6
votes
Stockton's basic income trial: Early results show how money is spent
Link information
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- Title
- A California city gave some residents $500 a month, no strings attached. Here's how they spent it.
- Published
- Oct 8 2019
- Word count
- 1509 words
A few grains of salt that were mentioned in the article: First, the study is quite small, with only 125 participants. Second, the participants will receive money for a limited time, which could impact how they spend the money. Third, and most notably, the participants were given the money in debit cards to track their spending, but 40% of the money was withdrawn as cash, with users self-reporting how they spent it. Nevertheless, these results suggest that most of the money is being spent on essentials.
This is my bias talking, but it's nice to see what is possible with young people involved in politics. As the article points out, this experiment is the passion project of Stockton's 29-year-old mayor, Michael Tubbs. The United States has so many systemic problems that need to be addressed. Taking risks and exploring bold ideas is necessary in order to tackle these problems, and it seems like younger people are more inclined to go in that direction.