives into their own hands. A basic income can liberate people.”

    Mouvement Reformateur is a French-speaking political party in Belgium that was also the party of previous prime ministers Charles Michel and Sophie Wilmès.

    _____

    To see original article please visit: https://www.brusselstimes.com/news/belgium-all-news/158323/georges-louis-bouchez-conservative-party-president-calls-for-universal-basic-income/

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  • A campaign for basic income has been launched by multiple unions in Turkey

    “Social assistance provided as charity rather than rights do not prevent poverty but perpetuate it,” 92 groups have said in a joint statement.

    Several unions, political parties and rights groups have launched a campaign for the introduction of a basic income guarantee against increasing income inequality during the coronavirus pandemic.

    The campaign was first initiated by the Union for Democracy (DİB) and supported by 92 groups, including the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which has the third-largest group in the parliament.

    The Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey (DİSK) and the
    The Confederation of Public Employees’ Unions (KESK) also announced support for the campaign.

    At a joint press conference yesterday (March 3), Nesteren Davutoğlu from the DİB said:

    “The real agenda of the country is unemployment, poverty and livelihood. The demand for an income guarantee is on the table. Our goal is to realize it.”

    “Social aids don’t prevent but perpetuate poverty”

    A joint statement by the 92 groups reads, “The income inequality has reached a terrible extent. Both poverty and the number of millionaires and billionaires is increasing.

    “Poverty is not only individuals’ inability to access shelter, healthcare and education services and their deprivation of adequate food but also their exclusion from the society.

    “Social assistance provided as charity rather than rights do not prevent poverty but perpetuate it.

    “… Especially in the pandemic conditions, it is the state’s primary to provide people’s most basic needs such as food, shelter and heating. If the aim is not to enrich the richest but to share the social wealth fairly and to prevent hunger and poverty, our country has resources to use for basic income security.”

    Selin Sayek-Böke, the secretary-general of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), said at the conference that the pandemic revealed the corruption of the existing order.

    “There is a deep, severe and deepening poverty. It affects millions of insecure people the most,” she said.

    “We need to create an order in which all segments of the society can live in security. The basic income guarantee is a building block of such an order.”

    Garo Paylan, the HDP’s deputy co-chair responsible for economic affairs, pointed out the unfair distribution of public resources: “They say there are no resources. We have a lot of evidence to refute their claim that while there are resources for palaces, wars, partisans, interest rates but there are no resources for citizens’ basic needs.”

    _____

    To see original article please visit: https://m.bianet.org/english/labor/240296-labor-groups-opposition-politicians-call-for-basic-income-guarantee-amid-high-ineuqality

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  • Police funding in Los Angeles to be partially reallocated from the LAPD to a one-year basic income pilot for 500 single parents

    Under the plan passed Tuesday, $6 million would go toward a universal basic income pilot program in Councilman Curren Price’s South L.A. and downtown district. Under the initial plan, a total of 500 households of single parents in Price’s district would receive $1,000 a month for 12 months.

    By Dakota Smith

    For months, L.A. politicians have wrestled with how to spend tens of millions of dollars cut from the city’s Police Department budget after protests erupted over George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis last May.

    A draft plan approved by the L.A. City Council in December would have devoted $88 million to youth and recreation programs, neighborhood beautification initiatives, job and business programs, nonprofit services and more.

    But that proposal ran into opposition from the police chief and the police union, as well as Mayor Eric Garcetti. The mayor vetoed the plan, saying the reprogrammed money should focus more heavily on racial justice, income inequality and community safety programs.

    On Tuesday, in a rare move, the City Council voted to override Garcetti’s veto, then went on to pass a more detailed proposal that seems to hew closer to his vision for how to allocate the money. Garcetti, in a statement, said he supports the council’s latest version of the spending plan.

    Tuesday’s vote marked the first time that the council has overridden a veto by Garcetti, city aides said.

    The plan backed by City Council President Nury Martinez and several council members now allocates $14 million slated for policing alternatives, including community intervention officers, according to a city report.

    An additional $18 million would be allocated for homeless prevention and homeless services, including eviction defense services, jobs and outreach workers.

    That initial allocation of $32 million reflects the spending priorities of six council districts.

    Tuesday’s vote was 11 to 4, with council members Bob Blumenfield, Monica Rodriguez, Mike Bonin and Joe Buscaino voting against the proposal. Ten votes were needed to override Garcetti’s veto.

    Blumenfield voted against the original spending plan, saying on Tuesday that “it wasn’t true to the intent of the funding” and that he was glad the mayor vetoed it.

    But he also voted against the revised plan Tuesday. Blumenfield cited several reasons, including recent budget cuts that slashed services and reduced city employees’ pay.

    “I love many of these new expenditures,” Blumenfield said. “But how can we look at our employees and our constituents, look them in the eye and tell them to accept all of these sacrifices, and then spend wildly on a host of new council-directed projects, as good as they are?”

    Other council members voiced concerns that residents outside the six council districts wouldn’t be able to access programs funded by the $32 million.

    Melina Abdullah, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles, told the council at Tuesday’s meeting that her group strongly supported the council’s plan to override Garcetti’s veto.

    “We must get the money that was reallocated from LAPD into our communities,” Abdullah said, adding that “dollars need to go to intervention work, dollars need to go into the hands of those who are struggling in communities, dollars need to go into housing, especially for Black people.”

    In a letter sent last week to the city’s top budget and legislative officials, Martinez said the council’s objective is to “invest these funds in a manner that uplifts the voices and needs of their residents.”

    “The council should affirm its intention that these funds be used to address areas of most concern to our residents, including youth programming, city services, jobs and economic development, community and nonprofit investment, reimagining public safety, and homelessness,” Martinez wrote.

    Under the plan passed Tuesday, $6 million would go toward a universal basic income pilot program in Councilman Curren Price’s South L.A. and downtown district.

    Such programs, which typically provide a monthly stipend to a small pool of residents, have been launched in Stockton and Jackson, Miss.

    Under the initial plan, a total of 500 households of single parents in Price’s district would receive $1,000 a month for 12 months.

    An additional $7.75 million would go to a fund dedicated to paying for an “unarmed response” to homelessness and nonviolent calls, according to budget officials.

    Under the program, the greatest share of the money will go to districts with the greatest number of census tracts experiencing poverty and unemployment.

    Nearly $50 million would be distributed to three of the council’s 15 districts, all of which take in portions of South Los Angeles.

    The council is asking budget analysts to prepare a report with a list of additional appropriations, totaling about $56 million, by Friday.

    “From the beginning, this conversation has been about making bold investments that lift up our communities and speak to the urgency of racial and economic justice,” Garcetti said in a statement.

    “The latest version of the council’s spending plan does that, and I support it.”

    “It’s significant that we move this issue forward in terms of how we reimagine and reinvest public dollars,” said Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, whose district includes Koreatown and parts of South Los Angeles. “And it can’t be a one time proposition.”

    Rob Quan, an organizer with Unrig L.A., which seeks to promote representative government and fight corruption, said the City Council was being “disingenuous” in its override of Garcetti’s veto.

    “The only reason anybody is OK with you overriding the mayor’s veto is because you’re now doing what the mayor told you to do,” Quan told the council.

    _____

    To see original article please visit: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-03-02/la-city-council-to-reconsider-88-milion-spending-plan-communities-color

    The post Police funding in Los Angeles to be partially reallocated from the LAPD to a one-year basic income pilot for 500 single parents appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • A town in Alaska in 2020 used CARES Act money to provide $1,000 a month for seven months on the condition residents spend it locally

    Instead of reserving CARES Act stimulus funds for municipal operations — like everywhere else in the United States — Skagway leaders decided to redistribute most of the money to residents.

    By Peter Kujawinski

    Normally around now, Skagway residents start getting serious about the summer ahead. It’s no joking matter, because if you count the May and September shoulder season, they have to make all their money for the year in five intense months. On a busy summer day, 13,000 passengers disembark from cruise ships to soak up the atmosphere of this Gold Rush-era town in southeast Alaska surrounded by glaciers, mountains, deep fjords and the wilderness of Tongass National Forest.

    Despite a year-round population of only a thousand people, before the pandemic Skagway was the 18th most visited cruise ship port in the world, with $160 million flowing annually into its economy.

    For the summer of 2020, Skagway was expecting 1.3 million tourists to stroll down Broadway, its main street of historic saloons and hotels turned souvenir shops. It’s the kind of tourist-focused town that even Mayor Andrew Cremata has a side gig selling tours at the dock.

    Covid transformed Skagway from cruise ship fueled boom town to ghost town. There were no cruise ship visits in 2020, and 2021 looks grim as well. To make matters worse, the pandemic didn’t just destroy its economy; it also cut off Skagway’s land connection to the rest of the world.

    The only road out of town leads to the currently closed Canadian border about 20 miles away.

    An idle crane sits at the empty main cruise ship dock in Skagway. On a busy summer day, up to four cruise ships are usually docked with thousands of passengers flooding the town’s streets. Christopher Miller for The New York Times.

    To avoid a mass exodus of residents, the town came up with a unique idea. Instead of reserving CARES Act stimulus funds for municipal operations — like everywhere else in the United States — Skagway leaders decided to redistribute most of the money to residents.

    Each full-time resident, regardless of age, received $1,000 monthly from June to December 2020, on one condition: they had to spend the money within town.

    It could be used to pay a mortgage, to buy groceries at Skagway’s two grocery stores, home improvement supplies at the town’s hardware store, or to patronize the town’s DVD rental store. Receipts proving the purchase was local were required.

    The Skagway Hardware Company is one of the local businesses where residents could spend their $1,000 monthly stipends of stimulus money as an incentive to not leave the Alaska town. Christopher Miller for The New York Times.

    To Mayor Cremata and other local leaders like Jaime Bricker, president of the Skagway Traditional Council, the rationale was simple: ensure the town’s survival until tourists returned.

    Other programs they set up included vaccine distribution, coronavirus testing, paying for residents’ medevac insurance as well as helping the town’s food bank and highly rated school.

    “We had one goal a year ago: make it through to the ’21 season,” the mayor said. “Highly successful. We’re going to make it to the ’21 season.” He paused. “And so, now, we have to make a new goal.”

    Mr. Cremata was referring to the fact that on Feb. 4, the government of Canada extended a ban on cruise ships in its territorial waters until Feb. 28, 2022. This decision effectively has canceled Skagway’s summer 2021 season.

    To ensure Skagway’s survival, leaders including Jaime Bricker, the president of the Skagway Traditional Council, had the idea of paying residents until the tourists returned.  Christopher Miller for The New York Times.

    Town leaders have batted around options. For example, they have proposed a Save Our Skagway campaign, encouraging former seasonal workers to come back and visit. “You can come here and probably have the best vacation of your life without a lot of traffic in town and do all the things you didn’t get to do when you were working 70 hours a week through the summer,” Mr. Cremata said.

    But no one expects this or any other option being discussed to make up for the usual summer influx of cruise ships.

    “Businesses have gotten used to the volume that we see from the cruise industry,” Ms. Bricker said

    Ashley Call, an owner of Ocean Raft Alaska, has three boats that have been sealed up for nearly two years. He had expected 2020 to be the busiest season ever for his business. Christopher Miller for The New York Times.

    This is certainly the case for Ashley Call and his company, Ocean Raft Alaska. “The more the merrier for my business and honestly, in Skagway, most of the tour businesses are set up the same way. My doors will stay closed unless I have the volume,” he said, adding that he would be working in construction until the cruise ships returned.

    To make it through 2021, Mr. Cremata hopes any new stimulus package would include funding for hard-hit municipalities like his. But beyond just surviving another year, the mayor says current circumstances have provoked questioning among residents about tourism and Skagway’s future.

    “What’s good for Skagway? Is it healthy to be working 70 hours a week when your kids are out of school or is it healthier to have an economy that is a little bit more sustainable, not only from an economic perspective, but from a personal perspective?” Mr. Cremata said.

    “People have said in the past, I won’t even go down Broadway. I won’t even go to the post office when the cruise ships are here.”

    Mr. Cremata laughed. “There’s always a dichotomy in Skagway. As much as people might complain about going down Broadway, people love tourists here. And I do too.”

    _____

    Peter Kujawinski , a Chicago-based writer, is a former U.S. diplomat and the co-author of five books, including Nightfall and Edgeland.

    To see original article please visit: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/03/07/travel/covid-travel-tourism.html#skagway

    The post A town in Alaska in 2020 used CARES Act money to provide $1,000 a month for seven months on the condition residents spend it locally appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Senate Passes $3,000 Child Tax Credit for 2021

    The American Rescue Plan would temporarily expand the child tax credit for 2021: allowing 17-year-old children to qualify, increasing the credit to $3,000 per child removing the $2,500 earnings floor, making the credit fully refundable and allowing half of the credit to be paid in advance through periodic payments from July 2021 to December 2021.

    By Joy Taylor

    An expanded child tax credit for 2021 is about to become law. After some procedural wrangling, the Senate narrowly approved President Biden’s stimulus package to help tackle the coronavirus pandemic and stimulate the economy. Because the Senate made some changes to the House-crafted bill, titled the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (“American Rescue Plan”), the House will have to revote on the revised bill before sending it to Biden’s desk for his signature. We expect that will happen next week.

    One provision in the American Rescue Plan would, for one year, expand the child tax credit and make it fully refundable.

    Presently, the child tax credit is worth $2,000 per kid under the age of 17 whom you claim as a dependent and who has a Social Security number. To qualify, the child must be related to you and generally live with you for at least six months during the year. The credit begins to phase out if your adjusted gross income (AGI) is above $400,000 on a joint return, or over $200,000 on a single or head-of-household return. Up to $1,400 of the child credit is refundable for some lower-income individuals with children, but these people must also have earned income of at least $2,500 to get a refund.

    The American Rescue Plan would temporarily expand the child tax credit for 2021. First, the plan would allow 17-year-old children to qualify. Second, it would increase the credit to $3,000 per child ($3,600 per child under age 6) for many families. Third, it would remove the $2,500 earnings floor. Fourth, it would make the credit fully refundable. And fifth, it would allow half of the credit to be paid in advance by having the IRS send periodic payments to families from July 2021 to December 2021.

    Phase-Out for Wealthier Parents

    Not all families with children would get the higher child credit.

    The enhanced tax break would begin to phase out at AGIs of $75,000 on single returns, $112,500 on head-of-household returns and $150,000 on joint returns.

    Under the proposal, the IRS would look to the 2020 return to determine eligibility for the credit. If a 2020 return has not yet been filed, the IRS would look to 2019 returns. Families who aren’t eligible for the higher child credit would claim the regular credit of $2,000 per child, less the amount of any monthly payments they got, provided their AGI is below the current thresholds of $400,000 on joint returns and $200,000 on other returns.

    Periodic Payments in 2021

    Regarding the advance payments, the plan calls for the IRS to send out a check (mainly in the form of direct deposits) periodically from July through December to families. These periodic payments would account for half of the family’s 2021 child tax credit. For example, if monthly payments were made, this would result in payments of up to $250 per child ($300 per child under age 6) for six months and would be a nice windfall for many families. Take a family of five with three children ages 12, 7 and 5. Assuming the family qualifies for the higher child credit and doesn’t opt out of the advance payments, they could get $800 per month from the IRS from July through December, for a total of $4,800. They would then claim the additional $4,800 in child tax credits when they file their 2021 return next year.

    (Use our 2021 Child Tax Credit Calculator to see how much you would get per month under the current plan.)

    Democratic lawmakers want the IRS to start making the payments to eligible Americans in July, giving the agency just a few months’ lead time to set up its computer systems to handle such a massive, but temporary, new payment program.

    The American Rescue Plan also calls for the IRS to develop an online portal so that individuals could update their income, marital status and the number of qualifying children. People who want to opt out of the advance payments and instead take the full child credit on their 2021 return could do so through the portal.

    Some Overpayments Would Not Have to Be Paid Back

    With advanced payments of the child tax credit, there will sure to be instances in which families receive more in advanced child tax credit payments from the IRS than they are otherwise entitled to. And the American Rescue Plan contemplates this by providing a safe harbor for lower- and moderate-income taxpayers.

    Families with 2021 adjusted gross income below $40,000 on a single return, $50,000 on a head-of-household return and $60,000 on a joint return would not have to repay any credit overpayments that they get. On the other hand, families with 2021 adjusted gross incomes of at least $80,000 on a single return, $100,000 on a head-of-household return and $120,000 on a joint return would need to repay the entire amount of any overpayment when they file their 2021 tax return next year. And families with 2021 adjusted gross incomes between these thresholds would need to repay a portion of the overpayment.

    Is the IRS Up for the Challenge?

    Many tax experts and some lawmakers question whether the IRS, with its out-of-date computer systems, shrunken work force and its myriad of other duties, would be fully able to deliver periodic child credit payments, especially if the expanded child tax credit and advance payments are eventually made permanent, which could very well happen. Some Senate and House Democrats are already talking about making this permanent, touting the potential impact that a fully refundable, expanded child tax credit would have on reducing child poverty.

    Setting up a new program to deliver regular payments to taxpayers who must meet complex eligibility requirements to qualify for the child credit will be a challenge for an agency that is not used to sending out periodic payments.

    The IRS would need more funding for such a big undertaking. The House bill authorizes an additional $400 million for the IRS to take on the additional work, but some experts question whether this is enough. The IRS says that to facilitate advanced payments of the credit, it would have to build a system to compute and recompute payments as taxpayers provide new information. Such a system must also be able to issue and track payments, as well as to reconcile all payments sent out to each taxpayer during the year with the taxpayer’s credit taken on the tax return. The agency would also need to develop a program that would flag returns that don’t accurately include all advance payments received during the year.

    Another issue that the IRS will have to deal with is how to minimize the potential for fraud when it comes to refundable child tax credits. For example, the IRS estimates that in 2019 it improperly paid $7.2 billion in such refundable credits.

    _____

    To see original article please visit: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/senate-passes-3-000-child-173400185.html

    The post Senate Passes $3,000 Child Tax Credit for 2021 appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • The American Rescue Plan May Be the Most Crucial Legislation in Decades

    It is hard to overestimate the importance of this measure both for the present moment and as a sign of the direction in which the Democrats in charge of the United States hope to take the nation. Continue reading

    The post The American Rescue Plan May Be the Most Crucial Legislation in Decades appeared first on BillMoyers.com.

    This post was originally published on BillMoyers.com.

  • Manchin Wins Cuts to Unemployment Benefits as COVID Relief Bill Passes Senate

    Sen. Joe Manchin adjusts his tie on March 4, 2021.

    The U.S. Senate is on track to approve a coronavirus relief package as early as Saturday after a session that extended late night Friday into Saturday morning and that included conservative Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia ensuring the package is less generous for economically struggling Americans.

    As of this writing, senators were still voting on a number of amendments to the $1.9 trillion rescue bill.

    “By daybreak Saturday,” according to The Associated Press, “senators had worked through more than a dozen [mostly Republican] amendments without substantially changing the overall package.”

    The package was already made less generous than the House-passed version after it was neutered on Friday of its popular provision to raise the federal minimum wage to $15, thanks in part to Manchin.

    “To be clear, Senator Manchin is choosing to vote against his constituents, but clearly support his donors,” said Rep. Marie Newman (D-Ill.).

    Manchin faced further criticism after successfully pushing back against a proposed boost to the existing $300-a-week unemployment benefits.

    With the party’s narrow control of chamber, and broad GOP opposition to the bill, Senate Democrats can’t afford a single caucus member’s opposition if there’s any hope of the package passing.

    According to Reuters, “The Senate set a record for its longest single vote in the modern era—11 hours and 50 minutes — as Democrats negotiated a compromise on unemployment benefits to satisfy centrists like Senator Joe Manchin.”

    Pointing to the West Virginia lawmaker’s “outsized influence,” evidenced in part by his minimum wage boost blockade, Politico framed Friday as “Manchin’s most quintessential moment” after he “paralyzed the entire Senate for more than 10 hours and threatened to side with Republicans seeking to cut weeks of unemployment benefits.” The outlet continued:

    In the end, it took a direct call from President Biden, a meeting with [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer, and significant concessions to get Manchin on board. He trimmed several weeks of unemployment benefits off of Sen. Tom Carper’s (D-Del.) compromise amendment from earlier in the day and added a $150,000 cap to the proposal’s tax deduction for up to $10,200 in unemployment benefits.

    The deal means federal unemployment benefits will be $300 a week — $100 per week less than the House-passed bill called for — and will expire September 6.

    Senate Finance Committee chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), while lamenting the reduction in weekly UI benefits, welcomed the fact that they’re extended through the first week of September rather than in August when the chamber would not have been in session. “My top priority throughout these negotiations has been securing the strongest possible deal for jobless workers that could pass the Senate. This agreement achieves that,” he said late Friday.

    In a Saturday morning tweet, Wyden added, “Senate Democrats are just hours away from passing the most comprehensive relief package in American history.”

    Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) also sought to sound a positive note.

    “Do not lose sight of this fact,” Brown tweeted Friday night. “We are on the cusp of passing the most transformative relief bill in our nation’s history.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • UBI can help LGBT+ people and it’s on its way

    LGBT+ people have so much to contribute to our society—be it in enterprise, the arts or in our politics. But still too many of us are held back by forces well beyond our personal control.

    By Gareth Lewis Shelton

    If you’re reading this piece, then you’re probably at least curious about Universal Basic Income (UBI) and its potential to change society. Many of the arguments for and against it are increasingly well rehearsed—giving workers autonomy, ending poverty. But there are some aspects where the conversation is only just beginning: namely that UBI has the potential to help people right across society, it could be especially transformational for LGBT+ people. What’s more, the campaign for UBI is picking up pace, with more and more people and political leaders calling for it. It is on its way.

    Like with other underrepresented and minority groups, LGBT+ people often feel the harsh end of inequality. A troubling 2019 YouGov poll revealed that LGBT+ people in the UK in fact experience a sizeable pay gap to the sum of £6700 PA (about a 16% gap between them and their cis-het counterparts). This is almost twice the estimated gender pay gap (8.6% for full time employees). In addition, a slightly older study from 2016 found that bi men were particularly impacted by pay inequality. This research is less than a decade old, and much more needs to be done to understand how and why this pattern manifests, but in the meantime a UBI would at least smooth out this inequality.

    Helping close this gap would help LGBT+ people deal with the realities of the extra costs that they often have to bear, particularly in the area of healthcare (which you can read Daveed’s blog about here).

    Image credit - Sharon Mccutcheon
    Image credit – Sharon Mccutcheon

    Un-secure work and unemployment are potent challenges for LGBT+ people, particular for trans people and particularly so during the coronavirus pandemic. While unemployment figures for trans people are not actively monitored we are still able to piece together a troubling picture. In Ireland, trans unemployment is around 50%. In 2017-19 the UK Government carried out an LGBT+ survey of 108,000 people, and found that while 80% of respondents (16-24) overall had been in employment at some point in the past 12 months, trans people were almost 20% less likely to have been: with 65% of trans women and 57% of trans men having been in work in the 12 months leading up to the survey. 

    Protecting LGBT+ people from the pay gap and some of the harms of unemployment are powerful reasons in themselves to introduce UBI, but that’s not the full extent of how it could help and uplift LGBT+ people. It has a powerful role to play in giving LGBT+ people the means to escape oppressive environments—whether they be in the workplace or at home. We know all too well that harassment in the workplace is still a reality for many LGBT+ people.

    A TUC report from 2019 found that a shocking 7/10 LGBT+ workers experienced at least one type of sexual harassment at work, and that almost 1/8 LGBT+ women reported being seriously sexually assaulted at work.

    In addition Stonewall’s 2018 ‘LGBT In Britain: Work Report’ found that almost one in five LGBT+ staff had been the target of negative comments or conduct from colleagues in the past year; and that more than a third of LGBT+ staff felt the need to hide or disguise that they are LGBT+ at work because of fear of discrimination. It is vital that LGBT+ people in the workplace are equipped with the option to leave their employer where they do not feel comfortable, rather than feel trapped into totally unsatisfactory and unjust conditions.

    While the UK is lucky to have “the gayest Parliament in the world” with 45 out LGBT+ MPs, we cannot be complacent about LGBT+ representation in our politics.

    Too often LGBT+ people are still missing—or excluded from—our public debate.

    Some of that needs more campaigning for a culture change, but in other areas there are practical things that a UBI would be able to help with. For example, while it may be obvious that campaign materials are expensive in an election, funding yourself as a candidate while juggling work and campaigning is an acute challenge. Moreover, what people might not appreciate is that the work and campaigning to get selected as a candidate in the first place can be prohibitively expensive in some instances. As explored above, LGBT+ people often have fewer financial resources, which can have a prohibitive impact on access to politics. A UBI can help level the playing field. If we want to keep moving forward with LGBT+ rights, then we need more LGBT+ people at the table.

    Fortunately, the campaign for UBI is picking up speed, and more and more people and more political leaders have been calling for it.

    I was proud when in September last year, my party, the Liberal Democrats, returned to calling for Basic Income as official party policy.

    In 1989 then Party Leader, Paddy Ashdown, called for a form of basic income in ‘Citizens Britain: A Radical Agenda for the 1990s’. In our 2020 leadership election, it was great to see both Layla Moran and Ed Davey strongly make the case for a UBI as part of our platform moving forward. Right across the country, from Hull with Jack Haines to London with Luisa Porritt and Caroline Pidgeon, I’m proud that our party is making the case so strongly.

    And I’m even more delighted that it isn’t just our party that is making the case for a UBI. The Green Party has also very publicly called for a UBI, and there are new movements within the Labour Party and beyond to advocate for it as official policy. These green shoots are encouraging and we cannot afford to be precious or territorial about it. As with so many sweeping changes to our society, we need to continue to cultivate a cross-party and cross-society agreement to give UBI a strong and enduring foundation.

    LGBT+ people have so much to contribute to our society—be it in enterprise, the arts or in our politics. But still too many of us are held back by forces well beyond our personal control.

    A UBI cannot solve all problems—but at the very least it can help get LGBT+ people onto something approaching an equal economic footing, and grant us the autonomy to make the choices that are right for us. We shouldn’t wait for crises in order to do the work to remake our world, and make it freer and more open, but COVID-19 has given us a chance to reimagine things. Let’s not squander the opportunity.

    _____

    Gareth Lewis Shelton is Chair of the LGBT+ Liberal Democrats. Gareth is also an entrepreneur in the creative industries and holds a Masters in Political Economy of Europe from the LSE. Connect on Twitter @GarethLShelton.

    To see original article please visit: https://www.ubilabnetwork.org/blog/ubi-can-help-lgbt-people-and-its-on-its-way

    The post UBI can help LGBT+ people and it’s on its way appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Moderate Democrats Strip Stimulus Checks From 12 Million Voters for No Reason

    Opinion by Eric Levitz

    For weeks, a handful of moderate Democrats in the Senate have been fighting to prevent $1,400 COVID-relief checks from reaching their own upper-middle-class constituents. It has never been all that clear to the public — or, by all appearances, to the senators themselves — why they wanted to restrict eligibility for these relief payments so badly. It is not as though Joe Manchin or Jeanne Shaheen are opposed to welfare for the affluent in all forms. To the contrary, Shaheen has lambasted Republicans for restricting the state-and-local-income (SALT) deduction, a tax subsidy that primarily benefits well-off homeowners.

    Nor could the moderates’ opposition be chalked up to (superstitious) fears of high deficits:

    Every Democratic senator has already tacitly agreed to support a $1.9 trillion stimulus package, and eligibility restrictions under discussion were always too minor to significantly impact the legislation’s bottom line.

    Nor could moderates claim to have the public on their side; the relief checks were overwhelmingly popular in their initially proposed form. And on this issue, one can’t attribute the moderates’ resistance to fealty to corporate interests; large retailers love stimulus checks.

    Nevertheless, despite the fact that Senate moderates had no coherent political or substantive argument for their position, the Democratic leadership caved to their demand Wednesday. As the Washington Post reports:

    Under the plan passed by the House, individuals earning up to $75,000 per year and couples making up to $150,000 per year would qualify for the full $1,400 stimulus payment. The size of the payments then begins to scale down before zeroing out for individuals making $100,000 per year and couples making $200,000.

    Under the changes agreed to by Biden and Senate Democratic leadership, individuals earning $75,000 per year and couples earning $150,000 would still receive the full $1,400-per-person benefit. However, the benefit would disappear for individuals earning more than $80,000 annually and couples earning more than $160,000.

    That means singles making between $80,000 and $100,000 and couples earning between $160,000 and $200,000 would be newly excluded from a partial benefit under the revised structure Biden agreed to.

    Here are the two big downsides to this measure:

    • It means that 12 million fewer adults and 5 million fewer kids will receive relief checks from the bill. Whereas 91 percent of U.S. households would have received a check under the previous proposal, now only 86 percent will. That’s not a huge difference. But these days, elections are often won in the margins. And Joe Biden’s Electoral College win in 2020 was contingent on the support of affluent, longtime Republicans who decided to cross the aisle.

    Now, a bunch of these voters will end up receiving less in direct cash assistance from Joe Biden than they did from Donald Trump.

    • Since Democrats chose to narrow eligibility by accelerating the phase down in the value of the checks, they effectively engineered a confiscatory marginal tax rate for a small band of workers: A single taxpayer who earned $80,000 in 2020 will effectively pay a 70 percent tax rate on their last $5,000 of income. And since Americans have the option to claim a relief check on the basis of their 2021 incomes, Democrats have now actually given some workers a strong incentive to work fewer hours, so as to avoid a radically higher tax rate. That isn’t a huge concern for progressives. But “discouraging work” is typically the sort of thing moderate Democrats don’t want fiscal policy to do. Meanwhile, those who took on extra hours last year — assuming that they would not pay a 70 percent rate on income above $75,000 — are not happy!

    So, what do Democrats gain at the cost of denying checks to 12 million potential 2022 voters? How much money did Joe Manchin “save” the U.S. Treasury?

    According to a Democratic who spoke with the Washington Post’s Jeff Stein: $12 billion.

    Which is to say, it makes the relief package 0.63 percent cheaper.

    Slate’s Jordan Weissmann reports that the move is partially motivated by the byzantine rules of the budget-reconciliation process, which imposes a cap on how much money each committee is allowed to spend. One reason the Democratic leadership decided to cave to moderates on checks was that they wanted to make sure that the Senate Finance Committee’s appropriations remain under its assigned limit once the Congressional Budget Office scores the bill. Twelve billion dollars isn’t much in the context of the entire bill, but could be enough to keep the Finance Committee’s section under its ceiling.

    But this still doesn’t constitute a rational basis for creating a 70 percent tax rate on income above $75,000 — while giving 12 million voters a reason to resent your party.

    The Finance Committee has jurisdiction over the $350 billion pool of fiscal aid to state and local governments. That is more than six times larger than the revenue shortfall these governments are expected to collectively face this fiscal year. There are sound reasons for providing state and local governments with more fiscal space than they require to meet existing obligations; in many parts of the country, municipal governments have been hollowed out in recent decades. But from a political and substantive perspective, shaving $12 billion off a pile of money that many red states are probably going to spend on tax cuts makes more sense than canceling relief checks to a significant minority of the Democratic base.

    Moderates must stop putting their fringe obsessions ahead of the Democratic Party’s best interests. Now is not the time to put centrist ideological purity above political pragmatism.

    _____

    To see original article please visit: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/03/1400-stimulus-checks-eligibility-democrats-covid-relief-bill.html

    The post Moderate Democrats Strip Stimulus Checks From 12 Million Voters for No Reason appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Stockton, California gave some residents $500 a month for two years. After a year, the group wound up with more full-time jobs and less depression

    By Aria Bendix

    • In Stockton, California, 125 residents got $500 per month, no strings attached, for two years.
    • After a year, full-time employment among them had increased, and depression and anxiety had decreased.
    • The experiment ended in January but has inspired other mayors to launch more basic-income pilots.

    Michael Tubbs didn’t see much risk in giving money to his city’s poorest residents, no strings attached. The former mayor of Stockton, a city in California’s Central Valley, is a strong proponent of universal basic income, a policy that essentially pays people for being alive as a way to alleviate poverty.

    “My belief in it came from being raised by three amazing women, including my single mom,” Tubbs told Insider.

    “The issue wasn’t that they couldn’t manage money. The issue was they never had enough money to manage.”

    As mayor, Tubbs spearheaded the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration, a pilot program that gave 125 residents debit cards loaded with $500 each month. The program launched in February 2019 and ended in January.

    Its critics argued that cash stipends would reduce the incentive for people to find jobs. But the SEED program met its goal of improving the quality of life of 125 residents struggling to make ends meet. To qualify for the pilot, residents had to live in a neighborhood where the median household income was the same as or lower than the city’s overall, about $46,000.

    A new report from a team of independent researchers found that Stockton’s program reduced unemployment among participants during its first year and helped many of them pay off debt. The report studied the effects of the payments from February 2019 through February 2020. SEED participants also reported improvements in their emotional well-being and decreases in anxiety or depression.

    “It’s really made a huge impact on my quality of life and being able to go do just normal things that a lot of people take for granted,” one participant said in the report.

    “Whether it’s go out to eat once every two weeks and sit down for a nice dinner, or whether it’s, you know, my mom’s birthday and I just want to get her a birthday present.”

    Tubbs said it was likely that the $500 monthly payments helped in other ways during the pandemic, such as tiding people over until their stimulus checks arrived or allowing them to take days off work if they got COVID-19.

    “We know anecdotally that the $500 allowed some members of the program to stay at home and not go to work because they don’t have paid time off,” Tubbs said.

    “They were able to listen to the doctor because they knew that the two weeks off work wouldn’t be catastrophic.”

    Michael Tubbs
    Mayor Michael Tubbs discussing basic income in Stockton. 

    Most of the money went toward food and merchandise

    Participants in Stockton’s basic-income program spent most of their stipends on essential items.

    Nearly 37% of the recipients’ payments went toward food, while 22% went toward sales and merchandise, such as trips to Walmart or dollar stores. Another 11% was spent on utilities, and 10% was spent on auto costs. Less than 1% of the money went toward alcohol or tobacco.

    By February 2020, more than half of the participants said they had enough cash to cover an unexpected expense, compared with 25% of participants at the start of the program. The portion of participants who were making payments on their debts rose to 62% from 52% during the program’s first year.

    Unemployment among basic-income recipients dropped to 8% in February 2020 from 12% in February 2019. In the experiment’s control group — those who didn’t receive monthly stipends — unemployment rose to 15% from 14%.

    Lorrine Paradela, a 45-year-old single mother, participated in Stockton’s basic-income pilot. Nick Otto/AFP/Getty Images

    Full-time employment among basic-income recipients rose to 40% from 28% during the program’s first year. In the control group, full-time employment increased as well, though less dramatically: to 37% from 32%.

    “Everything I thought would happen, I said would happen — I argued with Sarah Palin and Chuck Woolery and talked to ‘CBS This Morning’ and Bill Maher about — actually happened,” Tubbs said.

    “I remember telling people, ‘I think that $500 will allow people to work more if they choose to do so.’ And that playing out in the data, it makes me so proud.”

    The researchers also found that decreases in anxiety, depression, and extreme financial stress encouraged participants to set goals and helped them better cope with unexpected financial setbacks.

    “I had panic attacks and anxiety,” one participant said in the report. “I was at the point where I had to take a pill for it, and I haven’t even touched them in a while.”

    Basic income faces an uphill political battle

    Tubbs lost his reelection bid in November, but his departure didn’t affect the SEED program, since it was always designed to be temporary.

    stockton california
    A pedestrian walks through downtown Stockton on February 7, 2020. 

    Tubbs’ vision is to make basic income a national policy. In June, he launched Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, a coalition of mayors interested in starting similar basic-income pilots across the US. At least 40 mayors, including Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles, Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta, and Jenny Durkan of Seattle, have joined the group. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey donated $18 million to the cause.

    Inspired by Stockton’s trial, Saint Paul, Minnesota, started a basic-income pilot in the fall, giving $500 a month to 150 low-income families for up to 18 months.

    Richmond, Virginia, is distributing $500 per month to 18 working families. And Compton, California, is giving 800 residents a guaranteed income of $300 to $600 a month for two years.

    No Republican mayor has joined Mayors for a Guaranteed Income — and interest in a basic-income policy skews heavily Democratic. Andrew Yang, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, made basic income a prominent part of his campaign platform, pledging to give $1,000 a month to every US citizen over 18.

    Tubbs said there was more than enough research to suggest that a federal basic-income policy would improve Americans’ quality of life.

    “I am so proud of all the pilots, but I’m ready for policy,” Tubbs said. “I’ve got all the evidence I need.”

    _____

    To see original article please visit: https://www.businessinsider.com/stockton-basic-income-experiment-success-employment-wellbeing-2021-3

    The post Stockton, California gave some residents $500 a month for two years. After a year, the group wound up with more full-time jobs and less depression appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Sanders Is Making Excellent Use of His Power as Budget Committee Chair

    Bernie Sanders

    After his defeat at the hands of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in the 2016 presidential primaries, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders went back to work. Sanders’s supporters were in agony that November as they watched Clinton lose to the worst candidate ever put forth by the Republican Party: “Bernie would have won!” The rest is rancid history.

    When Sanders declared his intention to run again in 2020, hope blossomed anew. His supporters, and more than a few of the Smart Folks in professional politics, believed the country was ready for Sanders’s progressive policy ideas after years of enduring the Trump firestorm. Sanders built a lead in the early primaries against a large and varied pack of Democratic candidates, and for progressives, the chance of a lifetime seemed finally at hand.

    It was not to be. A variety of factors — low turnout by young voters who were the backbone of his campaign plan, poor showings in more conservative Southern state primaries, the rise of COVID fears which culminated in the crash stop the nation endured in March, and the thunderclap endorsement of Joe Biden by Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina — ripped the needle off the record for the Sanders campaign. This time, however, the ultimate outcome was far different.

    Biden took control of the election rather in spite of himself, won the nomination without the inter-party rancor that came in the aftermath of 2016, and soundly defeated Trump in November. After a pair of unlikely victories in two Georgia Senate races, long weeks of Trumpian tantrums, a slew of right-wing street riots, an attempted coup at the Capitol and the second impeachment of Donald Trump, President Biden found himself with a slim House majority and an even slimmer Senate majority. For the first time in 12 years, Mitch McConnell was not the most powerful person in Washington.

    Enter the democratic socialist from Vermont. Those slim majorities gave Democrats control over every congressional committee, and Sanders was given the chairmanship of the Senate Budget Committee. Putting him in that seat may well measure up to be the most impactful decision any Democrat has made in decades.

    The Budget Committee’s main purpose “is to develop a concurrent resolution on the budget to serve as the framework for congressional action on spending, revenue, and debt-limit legislation.” It is separate from the Appropriations Committee, which decides where specific revenues should be allocated within that larger budgetary framework. “The Senate Budget Committee is also responsible for the enforcement of this concurrent resolution and associated budget laws,” according to the committee’s information page.

    If that all sounds like pretty dusty stuff, it isn’t. Like the Appropriations Committee, the Budget Committee is where the money’s at, and in Washington, D.C., a great deal of congressional power flows through the choices on who and what gets federal revenues.

    One of the great powers of the Budget Committee is the use of reconciliation, which, according to the committee, is “a piece of legislation that is written to bring about specific identified fiscal goals. A reconciliation bill, if passed and signed by the president, carries with it the full force of law.” A bill drafted under the rules of reconciliation is immune to the filibuster, and requires only a straight-up majority to pass.

    The power of reconciliation is in the hands of Bernie Sanders now, and he has made good use of it. With the Senate tied at 50-50 and Vice President Kamala Harris standing as the tie-breaking vote, passage of President Biden’s most important priorities would have been all but impossible. Thanks to Sanders and his reconciliation tool, Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill is days away from becoming law.

    The relief bill is only the beginning for Sanders. “Senate Democrats are readying to pass President Biden’s infrastructure package through the budget reconciliation process, a recognition they’re unlikely to get much Republican support for a potential $2 trillion package,” reports Axios. “Sen. Bernie Sanders told Axios on Tuesday he’s consulted with the White House about how to prepare for the next round of spending, and he’s ready to do it immediately via reconciliation — a process he controls as chair of the Senate Budget Committee. ‘If I have anything to say about it, it will, and I think the president wants it to happen,’ Sanders said during an interview in the Capitol.”

    There have been some notable and potentially disruptive bumps in the road due to the use of reconciliation. A $15 minimum wage hike included in the relief bill has been stripped after Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled it unworkable under the reconciliation rules. A hue and cry was raised in the ranks of progressive Democrats: an unelected official should not have the power to derail so vital a policy. Calls for the Senate to ignore or even fire MacDonough were made, and one of those voices belonged to Sanders.

    “My personal view is that the idea that we have a Senate staffer, a high-ranking staffer, deciding whether 30 million Americans get a pay raise or not is nonsensical,” Sanders told reporters on Monday. “We have got to make that decision, not a staffer who’s unelected, so my own view is that we should ignore the rulings, the decision of the parliamentarian.”

    Back in 2001, when then-Senate Parliamentarian Robert Dove ruled against two key provisions in George W. Bush’s tax plan, the Republicans fired him and passed the bill. It was a bad look then, and 20 years later, the Senate majority assessed it would be a bad look again. In this instance, Senate Democratic leadership decided “Let’s be like the Republicans!” wasn’t a wise choice so early in the legislative season, especially with the minority piteously puling over the alleged absence of “unity.”

    The decision to heed the parliamentarian has not killed the drive for a $15 minimum wage, thanks in no small part to Sanders. “To the best of my knowledge, there will be a vote on the minimum wage, and we’ll see what happens,” said Sanders. “I intend to offer the bill that will raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and we’ll see how the votes go. If we fail in this legislation, I will be back. We are going to keep going. We are going to raise that minimum wage very shortly to $15 an hour.”

    Sanders’s impact as Budget Committee chairman reached into the Biden administration itself this week, as the nomination of Neera Tanden to head the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) fell to dust. Tanden, a former Hillary Clinton campaign official and vociferous Twitter warrior, found her nomination facing bipartisan push-back captained by Sanders, whose committee oversees the OMB.

    As much as Tanden’s notoriously caustic Twitter treatment of friends and enemies alike put her nomination in peril, it was her pro-corporate work with the Center for American Progress (CAP) that ultimately did her nomination in. CAP calls itself a progressive organization, but enjoys vast funding from a variety of Wall Street entities. During her time there, Tanden was responsible for maintaining and augmenting those financial relationships, a fact that has rubbed actual progressive organizations raw for years.

    In April 2019, Sanders dispatched a letter to CAP underscoring his concerns about Tanden’s tactics and behavior. “Neera Tanden repeatedly calls for unity while simultaneously maligning my staff and supporters and belittling progressive ideas,” he wrote. “I worry that the corporate money CAP is receiving is inordinately and inappropriately influencing the role it is playing in the progressive movement.”

    Two years later and with real power in hand, Sanders was able to derail the nomination of someone who had plagued him and his campaigns for five years. It could be said that Neera Tanden is the last casualty of the Hillary-Bernie wars, and when all was said and done, Bernie won.

    If the failure of Tanden’s nomination has angered the Biden administration, they are at pains not to show it. “The state of the Bernie-Biden relationship remains strong, even under stressful circumstances,” reports Politico. “With Democrats navigating battles over labor rights and wage policy, the two have back-channeled, applauded each other, and crafted carefully worded statements designed to project peace and the aura of collaboration. It is, in part, a recognition that each side needs the other in order to be successful. It’s also driven by a desire to avoid the problems of the past.”

    Bernie Sanders will never be president. From his chairman’s seat on the Budget Committee, however, he has steered vital legislation toward passage in perilous congressional seas, and body-blocked ersatz progressives from positions of significant government power. Just over the horizon lurk all-important issues like infrastructure, immigration, the minimum wage, climate disruption and the ongoing fight against COVID.

    After decades shouting truth in the wilderness of U.S. politics, Sanders is making the most of his chance. He is steering the Biden administration toward a genuinely progressive course, and is paying little heed to the fountaining hypocrisies of the Republican right. Two months in, he is already enjoying great success, which means the Biden administration is enjoying great success. Next to Representative Clyburn, Chairman Sanders may be the best friend Joe Biden has ever had.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Eleven Senate Democrats Urge Biden to Include Recurring Monthly Checks in the Next Recovery Package

    Ten senators want to make direct payments and unemployment insurance extensions automatic until the economy recovers.

    By Kevin Robillard

    Ten Democratic senators are pushing President Joe Biden to make direct payments and the extension of boosted unemployment insurance benefits automatic until the economy fully recovers from the coronavirus pandemic, aiming to take the fate of the recovery out of the hand of politicians and avoiding a key mistake of the Democratic plan to recover from the financial collapse of 2008. 

    Led by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the senators are pushing Biden and the rest of the Democratic Party to include what are called “automatic stabilizers” in his Build Back Better plan, which is expected to be written this spring and summer and aims to jump-start the economic recovery.

    The stabilizers would automatically extend enhanced unemployment benefits and issue direct payments to American families until key economic indicators ― say, GDP growth, the unemployment rate or job growth ― reach predetermined levels. 

    The idea is to ensure aid to Americans continues until the economy recovers, regardless of changes in the political mood of the country or the legislative calendar. 

    Automatic stabilizers, like those in the Wyden plan, are important for moving relief to people who need it without giant political fights that drag on for months, holding the relief hostage.

    Natalie Foster, co-chair of the Economic Security Project

    “This crisis is far from over, and families deserve certainty that they can put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads,” the senators wrote in a letter to Biden released Tuesday morning. “Families should not be at the mercy of constantly-shifting legislative timelines and ad hoc solutions.” 

    The 10 senators who signed the letter include the chairs of three major committees: Wyden, the chair of the Senate Finance Committee; Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who leads the Budget Committee; and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), the chair of the Senate Banking Committee. Other signatories include five veteran progressives ― Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin ― alongside newly installed Sen. Alex Padilla of California and the more moderate Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado. 

    Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), right, bumps elbows Thursday with Xavier Becerra, nominee for secretary
    Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), right, bumps elbows Thursday with Xavier Becerra, nominee for secretary of health and human services, after Becerra’s confirmation hearing.

    Wyden has argued in the past that stabilizers are necessary to avoid a repeat of the laggard recovery from the 2008 financial crisis.

    Then, Wyden argues, Democrats assumed they would be able to pass additional stimulus and economic relief measures after the passage of the Recovery Act early in President Barack Obama’s first term. Instead, Congress became consumed by other problems, public opinion turned against additional stimulus measures and Republicans worked to block additional relief, leading to repeated political showdowns over extending unemployment benefits. 

    “Automatic stabilizers, like those in the Wyden plan, are important for moving relief to people who need it without giant political fights that drag on for months, holding the relief hostage.

    “Automatic stabilizers are good policy and good government ― agencies can actually plan for a few months down the road,” said Natalie Foster, the co-chair of the Economic Security Project.

    The letter does not specify how large the recurring payments should be or in what ways unemployment insurance would be boosted. Democrats are set to pass a relief bill with generous boosts to unemployment insurance ― continuing an additional $400 a week in payments until this summer ― and $1,400 payments for most American adults and children. 

    Automatic stabilizers have broad support among congressional Democrats. Both the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the moderate New Democrats endorsed the concept last year, and two key Biden administration figures ― National Economic Council Director Brian Deese and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen ― have also signaled their support. 

    Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Institute, said his group will push additional senators to sign on to the letter. 

    “President Biden could expect broad support throughout the Democratic Caucus if he includes recurring benefits in his Build Back Better long-term economic recovery plan ― and every senator would be smart to join Sen. Wyden and others in signaling their support now,” Green said. 

    Still, hurdles remain: House Democrats hoped to include stabilizers in COVID-19 relief legislation they considered last year but abandoned the plan after it was clear the Congressional Budget Office would estimate the cost of the stabilizers in the trillions of dollars. Even though it was unlikely the full amounts would be spent, the high top-line number scared off some moderate members, forcing the party to abandon the idea.

    _____

    To see original article please visit: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/democratic-senators-coronavirus-relief-package-automatic-stabilizers_n_603dc896c5b617a7e410475f

    The post Eleven Senate Democrats Urge Biden to Include Recurring Monthly Checks in the Next Recovery Package appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • The pros and cons of universal basic income

    Unconditional cash payments to residents are more of a floor to stand on than a safety net, say these Carolina scholars in light of a proposed pilot project to give $500 per month to formerly incarcerated Durham, North Carolina, residents.

    By Logan Ward

    The idea of governments giving residents no-strings-attached cash payments is picking up steam, due in part to the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Last June, Mayor Michael Tubbs of Stockton, California, created Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, a coalition to “advocate for a guaranteed income — direct, recurring cash payments — that lifts all of our communities, building a resilient, just America.”

    Durham Mayor Steve Schewel joined the group. In January, Schewel announced that Durham was one of 30 U.S. cities being considered to receive a $500,000 slice of a $15 million gift from Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey. The money would fund Universal Basic Income pilot projects, such as the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration.

    Durham council member Mark-Anthony Middleton announced that Durham’s proposed project would guarantee $500 per month to 55 formerly incarcerated residents until the pandemic ends and the city’s economy recovers.

    Before the pandemic hit, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang put UBI, also known as guaranteed basic income, on the map by making it his signature policy. His proposed “Freedom Dividend” — $1,000 per month payments to every American adult — was a response to job displacement by automation.

    For a deeper understanding of this issue, The Well spoke with two Carolina faculty members who have studied UBI. Fabian Wendt, a teaching assistant professor in the College of Arts & Sciences’ philosophy department and the philosophy, politics & economics program, first came across UBI while studying theories of distributive justice. Doug MacKay, associate professor in the College’s public policy department, grew interested in UBI through research into paternalism in the U.S. social safety net.

    What is universal basic income?

    Wendt: It is a regular cash payment by the government that is given on a monthly or annual basis. It’s unconditional in several respects. In contrast to many other welfare programs that you only get when you prove your willingness to work, a UBI would be unconditional in that respect. It would also be unconditional on what money you make, what you have in general and on what contribution you made to finance the UBI.

    Finally, it would be unconditional on your family situation, on whether you’re married or not.

    UBI is probably best conceived as a floor to stand on, not as a safety net.

    A safety net is only meant to catch you when you need it, which requires some institution to test whether you really need it, and that opens up all these worries about paternalism, bureaucracy and so on, whereas the UBI would be a floor to stand on for everybody.

    MacKay: I completely agree with Fabian’s description. UBI is a platform to stand on and to build a life on. But it’s not something that’s going to allow you to live a great life. The sort of numbers that we’re talking about are, at most, $1,000 a month per person. People will still have a strong motivation to work.

    What are the goals of UBI?

    MacKay: The goals really differ, depending on the policymaker but also on who’s proposing it. I think for a lot of folks on the left, they see it as more a platform to build your life on. So it’s going to be there for you when you when you need it. If you think about the pandemic, when people are losing their jobs, it takes a long time for government to react.

    Had we had a basic income in place, that would have been a way of ensuring people are secure, have the ability to meet their basic needs and live a dignified human life. They don’t need to appeal to various agencies. They have consistency in terms of being able to afford housing, food and so on. It’s an anti-poverty measure.

    You also see from people on the left the idea of UBI as promoting freedom. Oftentimes we talk about freedom as being freedom from constraints.

    Some folks on the right, libertarians in particular, emphasize the need for government to stay out of our lives. And thinkers on the left often point out that if people are just leaving you alone, you might be unlimited in terms of choices, but you’re not actually going to be able to do anything unless you have resources. So the idea is that if people have a platform to build their lives off, they have resources every month. They can actually do things. They can meet their needs. They can pursue various projects.

    On the right side of the political spectrum, people see UBI as potentially realizing a number of goals. One, they emphasize this is anti-paternalistic in nature. There’s an element of government not interfering with the lives of individuals by imposing all these conditionalities on them, but rather just letting them be free to live their lives as they see fit with the income.

    The other thing that folks on the right emphasize is the way UBI might allow you to shrink the size of government. People on the left often think of basic income as something we’re going to add to the safety net and keep much of the safety net intact. People on the right often see it as a replacement:

    We’re going to give people a guaranteed income, and we’re going to get rid of a whole host of social safety net programs that cost a lot of money and require a lot of people to administer.

    Wendt: One thing I found interesting about Andrew Yang’s proposal was his idea to let people choose whether they either take the UBI or keep the benefits from current programs.

    Another thing different proponents will disagree upon is how high UBI should be. A thousand dollars a month was Yang’s proposal, but you could also go much lower or much higher. Maybe even “as high as is sustainable,” as [Belgian philosopher and economist and chief UBI proponent Philippe] Van Parijs would say.

    Its sustainability will depend on how high it is pitched, but also on how it’s financed. It seems very natural to think that it would be financed through the income tax. That would make it a close relative to a negative income tax proposal, which was popular in the 1960s and ’70s. [The influential American economist] Milton Friedman was a famous advocate of that. But Andrew Yang and others propose a mix in terms of how it’s financed. It could also be a sales tax or capital income tax or some other way.

    Andrew Yang put UBI on the map, but what’s driving it and why now?

    Wendt: 

    UBI has often been seen as a response to the challenge of automation — the worry that many people are going to become unemployed and replaced by machines.

    For example, truck drivers will lose their jobs once there are automated trucks. In the end, that’s not a new concern, though. People have worried that machines would replace jobs at least since the 19th century, but usually new types of jobs were always created elsewhere.

    The idea of a UBI was brought up last spring as a response to the pandemic — an emergency UBI. The coronavirus hit so hard. Many people felt like this was a chance to get some serious reform of the welfare state going. In the end we got the stimulus checks instead, which were not completely different, but a one-time thing, and not unconditional. The checks depended on how much you earned.

    One thing to emphasize is also how UBI would empower women. It gives working mothers cash to pay for childcare, for example, or it makes it easier to leave an abusive husband if you have something to rely on that is independent from the family situation.

    MacKay: The other thing I would point to are concerns about income inequality. I don’t think this is necessarily a great solution to the problem of income inequality, but I think the economic anxiety leads people to UBI.

    Is there evidence that UBI works?

    MacKay: There’s been a variety of studies. There were a couple of really famous experiments in the ’70s in Canada and here in the United States. There was a really interesting study in Manitoba in the late ’70s, where they had a whole town that was subject to a guaranteed income policy — a floor that families would not fall below. A lot of randomized controlled trials in low-income countries have been using cash transfers since the late ’80s, early ’90s. Some of these are conditional cash transfers.

    In Mexico, for example, you might get a cash transfer from the government if you send your kids to school and take them for yearly doctor visits. And there was one recently in Finland, where they gave $500 per month to unemployed folks.

    These are high-quality studies.

    The evidence has shown that the UBI programs are pretty effective in a number of different ways.

    The caveat I would give is that they happen in different contexts, and the interventions are very different.

    Wendt: An experiment in Kenya is the largest. It involves around 20,000 people and unconditional cash payments that cover basic needs. It started in 2017 and will last 12 years. There are four different groups. One group gets the cash for the whole 12 years. Another group gets paid up front rather than on a monthly basis, I believe. Another group receives payments for a shorter period of time. And then there’s a control group that doesn’t get any cash. Some people reported that it has changed how women see their role in the household, because they felt entitled to have a say over how to spend the money.

    What are the main points of criticism against UBI?

    MacKay: A big one is a reciprocity worry — that in order to get access to public benefits, you should be at least willing to participate in the labor market.

    Think of the earned-income tax credit. That’s a cash transfer that goes to low-income Americans. But to get access to it, you need to be participating in the labor force. A lot of programs like SNAP [the federal government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as the Food Stamp Program] and TANF [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, another federal program] have work requirements attached to them. The Trump administration was trying to attach a work requirement to Medicaid programs, as well. The thought is, you should only get access to public benefits if you are participating in the formal labor market and earning an income.

    The question they ask is: Why should some group of individuals be participating in the labor force and paying taxes to fund a UBI for other people who aren’t participating in the labor market?

    One of the responses to this is that UBI recognizes all those forms of contribution to society that aren’t remunerated. Think about parents taking care of their children or poor people taking care of elderly family members.

    There’s lots of ways in which people contribute to society. And you can think of a UBI as reciprocating in that sense, remunerating people for those contributions.

    Wendt: Another common worry is that UBI is a waste of money on the wealthy. Why should all of those wealthy people get a monthly check? If the goal is to do something about poverty, then why UBI, since the rich by definition are not poor? That’s an understandable concern for sure. But the reply there is that depending on how the UBI is financed, the rich will not be net beneficiaries. They will contribute more to finance the UBI than what they get as their monthly check.

    What do you think about the Durham proposal?

    MacKay: This is the first time I’ve heard of a guaranteed income program that’s aimed at people coming out of prison. I think it makes perfect sense. Part of the justification here is that people with a felony record face a lot of difficulty in terms of accessing other public programs. I think they’re actually banned for at least some period of time from federal housing programs and from receiving SNAP benefits. Felons face a lot of difficulty getting jobs. Employers can legitimately ask if they have a record and deny them employment on that basis. So it makes a lot of sense that you would target this type of pilot project at those folks.

    If you think about who needs a platform in American society, it’s going to be people who don’t have access to these other programs and are economically vulnerable in terms of not being able to get a job.

    And so I think it makes a lot of sense that you would target the program this way.

    Oftentimes we discuss UBI as a major transformation to society, as a sort of utopian policy. That draws a lot of attention.

    But I think the discussion might lead to a simpler idea — just using cash payments in more of our social safety net programs. That might be more sustainable, more cost effective, than trying to try to implement a full UBI type policy.

    For that reason, what’s happening in Durham — a guaranteed income for a very narrow group of individuals — is really interesting.

    One thing the pandemic has shown us is that the government got a little bit more comfortable with giving cash payments to people. Another thing I’m really excited about are these proposals to expand the child tax credit, both coming from [Mitt] Romney and also coming from the Democrats, which you might think of as a basic income for kids. Every month, they would get a certain amount of money, maybe a few hundred dollars. The parents decide how to spend it, but the thought is it’s kind of like a baseline for kids.

    We don’t want to spend too much time focusing on the big UBI utopian policy proposals and miss that there’s a lot of interesting and potentially really important, cost-effective policy proposals around using cash payments in very targeted ways.

    _____

    To see original article please visit: https://thewell.unc.edu/2021/02/23/the-pros-and-cons-of-universal-basic-income/

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    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.