The New Yorker has reported on the results of the experiment in Stockton, where five hundred individuals randomly selected from the city’s most deprived districts have been receiving US$100 per month unconditionally.
… For example, during the pandemic, the percentage of money that participants spent on food, consistently the largest category, reached nearly twenty-five per cent over the monthly average, while the amount spent on recreation dropped to less than two per cent.
Participants have also put the money toward rent, car payments, and paying off debt, as well as one-off expenses for themselves or their children: dental surgery, a prom dress, football camp, and shoes. They’ve also been able to cut back on working second and third jobs; one participant, a forty-eight-year-old mother of two who works full time at Tesla, was able to stop working as a delivery driver for DoorDash. Alcohol and tobacco has accounted for less than one per cent of spending per month. …
(To read previous articles on the experiment, click here)
dear city of STOCKHOLM
I write to you from AUSTRIA; AUSTRIA managed the crisis on the sholders of the poor people in introducing the shorted work with lower income,in closing the large airlines and reopening with large state-support and in giving no higher income to the poor but
highering the family allownaces for families
and giving a one paid payment of 450 EUROS once a year to unemployed persons due to the larger consumption of food.But they are all forced to stay at home, not to travel and not to have full payed work.So the crisis is a empty work.-area for many people and not to go there again.ABout 800.000 persons are without a work in Austria and will remain outside the next years.
Greetings from AUSTRIA
Dr.Sabine STADLER; BIEN AUSTRIA VIENNA
I live in San Francisco Bay Area near Stockton and am a big fan of mi amigo Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs, who drove and led this UBI experiment. Of course UBI of only $100 per month is not my UBI, as I advocate UBI for Everyone, $1,000 per month for all rich and poor, with no means-testing.
As greedy California landlords charge ruinous overpriced rent and steal almost all our income, UBI is quite useless until we live in Free Housing Cooperatives, including what I advocate, Free Self-Managed Tent Village Cooperatives for the Employed and Unemployed Precariat, with no means testing.
I see UBI and Free Housing as equally essential, as both are needed in USA now.