In case you missed it, ALL moms in Flint, Michigan can now get $1,500 while pregnant, plus $500 a month in #BasicIncome for the first year of their child's life.
There are around 1,200 babies born in Flint every year, and with this, they can all start off their lives better and healthier.
Austin recently became the first city in Texas to experiment with a guaranteed income program. For one year, 135 low-income families received $1,000 each month. Now, a new report shows that the program significantly improved many aspects of the recipient’s lives, especially in regards to housing security.
‘We know that if we trust people to make the right decisions for themselves and their families, it leads to better outcomes, ...' - NowThis Impact
Want to know how people have felt about #BasicIncome through time? As long ago as 1917 UBI was being championed as a 'pathway to a world with less fear, government and policing and more genuine joy, beauty and usefulness' in this essay from the archives https://zurl.co/vT9m
Did you know that #basicincome experiments have shown time and time again that given the choice, people don't choose idleness? They choose education. They choose entrepreneurship. They pursue culture and care. By guaranteeing survival, universal basic income enables truly living.
The real wealth of society is its people and our collective knowledge and resources. With Universal Basic Income, we can invest in everyone's human potential and unlock untold societal progress.
Is it fair that some people amass an extravagant fortune from birth due to luck of the draw, while others work countless hours just to make ends barely meet? We need to reconsider our understanding of wealth, merit, and fairness. This is where Unconditional #BasicIncome steps in.
Results from the Minneapolis #basicincome pilot are in. This one is a randomized controlled trial evaluated by the Minneapolis Fed. 200 people get $500/mo for 2 years.
Cash recipients ARE NOT WORKING LESS than the control group.
"Food security, financial security, well-being, and psychological wellness all improved for GBI recipients relative to the comparison group of nonrecipients... For the remaining index—labor supply—we cannot detect a significant impact of GBI."
Why should simple existence still be tied to jobs? Many of us spend our lives in jobs we hate, just to stay alive amidst abundance. What if we could live without fear of hunger or homelessness? That's the essence of universal basic income—a basic right to life, regardless of job.
Which country other than the US could be first to implement universal basic income? Maybe Canada? Brazil? Germany? South Korea? South Africa? India? Japan?
What about China?
Let me know in the replies which country you'd put money on to win the race for UBI.
The idea of #basicincome isn't to diminish the value of work, it's to recognize the value of life. We shouldn't have to prove our right to exist. Jobs are a means providing extra, but basic needs - food, shelter, clothing - need to be met first.
We have to entirely disconnect healthcare and survival money from jobs. No matter what you do, no matter the job, no matter anything, you should at the very least have enough money to survive, and healthcare when you need it.
All jobs should be about more than survival needs.
We should all have #BasicIncome as a floor. Jobs will then exist as a means to raise us above that floor.
The Supreme Court has agreed to review a lower court ruling holding that Grants Pass (OR) cannot criminalize homelessness due to the 8th Amendment prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment. They will likely overrule it. This means that stopping the criminalization of homelessness starts by electing city council members who will prioritize helping the homeless over zoning regulations. And working for a #BasicIncome. Local elections matter. https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/01/19/the-hostile-architecture-of-late-stage-capitalism/
Having a job should be a choice, not a survival requirement. The notion that we all must earn our living is an outdated concept. We need to see jobs as something we choose to do for satisfaction, not a means to live.
When I say jobs should be for satisfaction, I mean to live a SATISFYING LIFE. That means a job we find satisfying or a job that pays us enough to ENJOY LIVING. Most all of us want to spend money on MORE than basic needs.
If we had not allowed inequality to grow so extreme in the US in the decades following the 1970s, we'd all be earning around $1400 a month more than we are now. You should see Universal #BasicIncome as your missing wage/salary that instead went to make the richest 1% even richer.
It's unacceptable that we require jobs in order to "earn a living." Living is a right. For the same reason it's wrong to kill someone, it's also wrong to withhold food we all need to live when there's enough for all. Jobs should be about wages for fun stuff, not survival stuff.
We know how to solve homelessness, we just don't do it. Universal #BasicIncome would greatly reduce and prevent homelessness. Land value taxes would tax land versus housing, increasing the housing supply and bringing costs down. We also need YIMBY reforms too to build more housing and lower costs.
@peterbrown@scottsantens you miss the point. Even if there were no housing benefit at all (and really, there's no point in Universal #BasicIncome unless it replaces all means-tested benefits), the rentier sharks would raise rents to the point that they captured virtually all the value.
@simon_brooke@scottsantens Your "rentier shark" argument also ignores social housing and housing co-ops, as if they do not exist.
Your "and really, there's no point in Universal #BasicIncome unless it replaces all means-tested benefits" is absurd, not just because of the point about housing, but because many such benefits are not universal claims or entitlements.
You're not going to pay UBI to cover e.g. disability or ill-health, because not everyone is disabled or sick all the time.
Whelp.. I finally made too many hashtags to fit on my profile. I tried to pick the ones most applicable to me, or ones I feel most passionate about for my page, and I'll attach an exhaustive, absurdly long list of hashtags below. It was surprisingly difficult to decide which ones made the cut. Drumroll please: