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Category: Mayor Michael Tubbs

  • Basic Income Programs Are Triggering Health Benefits Across the Country

    By: Minerva Canto 

    Original post can be found here.

    We now know what happens when we think the best of people in lower income communities: They thrive.

    Treating people with dignity and allowing them to make their own choices is the premise behind a number of guaranteed income programs in force around the country. Study after study shows that participants in these programs do well, so much so that their health improves.

    “Participants reported notably better mental health than other people with low incomes,” researchers found in a study released by the Urban Institute in February that examined a guaranteed income program in Washington, D.C.

    Similarly, “Recipients saw statistically significant improvements in emotional health, energy over fatigue, and emotional wellbeing” — among the findings of an investigation of a program in Stockton, California.

    And researchers behind a study from 2017 reported that “recipients experienced an 8.5 percent decrease in hospitalizations compared to the control group, especially for mental health, accidents, and injuries.”

    These findings bode well as Los Angeles County launches the latest guaranteed income program this week. Like dozens of other municipalities nationwide with similar programs in the past two years, Breathe aims to provide participants “the chance to ‘breathe’ easier knowing they are more financially secure.”

    The fundamental guideline for most guaranteed income programs is that participants can decide for themselves how to spend the money — without any restrictions.

    For three years, 1,000 participants living in the county will receive $1,000 each month. Participants must meet low income eligibility requirements but will be chosen randomly. Breathe is believed to be the biggest and most extensive such program yet, in a county that’s the most populous in the country and where an estimated 25% of children live in poverty.

    The city of Los Angeles already has a similar program underway. Meanwhile, California has earmarked $35 million over five years for guaranteed income pilot programs.

    The fundamental guideline for most guaranteed income programs is that participants can decide for themselves how to spend the money — without any restrictions. These programs generally aim to help people in impoverished neighborhoods, who tend to be predominantly Latino or Black. Some guaranteed income programs target specific communities such as foster youth aging out of care or lower income college students.

    Paula Hernandez, a participant in one Southern California program, says the extra money allowed her to pay her rent, and ensure she and her daughter had healthy food to eat after her savings ran out during the pandemic.

    “I was always two or three hundred dollars short after my supervisor shortened my hours,” says Hernandez, who works at a small family restaurant, which didn’t need as many servers after it switched to takeout only. “Each month, I worried about how I would make the shortfall. So many sleepless nights and my days spent in a fog as a result.”

    Before participating in the program, Hernandez was concerned about how the financial stresses would impact her 10-year-old daughter.

    “I tried not to talk about money problems in front of her, but did she notice how many times I told her I wasn’t hungry as my stomach was growling with hunger?” she says. “Once I was receiving the money, I wasn’t always in a state of worry. Or hungry.”

    California is leading the way when it comes to guaranteed income programs, in large part spurred by the success of a program in Stockton created by former Mayor Michael Tubbs.

    Having access to healthy food is a primary indicator of wellness, and the lack of it can lead to serious medical problems such as diabetes and high blood pressure. Yet it’s estimated that nearly 11% of California residents don’t have enough to eat.

    California is leading the way when it comes to guaranteed income programs, in large part spurred by the success of a program in Stockton created by former Mayor Michael Tubbs. He founded Mayors for Guaranteed Income in 2020 to help other municipalities replicate or advocate for these programs. To date, 62 mayors have signed on, including 14 in California, the most of any state.

    “This has provided millions of families what I did for 125 families in Stockton,” writes Tubbs in his memoir, The Deeper the Roots, “the dignity of being able to breathe and to have the agency to make the right decision for themselves and their families.”

    A guaranteed income program in Washington, D.C., helped people who live in an area known as Ward 8, where researchers found that “residents face higher rates of food insecurity and related health issues than residents in other parts of the city because of disinvestment and limited health care access.” For many years the area did not have a grocery store, making it a so-called food desert — affordable, nutritious food was inaccessible.

    As a result, organizers of the guaranteed income program “saw unconditional cash transfers as an important mechanism for undoing Ward 8’s history of displacement and segregation.”

    Importantly, organizers from four community-based organizations working together created a set of impressive guidelines to steer their decision-making and ensure racial equity for the program:

    • We value the power of our residents to make their own decisions.
    • We treat our community with respect.
    • We will always act with integrity.
    • We believe in a racially and economically equitable community.


    As partners, organizers would consult these guidelines whenever difficult questions arose, such as when it came time to decide whether participants should get $5,100 in one lump sum or over five monthly payments. These values, specifically the first, called for residents to decide for themselves how they wanted the payments disbursed. The study showed that participants were thoughtful in making this decision, carefully considering their specific circumstances.

    “Trusting folks to make their own decisions was key in many ways,” says Mary Bogle, an Urban Institute researcher who led the Washington, D.C., study.

    This stance is starkly different from one commonly voiced by policymakers for decades.

    “The idea that we were given this money to improve our lives was powerful. For the first time in a long time, I felt like someone believed in me.”

    ~Damon Jones, guaranteed income program participant

    Past policies aimed at helping people with lower incomes treated them as would-be criminals. Policymakers agreed to provide cash aid or food benefits only with harsh restrictions and requirements to avoid fraud that they believed would otherwise ensue.

    “Because of these perceptions we don’t unleash the power of the country to help people in any real way,” Bogle says.

    The term “welfare queen” is racist. As single moms have been vilified, the holes in the safety net have only gotten bigger.

    Indeed, it’s the poverty of choices that tends to hamper the outcomes of lower income people.

    In his memoir, Tubbs details how he “fought against the bigotry of low expectations” from teachers and others when he was growing up in Stockton. Despite being a top student, he narrowly avoided the school-to-prison pipeline when he was nearly arrested over a high school senior prank, he writes. Thankfully, his grandmother was able to help smooth things over, and Tubbs graduated and continued to Stanford.

    During Tubbs’ first successful run for city council, he visited residents in impoverished neighborhoods and saw the effect a low income can have on one’s health.

    The correlation between income and health is suggested by statistical evidence. One 2021 report produced for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston for which a number of studies were examined found that higher minimum wages for parents had a positive effect on children’s birth weights, that during pregnancy and early childhood it had positive health effects on children into their adulthood, and that higher minimum wages reduced the number of suicides. Researchers found other positive health benefits linked to higher incomes.

    “The idea that we were given this money to improve our lives was powerful. For the first time in a long time, I felt like someone believed in me,” says program participant Damon Jones.

    People from lower income communities have known and fought against the idea that poverty can be a never-ending cycle of broken dreams.

    “Oftentimes, poverty in Stockton is a family heirloom,” Tubbs writes in his memoir.

    Guaranteed income programs empower people to help break that cycle.

    The post Basic Income Programs Are Triggering Health Benefits Across the Country appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Guaranteed basic income program begins in Tacoma; families get $500/month for one year

    By Lisa Stiffler

    Original article: https://www.geekwire.com/2021/guaranteed-income-program-backed-by-twitters-jack-dorsey-begins-in-tacoma-families-get-500-month/

    The 110 Tacoma, Wash., families chosen to participate in a guaranteed income program received their first $500 check this month, according to MyNorthwest. 

    The program launched by the Mayors for a Guaranteed Income is backed by $18 million in donations from Jack Dorsey, co-founder and former CEO of Twitter. The effort is being done in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Guaranteed Income Research, which is studying the impacts of providing regular income to families. Numerous income pilot projects are underway around the country. 

    Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards was a founding member of the nonprofit Mayors for a Guaranteed Income. Half of households in Tacoma and surrounding Pierce County earn less than $72,000 a year, which is the minimum needed to cover basic expenses, according to United Way of Pierce County, a partner of the local pilot. 

    The program in Washington state, which is called Growing Resilience in Tacoma, or GRIT, will provide families $500 a month for one year. 

    Participants in the program must reside in certain Tacoma area codes; live in a single-parent household with children; and meet the definition of having limited assets and income while being employed.

    Some 2,000 people applied and qualified participants were randomly chosen. A control group of 135 households who will not receive $500 was also selected. Both groups will be given regular surveys about their expenses and expenditures and receive $30 gift cards for each completed survey.

    GRIT is funded by $500,000 from Dorsey, $100,000 from the mayoral group, and $100,000 from the city to cover administrative costs.

    Dorsey donated $15 million to the effort in December 2020, adding to an initial $3 million gift. Mayor Michael Tubbs of Stockton, Calif., led the creation of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income. He ran the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration, an earlier effort to provide income to residents. 

    In announcing the donation one year ago, Dorsey addressed Tubbs in his tweet: “Thank you Mayor and to all the Mayors of @mayorsforagi for these universal basic income pilots! I hope they inform federal policy in the future.”

    Dorsey isn’t the only tech leader interested in the concept of boosting incomes for Americans. Tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang promoted the idea of a universal basic income as part of his platform when he ran as a Democratic presidential candidate in 2020. In a different tact, Seattle venture capitalist Nick Hanaeur has for many years been a staunch supporter of higher minimum wages.

    The post Guaranteed basic income program begins in Tacoma; families get $500/month for one year appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Why Michael Tubbs says he’s obsessed with ending poverty

    By Lorie Konish

    Original article: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/21/former-stockton-mayor-michael-tubbs-on-why-he-wants-to-end-poverty.html

    Michael Tubbs had the odds stacked against him while growing up in Stockton, California, as the son of a young single mother and an incarcerated father.

    Tubbs, 31, felt the expectations for his life as a Black man in America were either prison or death, he writes in his new memoir, “The Deeper the Roots.”

    But Tubbs defied that grim future when he was accepted to Stanford University. After graduating, he returned to Stockton to serve as city council member. He upended expectations again when in 2017 he became the city’s first Black mayor and, at just 26, the youngest mayor ever of an American city.

    While in office, Tubbs created a guaranteed income experiment that gave certain residents $500 per month, a program that has since been replicated in other American cities. He also worked to help make it possible for other students like him to achieve their college dreams.

    In 2020, however, he lost his bid for re-election, a defeat he writes about in his new memoir.

    CNBC.com caught up with Tubbs before he kicked off a virtual book tour featuring a Q&A with Oprah Winfrey, who published the memoir through her Flatiron Books imprint.

    Lorie Konish: Your story begins with your mother saying, “Don’t tell nobody our business.” Why did you decide to write a book telling your story now?

    Michael Tubbs: Growing up, so many memoirs really inspired me, particularly memoirs about the transition from adolescence to adulthood. I think of “Black Boy” by Richard Wright. I think of “Makes Me Wanna Holler” by Nathan McCall and others. The unique experiences I had growing up in Stockton, but also being the first Black mayor of a major city, of Stockton, being the youngest mayor of a big city ever, that’s just a unique perspective and experience that I felt was worth to capture while it was still fresh in my mind, while I was still living it.

    LK: Your father was in jail while you were growing up, which was something you hid. Why?

    MT: I was so embarrassed because I thought it would cause people to make judgments of me, or view everything I did through that prism. I was afraid of what if that was a prophecy for me and my contributions to society or how my life would be. I didn’t want anyone to make judgments of me or my family based off that.

    LK: You talk about how coming up in the educational system, you encountered racism or condescending teachers. You defied expectations when you were accepted to Stanford University. How did that educational experience change your perspective?

    MT: From elementary school up until I graduated high school, I just did not get along with a lot of my teachers. And all of them were not racists, but some absolutely were. The classroom didn’t feel safe for me. I felt that it was always a struggle or a fight. I felt that my teachers were trying to control me or bring me in line or put me in my place. I just really rejected all of that.

    And it wasn’t until Stanford where the same things I would get in trouble for in high school, like really kicked out of class for, was the reason why I was a teacher’s pet, was the reason all of the professors wanted me to TA for them, was the reason why all of the professors wanted to be my mentor and write recommendations for me. They valued someone who was questioning, someone who was challenging, someone who was really excited about learning and wanted to debate ideas and discuss. That was the biggest surprise of Stanford, actually, was I didn’t get controlled in class, that I was the teacher’s pet. It was the exact opposite in high school or elementary school.

    LK: As an intern in President Barack Obama’s White House, you found out that your cousin Donnell had been shot and killed in Stockton. What was that like, and how does Donnell’s death influence you today?

    MT: That was very jarring. Just dealing with the pain, the anger, the grief, the feeling of helplessness, almost feeling nihilistic, and also doing so from a place of privilege, like being in the White House, and being at Stanford and having been at Google before that. And really thinking about how was anybody’s lives better because these things were happening for me? Or how is this helping anyone else? It really caused me to think, OK, what do I want to do in the world?

    And that pain and that anger and that grief drove me to run for city council and it still drives the work I did and do now around gun violence reduction and creating safer communities and reducing homicides in communities like Stockton. It was so real and so visceral, and then realizing that the No. 1 cause of death in this country for young Black and Latino men between 14 and 25 isn’t cancer, isn’t Covid, it’s gun violence. It’s unacceptable, and I felt like I had to do something to try to change it.

    LK: When running for city council, you had serendipitous run-ins with people like Oprah Winfrey and MC Hammer, who helped you financially. What was that like?

    MT: It was so random in the best way. It was also confirmation that even though it was unlikely, even though it sounded like a crazy idea, that this was aligning with a greater purpose, that this was what I’m supposed to be doing. Because who can plan for that?

    No one plans to run for office and have MC Hammer give them money for a city council race. It just reminded me that this was something bigger. It was bigger than me and bigger than this race. And it came at pivotal inflection points when I wanted to give up, when I felt like I didn’t have enough. I’m still in shock, amazed, surprised to this day, like 10 years later.

    Michael Tubbs, pictured here as a 22-year-old Stanford University graduate, worked to change his hometown of Stockton, California as a city council member and then as mayor.
    Michael Tubbs, pictured here as a 22-year-old Stanford University graduate, worked to change his hometown of Stockton, California as a city council member and then as mayor.

    LK: Have you kept in touch with them?

    MT: MC Hammer lives like 30 minutes away from Stockton. So we’ve had a couple dinners, we text, we did a Clubhouse conversation recently about basic income. I call him Uncle Hammer now.

    Oprah, we hadn’t kept in touch until she picked up the book and said, “I want to publish it.” And we’re having a conversation about the book, which I’m excited about.

    LK: You write about how happy your mother was on the last day she used a local check-cashing service. How did those services influence your family and the Stockton community?

    MT: In some parts of Stockton, you’re going to find check-cashing places. Given the way paychecks work, you get paid the 15th and the 31st, but your bills are due the 12thor the 10th. To see my mom having to go to check-cashing places, not because she would never have the money, but because she didn’t have the exact amount the day it was due, and would need like two more days to wait for her pay check. That really gave me a passion for economic security and that’s where basic income comes from, and that’s where a lot of the work around financial inclusion comes from, is seeing how predatory and how terrible these institutions are in that they keep people in the cycle of debt and keep a rat race that’s very hard to pull out of.

    LK: Did that contribute to the idea for the guaranteed income experiment?

    MT: My belief in basic income came from thinking how would my mom use that money, how would that help my mom raise me and my brother.

    LK: What lessons have you learned about guaranteed income now?

    MT: That dignity has to be attached to humanity before it’s attached to work. What you dignify is inherent to who we are as people. That’s a big lesson. There’s this idea of time. Money is proxy for power and agency. And so the ability to own your time and decide what you want to do and how you want to do it is important. And that you can trust people. You can trust them to make decisions for themselves and their family.

    LK: A big part of your efforts in the community have also been with education. Why has that been such an emphasis for you?

    MT: It also comes from personal experience. I’ve seen how four years getting a master’s and bachelor’s at Stanford has really set me up to be doing the work I’m doing now. It opened up my horizons, opened up my mind, I met my wife. It also taught me critical thinking. It taught me how to challenge. It gave me a network of people of support to draw from. And it’s empowered me to go back to my community. And to think about the potential of education and critical thinking to really create the changes we need to see in our local communities, in our state and in our nation.

    LK: What would you like your legacy of your time as Stockton’s mayor to be?

    MT: I want my legacy as Stockton’s mayor to be a mayor who wasn’t afraid of hard things, who believed that the city belonged to all people and who changed Stockton’s perception from a city with problems to a city where there’s solutions.

    LK: Now you’re planning to launch an anti-poverty project?

    MT: It’s an anti-poverty initiative called End Poverty in California, and it’s really about really sort of using all the tools at our disposal, from media to policy to art to research to piloting to really elevate the issue of poverty as a top issue for Californians to solve and really muster the political will to solve it. In January, we’re rolling out with a policy paper, because I’m a policy nerd, and then we have some other stuff in the works.

    LK: Why California specifically?

    MT: California is the Golden State. It has so much wealth, so much opportunity, but it also has the highest poverty rate in the country. It just seems antithetical to our values as a state. And as California goes, so goes the nation. It’s hard, as we’ve seen, to move things on a national level. As a state, we can organize and actually get things done.

    LK: How did this idea come about?

    MT: I’ve always been obsessed with ending poverty, and that’s kind of where some of the guaranteed income work comes as well. When I lost the election, it was like what do you want to do? I still want to work on this issue. This issue is still that important. It’s worth losing for. It’s worth trying again for.

    LK: What are the moments that have offered you the most satisfaction?

    MT: The fact that we have 60 mayors signed up to be part of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income. When I started, it was just me. There was one mayor for guaranteed income in this country, and now there’s 60. I am incredibly proud of all of the kids who are in the Stockton Scholars program, who are getting scholarships for four years or two years or trade school, who speak so beautifully about their community and ways to come back and ways to serve and continue the work that was started. My two kids, they get up every day and are hopeful, excited, laughing and growing. All of those give me hope.

    The post Why Michael Tubbs says he’s obsessed with ending poverty appeared first on Basic Income Today.

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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

    The post UBI Gains a Friend in High Places appeared first on Basic Income Today.

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  • 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.

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

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  • 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.”

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    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.

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