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CHICAGO (CBS) –Mayor Brandon Johnson spoke Friday in favor of a basic income guarantee program at a conference held in Chicago. "We are ushering in a more dynamic, prosperous economy by giving people a guarantee that their lives have meaning," Johnson said. About 3,200 families are receiving direct payments in the first-ever Cook County Promise Guaranteed Income pilot program for low-earning households.

More than 140 people experiencing homelessness in Denver will each be provided up to $1,000 in cash a month for up to one year as part of a basic income program designed to help "lift individuals out of homelessness," the city announced last week. The $2 million contract with the Denver Basic Income Project was approved by the City Council and will provide direct cash assistance to more than 140 women, transgender and gender non-conforming individuals, and families in shelters. "Just as important as housing and shelter is a regular source of income for those experiencing homelessness," Mayor Michael B....

“Universal Basic Income” has gotten quite the prominent press over the past few years. Yet, full communism eludes us.Still, some are giving it a shot:Running low on cash? Try asking Andrew Yang for an advance on the Universal Basic Income. pic.twitter.com/ihkYLXeeMX— MeidasTouch.com (@MeidasTouch) November 4, 2021According to The Sun, just over 20 American cities are dabbling in the idea, and West Hollywood now joins them.As reported by WeHo.com, the town is launching a guaranteed income pilot program:The city will give $1,000 each month from April 2022 through September 2023 — a total of $17,000 over 17 months — to 25...

One of the favorite utopian goals of the left-wing loons — from members of "The Squad" to Andrew Yang — is the guaranteed-to-fail fantasy of Universal Basic Income...or, as Dire Straits said in their 1985 hit, "Money for Nothing." This welfare-on-steroids plan has already been tried and failed in Ontario, Canada and Finland, but progressive hopes spring eternal in California, where many new ideas — business concepts, laws, social experiments, fads, drugs (legal or not), or whatever — are often tried. It's a type of proving ground, if you willStockton, California has tried an experiment of its own, giving $500...

Something strange is going on out in Marin County, California. The elected officials there have instituted a pilot program offering a universal basic income in the form of a monthly stipend to a limited number of participants. That in and of itself isn’t unique, as programs such as this have been tested in other places, such as Stockton, California. A couple of aspects of this program, however, really are unique. The most glaring among these is the fact that in order to qualify, participants have to be women. No males need apply. On top of that, the program is not...

Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang made his first appearance as a New York City mayoral candidate on Thursday, proposing a basic income program for the city’s poorest. “We will launch the largest basic income program in the history of the country,” Yang stated. “We will lift hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers out of extreme poverty, putting cash relief directly into the hands of the families who desperately need help right now.” Yang’s plan, a modified version of his national universal basic income (UBI) proposal, would involve providing roughly 500,000 New Yorkers “who are living in extreme poverty with...

Most people agree that politics is a dirty game and that political powers will inevitably be used to further the agenda of officeholders and their cronies. That said, despite being immersed in the current thinking regarding UBI for three years now, I have seen precious little worrying as to what the government — or a future government — might actually do once it has seized control over everyone’s purse strings.

No excerpt from Bloomberg, story here.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said on Thursday that lawmakers should consider a swath of measures, including “no-strings” universal basic income (UBI) programs, as a response to the economic impacts of the Chinese coronavirus. The freshman lawmaker weighed in on the ongoing debate over an economic relief package designed to combat the ramifications of the coronavirus. She said while proposals, like expanding unemployment insurance, are good, they are not enough and pushed for far more drastic, big-government measures.

Gallup released the results of a survey today on the topic of Universal Basic Income. The survey found that respondents in the UK and Canada overwhelmingly support UBI while it remains a minority position in the United States: A recent survey by Gallup and Northeastern University finds a slight majority of Americans opposed to a universal basic income (UBI) program as a way to support workers displaced by AI adoption. Conversely, about three-fourths of residents in the U.K. and Canada favor the idea…In the survey, UBI was defined for respondents as a government-instituted program that would provide every adult...

Getting a paycheck for doing nothing could be in the future for residents of New Jersey’s largest city. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka says the city is going to study a pilot program to provide a universal basic income, or basically guaranteeing income for all residents whether they have a job. […] The city has launched a taskforce to see if the program is feasible with help from the Economic Security Project and the Jain Institute. […] There has not been a successful long-term Universal Basic Income program. A small basic-income program that was tested in Finland was ended after one...

Finland’s Social Insurance Institution just released results from a two-year experiment with Universal Basic Income. The plan was simple. Instead of only giving unemployment benefits to people who are out of work, Finland would randomly select 2,000 people who would receive a monthly payment whether or not they worked. This guaranteed income was supposed to encourage people receiving it to take more jobs or even start new businesses. But that’s not what happened. From the official press release: ‘On the basis of an analysis of register data on an annual level, we can say that during the first year...

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — A nationwide experiment with basic income in Finland has not increased employment among those participating in the two-year trial, but their general well-being seems to have increased, a report said Friday. The Social Insurance Institution of Finland, or Kela, said "it was not yet possible to draw any firm conclusions" from the first half of the experiment, where about 2,000 randomly selected, unemployed people aged 25-58 got tax-free income of 560 euros ($636) a month with no questions asked. Finland is looking into ways to reshape its social security system and became in January 2017 the first...

A nationwide experiment with basic income in Finland has not increased employment among those participating in the two-year trial, but their general well-being seems to have increased, a report said Friday. The Social Insurance Institution of Finland, or Kela, said “it was not yet possible to draw any firm conclusions” from the first half of the experiment, where about 2,000 randomly selected, unemployed people aged 25-58 got tax-free income of €560 ($636) a month with no questions asked. Finland is looking into ways to reshape its social security system and became in January 2017 the first European country to launch...

Members of an internationally lauded basic income pilot project in Canada are taking their province to court over its surprise cancellation, arguing that the Ontario government’s decision is unethical and that it was made in bad faith. On Jan. 27, a three-judge legal panel heard arguments in a Toronto courthouse. They ultimately reserved judgment, meaning they haven’t yet decided whether to uphold the government’s decision or accept...

Two Democrats in the U.S. Senate – both said to be eyeing the party’s 2020 presidential nomination -- recently announced so-called “basic income” plans for America’s lower-income families. A liberal publication, meanwhile, says neither plan goes far enough to aid families, and the government should instead just start “writing them checks.” But the Heritage Foundation argues that such plans tend to fail, in part because they tend to remove the incentive for work.

It’s the year of the Democratic Socialist and that means that some relatively crazy ideas are all the rage. One of the biggest is the dream-like vision of a society where you get paid whether you work or not. It’s known as universal basic income (UBI) and it fits in nicely with the idea of each according to his needs. Can it work in the United States, particularly in some of our cash-strapped major cities? We may find out soon enough because Chicago is looking at giving it a go. (Free Beacon) Officials in Chicago want to test the...

In his first major speech since leaving office, former President Barack Obama endorsed the idea of providing a universal basic income. Speaking at the Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture in South Africa on Tuesday, Obama raised the notion of guaranteed income as a way to reduce what he called "yawning disparities" in wealth, education, and security across different socioeconomic groups. "It's not just money that a job provides," said Obama. "It provides dignity and structure and a sense of place and a sense of purpose. So we're going to have to consider new ways of thinking about these problems, like a...

Back in May, we looked at a story out of Stockton, California, where their new, young mayor, Michael Tubbs had some unusual plans in mind. Stockton is frequently plagued with violent crime and deals with endemic poverty issues. Tubbs wanted to find a unique way to help some people out. A few of his ideas were clearly well intended and forward thinking. For example, he was partnering with private sector benefactors to try to offer college scholarships for qualifying students without further burdening the municipal budget.Some of his other ideas were a bit more, um… out there. And he’s...

The latest "big idea" in the U.S. is the Universal Basic Income — a guaranteed income for all. Progressives of course like the idea, but even some conservatives and libertarians do, too. Only one problem: It doesn't work. Ask Finland, a highly progressive Scandinavian country that has an ongoing guaranteed income experiment, but is abandoning it. Starting in 2017, the two-year Finnish program selected a random group of 2,000 unemployed people and gave them a monthly income roughly equal to about $678 for doing ... nothing. The government hoped that many participants would flood back into the labor market. But...