Universal Basic Income in California? Here Are the Mayors Supporting it - The New York Times

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Downtown Stockton in 2018. The city has been the first in the nation to experiment with guaranteed income.Credit...Jason Henry for The New York Times

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A renewed push for guaranteed income

Stockton is led by a history-making mayor, Michael Tubbs.Credit...Jason Henry for The New York Times

For Californians, the economic devastation wrought by the pandemic has only deepened existing inequality.

When we asked what you wanted to know about how the pandemic is reshaping life in the Golden State, Erin Durham, a former San Franciscan now living in Europe, asked about the kinds of social programs she’s seen there, or whether California might implement one that has recently gained traction: a universal basic income.

“I believe that the basic guaranteed income initiative would work very well in a rich state that relies so much on lower paid workers and that has a huge homeless problem that seems to be irresolvable,” she wrote. “It only looks like a win-win to me.”

While the idea's most high-profile booster this year was the presidential candidate Andrew Yang, a universal basic income, or guaranteed income, experiment has been underway in Stockton since early last year.

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The idea is for the government to give everyone, regardless of their wealth or employment status, a certain amount of money every month — in the Stockton case, though, it is 125 residents receiving $500 of donated cash — which would remove “the stigma of traditional welfare schemes while ensuring sustenance for all,” as my colleague reported in 2018.

[Read the full story about Stockton’s first-in-the-nation program.]

Now, Stockton’s first Black mayor, and, at 29, its youngest, Michael Tubbs, is leading a push to expand the idea with a new initiative, Mayors for a Guaranteed Income. Mayors from across the country — including Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles, Aja Brown of Compton and Libby Schaaf of Oakland — have signed on.

Earlier this week, I talked with Mr. Tubbs about the effort and about Stockton right now. Here’s our conversation, lightly edited and condensed:

Tell me about how Mayors for Guaranteed Income builds on what’s already happening in Stockton.

We found that over the last 18 months, as we’ve been piloting in Stockton, so many cities have reached out, wanting to do something like this for their constituents.

Something this important and fundamental has to be at the federal level, but oftentimes, the federal government needs test cases.

Then, during Covid-19, I spent a lot of energy ensuring that the folks in our pilot would have their program be extended at least to January. We were able to do that thanks to a grant.

But then the George Floyd civil unrest happened. I reread the section of “Where Do We Go From Here?” Dr. King’s last book, about guaranteed income. I was fascinated because I realized he wrote that book in a context very similar to this one, where there was civil unrest in every city. Folks were angry and protesting the structural racism and violence in society.

And so I said, “Let me reach out to some mayors I know and see if they will join with me in creating a network, saying we need to do pilots in our cities, but we also need a federal policy that speaks to economic insecurity.” So that’s what I did.

What’s been the most surprising thing about the program?

I wish I had known just how emotional some of the stories would make me.

Stories of people who have jobs, people who, on the surface, everything looks good, but something as small as $500 has been the difference between eviction and homelessness and being housed, or being able to take time off to interview for a better job.

And a lot of them have told our researchers that this is the first time they’ve been seen. I was unprepared for the level of people struggling.

What do you see as the biggest challenge to scaling up?

The past couple months you have Covid-19, which showcased how fragile our economy is, where we literally today have essential workers who are putting their health and lives on the line, who still cannot afford rent and are still standing in food banks after work.

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You have civil unrest with the George Floyd murder, and people are demanding a change.

I think the hardest part is probably mustering the political will, but if we can’t summon the political will now, at the time when we’re entering into a Great Depression, at a time where we’re at levels of inequality not seen since the Gilded Age, it’s a time of civil unrest.

If we can’t muster the political will to act now, then we have a deeper problem of values and ability to act in our society.

I know that the George Floyd protests were tricky for progressive mayors and you recently talked to my colleagues about navigating that. But since then, calls have turned more explicitly to defunding or dismantling police departments. Do you support defunding the Stockton Police Department, or is that something you’re looking into?

We know that crime correlates with poverty, and things like mental illness can be exacerbated by poverty. So one way we get to a society where we don’t need as many officers is to abolish poverty. I think guaranteed income is a step in that direction.

Ideally, we’d love to live in a world without crime, but as long as there’s crime there will be a need for officers.

In Stockton’s context, because of the bankruptcy, we decimated our police force by about 30 percent about a decade ago. And twice in the last decade our citizens have voted to tax themselves more to pay for officers.

What we’ve been doing in Stockton is really looking at the role of police. Like other cities, we’ll be doing an analysis of 911 calls to see which are calls that don’t need an officer.

What do you think is the biggest misconception about guaranteed income programs?

The biggest misconception I hear is that it rewards people for not working. That’s such a racist trope and it’s not true. The second big misconception I’ve heard is that we can’t afford it. But there are all these proposals now to do that.

So the question is: Do we trust our neighbors to spend money well? I would argue we should and we have to, given this crisis we face.

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Jill Cowan grew up in Orange County, went to school at U.C. Berkeley and has reported all over the state, including the Bay Area, Bakersfield and Los Angeles — but she always wants to see more. Follow along here or on Twitter.

California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.

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