John Yang:
It's not a new idea. No strings attached payments to provide people with a financial floor what's called a guaranteed basic income. It actually dates back to 16th century England.
Today, it's been tested in dozens of pilot programs across the country and cities as big as Baltimore and as small as Yellow Springs, Ohio population about 3,700. Some of them use taxpayer funds. Others use private contributions or foundation grants. Stockton, California was among the first to launch a pilot program in 2019.
Earlier, I spoke with Stockton's mayor at the time, Michael Tubbs. He's also founder of a group called Mayors for a Guaranteed Income. I asked him about the genesis of Stockton program.
Michael Tubbs, Founder, Mayors for a Guaranteed Income: That the crux of all the issues from homelessness to crime to education was his persistent poverty and economic insecurity. So my first 100 days, I gathered my team in the office and I said, you guys, I want our legacy to be an anti-poverty, a pro-economic security administration. So let's come up with all the ideas for how can we, as a government, ensure that people have enough to live and survive and eventually thrive.
And through that my team came back with this idea of a guaranteed income, citing work that was happening in places like Kenya, and in Mexico and Brazil, that had heard their guaranteed income from studying Dr. King in college. So I was familiar with the idea. So I said, well, let's do it.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7sa7SZ6arn1%2Bjsri%2Fx6isq2ejnby4e8CsZJynnaLCr7XTopysZaSawLV5wZqqoptdnruku8yeZKmqn5y%2FornSZp%2BeqpWoeqm71mamp51dmK6ttcWoqaehkWKwqsDYZp2aqpWZ