This fall, Stockton, Calif., once known as America’s foreclosure capital, will become the first city in the nation to test drive a $500 a month universal basic income experiment, Fox News reported.
One hundred residents of the 300,000 population city have been selected to participate in the program, funded in part by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes.
Hughes, a multi-millionaire by the time he was in his mid-20s, founded his organization, the Economic Security Project, to support the research and development of these types of projects, CNN reported.
“It is such a fundamental idea behind America that if you work hard, you can get ahead — and you certainly don’t live in poverty. But that isn’t true today, and it hasn’t been true in the country for decades,” Hughes told CNN in an interview this past March. “I believe that unless we make significant changes today, the income inequality in our country will continue to grow and call into question the very nature of our social contract.”
Hughes also said then that his interest in universal basic income also stems from the “looming threat of automation and displacement.”
Another silicon valley tycoon, Elon Musk, has similarly expressed concerns of automation displacing too many jobs.
When asked whether he supported universal basic income, Musk tweeted in June, “Universal income will be necessary over time if AI takes over most human jobs.”
Universal income will be necessary over time if AI takes over most human jobs
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 15, 2018
Facebook’s other co-founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has also expressed interest in UBI.
“We should explore ideas like universal basic income to make sure that everyone has a cushion to try new ideas,” Zuckerberg said in May 2017 Harvard commencement speech.
Lori Ospina, director of the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration, which is running the project, told CNN that residents are clamoring to be a part of the experiment.
“My email inbox is inundated daily with residents from the community wanting to know, ‘What’s the sign-up process? Has it already started? Am I already too late? What do I have to do?'” said Ospina.
As a concept, universal basic income has recently enjoyed a revival in interest, with some claiming that it will become necessary as technology obviates the need for more and more jobs. Most of the idea’s exponents today are on the political Left. But some libertarians, such as the late Milton Friedman, have supported similar ideas such as the minimum guaranteed income as a more efficient and flexible replacement for the modern welfare state.
