“A successful basic-income trial in Stockton, California, has inspired a chain of similar pilots in other cities,” reports Business Insider:
The city council of Saint Paul, Minnesota, voted to approve funding for a pilot there on Wednesday. The program is set to begin this fall and will give up to 150 low-income families $500 per month for up to 18 months — no strings attached… “I think there’s a budding realization that not only is this a good thing for us to try, but that we may not have any other option,” St. Paul mayor Melvin Carter said on a Wednesday press call…
“We’re obviously seeing an unprecedented crisis in our communities across our country,” Carter said. “We’re coming to a recognition that we don’t have a funding problem. We have a priorities problem.”
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced he was donating $3 million to a coalition of “Mayors for a Guaranteed Income.” The group currently has 25 mayors — two who are already overseeing pilot programs in their own cities — while Chicago, Newark, and Atlanta “have created task forces to help design their programs,” and the mayor of Pittsburgh would like to launch one of their own by the end of the year.
In another article, Business Insider created a map showing the locations of 48 basic income programs that have happened around the world (based on data from the Stanford Basic Income Lab). But they also provide this summary of their current state:
So is basic income the real deal or a pipe dream? The results are still unclear. Some, like the initial pilots for Uganda’s Eight program, were found to result in significant multipliers on economic activity and well-being. Other programs, however, returned mixed results that made further experimentation difficult. Finland’s highly-touted pilot program decreased stress levels of recipients across the board, but didn’t positively impact work activity.
The biggest difficulty has been in keeping programs going and securing funding. Ontario’s three-year projects were prematurely cancelled in 2018 before they could be completed and assessed, and the next stages of Finland’s program are in limbo. Likewise in the U.S., start-up incubator Y Combinator has been planning a $60M basic income study program, but can’t proceed until funding is secured.
of this story at Slashdot.
Source:: Slashdot