How UBI proposals distract from the real problem: housing costs.
By: Chares Blaine
In an effort to reduce poverty in their cities, eleven mayors have signed on to a push to guarantee a basic income for the more than 5 million people they collectively represent.
The first U.S. city to move forward on this initiative was Stockton, California, but the effort has gained more steam given the unemployment uptick due to Coronavirus-related government shutdowns of the private sector.
While the policy is well-intentioned, it’s far from the most effective way to eradicate poverty in America’s cities and, in the long-term, could have unintended consequences on the exact people the mayors hope to help.
Read the full article here.
**Editor’s note**
Since this article was written in 2020, cities like Compton (Compton Pledge), Los Angeles (Big Leap), and LA County (Breathe) have implemented similar programs designed to give “free” money to less than 1,000 residents as an experiment of sorts to see if the money, with no strings attached, elevate the recipients out of poverty without addressing problems such as rising housing costs, inflation, how to either maintain and/or expand the program without reliance on private donors and one-time monies received through the American Recovery Plan Act (ARPA).
The daughter of the owner of the LA Times is being accused of seeking to reduce police budgets to pay for such programs. Nika Soon-Shiong is the mastermind behind the Compton Pledge and reducing the law enforcement budget in West Hollywood.
She announced last month she is leaving Los Angeles to return to Oxford to finish her doctoral studies with a thesis centering around cash transfer systems in India. Real convenient to kick up dust around public safety then leaving others behind to deal with the fallout.
