Stockton, California, is planning on becoming the first American testing ground for a basic income. The plan is to begin giving potentially 100 families $500 a month, “no strings attached.” The concept of universal basic income has been around for a long time and the hope is that in providing everyone a level of income, the stigma surrounding assistance programs like welfare will diminish, ameliorating some of the more destructive social inequalities that come in hand with income inequality.
In more modern times, Milton Friedman, darling of laissez-faire economics, embraced the idea of negative income taxes that put cash in the hands of the poorest people. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. advocated “the guaranteed income.”
Dr. King’s legacy has currency in Stockton, which is now led by a history-making mayor, Michael Tubbs. At 27, he is the youngest mayor of a sizable American city, and the first African-American to hold the job here.
Stockton is an area in the central valley of California, devastated by the last decade of American economics. In 2007, Stockton led all major U.S. cities in foreclosures—one in every 27 Stockton homes were foreclosed on (it was supplanted by Detroit later that year). Stockton once again gained that dreaded No. 1 spot in 2008, only to move into second place behind Las Vegas in 2009. By 2012 Stockton filed for bankruptcy, and by 2016, Michael Tubbs became the first black mayor of Stockton, and the youngest at age 26. He’s been promoting his hopes and reasons for wanting the basic income project to be enacted since coming into office. Here he is explaining it to Politico in April.
“So much of the investment strategy in the past was, ‘Let’s create this image of the city,’ while really neglecting investing in people,” Tubbs told me in a conversation for POLITICO’s Off Message podcast.
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“There’s this interesting conversation we’ve been having about the value of work,” Tubbs said. “Work does have some value and some dignity, but I don’t think working 14 hours and not being able to pay your bills, or working two jobs and not being able—there’s nothing inherently dignified about that.”
Hear, hear. The basic income plan he’s supporting is funded through the Economic Security Project, which the New York Times says is an advocacy group for basic income. The Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED) began with $1 million from the Economic Security Project. Now, the most important step forward is figuring out who to give the money to in starting this experiment.
At a meeting at City Hall, the SEED project manager Lori Ospina urged that the program be designed to yield valid scientific data. That involves choosing participants on the basis of narrow demographic criteria — perhaps their age, their race, their income.
But that approach could expose the city to charges that the program is not inclusive enough. “The trolls I’ve been dealing with on social media and in real life have very racialized views of how this is going to work,” Mr. Tubbs said. “As the first black mayor of this city, it would be very dangerous if the only people to get this were black.”
Tubbs says that there needs to be a change in “the narrative” of who is “deserving” of the money. This is 100 percent true, as the racist concept of the African-American “welfare queen” is still deeply embedded in the racist American story. Most people who need some assistance do not want to stay on assistance. They want some help covering the rising costs that our economy’s stagnant wage growth does not satisfy.
Good luck, Mayor Tubbs. We will be watching, hoping, and some of us even praying.