Michigan’s $55M experiment with guaranteed income begins with Flint moms
Michigan’s $55M experiment with guaranteed income begins with Flint moms
Michigan will experiment with guaranteed income in Flint, one of its poorest cities, giving expectant and new moms $7,500 — no strings attached — to lift the stress of poverty from their newborns.
FLINT—Eight days after entering the world, Khi’Meir Taylor made another debut — this time in what could be a national spotlight.
Wednesday was the first day of a $55 million experiment to test whether cash payments can protect children from the toxic stress of poverty.
Calling it now: They'll find that it works, but then nothing will change once the experiment concludes. Bought and paid for politicians will protect the wealthiest instead of allowing the poor enough to get by, doing everything they can to prevent UBI from being widely implemented.
True, especially as many similar programs met the same fate.
You kind of need to help pay for it by getting rid of government programs to allocate money piecemeal. That’s a huge change and a huge commitment, and politicians aren’t good at that.
…. Although I don’t know why the libertarian and other small government folk haven’t latched onto that opportunity
You need to do way more than that. In addition to canceling pretty much every entitlement, you still need more money to give everyone a check.
I am looking forward to the results. It's about time we start testing Universal Basic Income.
Really, we already have the results. And they're good results. Every single resident of Alaska gets oil dividends. I don't like that it's how they have a UBI, but it does give them one and it does help. The only problem is that the amount entirely depends on the oil revenue generated by Alaskan oil in any given year.
TIL. I never knew that. Thank you I'm gonna look into this some more.
Is it really every resident, or only legal US citizens?
Agreed.
I only wish it weren't a state or local-level thing. If we can find hundreds of billions for other countries' wars, in my mind, there's no excuse for UBI not being the law at the federal level.
Same, although I do understand that at the moment, it's only a local or state level thing because it's still in its early stages. I feel like once enough states or cities experiment then we can gather all that data to create a national system based off what works and find ways to limit abuses on the system.
I'm more interested in paying for domestic and reproductive work i.e. paying people to take care of their kids, cook their meals, mow their lawns, take out their trash, etc. Society can only function on the back of this unpaid labor after all.
UBI is okay too, though.
to test whether cash payments can protect children from the toxic stress of poverty
The answer is yes. Obviously.
I keep seeing these pilot programs and small experiments in UBI, and they all prove that people prosper and thrive more when they have more money. Nobody is surprised. Was that ever even in question?
I want to see UBI experiments, plans, etc. that tackle large-scale implementation. We've proven "BI"; that was never the hard part. We need to focus on the "U".
Defeat the fuckingcapitalists