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Government

California Approves a Targeted State-Funded Guaranteed Income Program (cnbc.com) 130

Thursday's California's lawmakers approved America's first state-funded guaranteed income program for both qualifying young adults who have recently left foster care and for pregnant women, reports CNBC. The votes — 36-0 in the Senate and 64-0 in the Assembly — showed bipartisan support for an idea that is gaining momentum across the country. Dozens of local programs have sprung up in recent years, including some that have been privately funded, making it easier for elected officials to sell the public on the idea. California's plan is taxpayer-funded, and could spur other states to follow its lead.

"If you look at the stats for our foster youth, they are devastating," Senate Republican Leader Scott Wilk said. "We should be doing all we can to lift these young people up."

Local governments and organizations will apply for the money and run their programs. The state Department of Social Services will decide who gets funding. California lawmakers left it up to local officials to determine the size of the monthly payments, which generally range from $500 to $1,000 in existing programs around the country. The vote came on the same day millions of parents began receiving their first monthly payments under a temporary expansion of the federal child tax credit many view as a form of guaranteed income. "Now there is momentum, things are moving quickly," said Michael Tubbs, an advisor to California governor Gavin Newsom, who was a trailblazer when he instituted a guaranteed income program as mayor of Stockton. "The next stop is the federal government."

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California Approves a Targeted State-Funded Guaranteed Income Program

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  • The thing is, unlike the wealthy, these people will not hoard this money. 95% will be returned to the economy within weeks of it being allocated. Ramp up the printing machines and share the debt. Or the wealth, as it may be.
    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      The thing is, unlike the wealthy, these people will not hoard this money.

      Wealthy people don't "hoard" money. They invest it.

      This program trades investment for consumption.

      America has a $680B trade deficit, which is the excess we consume over what we produce.

      • by Anonymouse Cowtard ( 6211666 ) on Saturday July 17, 2021 @11:28PM (#61593307) Homepage

        They invest it ...in shit that just sits there gathering entropy, and if they can afford the "asset", rent. They are leeches. And who are you to invoke "we" and "us" Americans? Some worldy authority on everything.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Chas ( 5144 )

          No. They invest in things that allow others to utilize those resources to make/build/grow. Then, when the making, building, growing happens, they return the money at an agreed upon rate of interest/profit.

          Even your no-interest checking account is utilized for monetary capital. By the bank.

          Unless you're hiding money in your mattress, money is seldom idle.

      • America has a $680B trade deficit, which is the excess we consume over what we produce.

        Luckily for the US, in macroeconomics trade is not the primary metrics to measure a successful policy.

        • Luckily for the US, in macroeconomics trade is not the primary metrics to measure a successful policy.

          Unlucky for us, is while microeconomics is wrong about specific things, macroeconomics is wrong about things in general.

          Anything beyond supply/demand/competition, and you've jumped the shark.

        • by reanjr ( 588767 ) on Sunday July 18, 2021 @09:26AM (#61594205) Homepage

          So, we're getting $680B in goods from other countries each year, and in return we give them nearly worthless printed bills.

          That's a steal.

          • We also encourage, and in some cases require, those nations to park money in our banking system. The less the world depends on the US for its currency and banking, the sharper our decline will be. There is a tremendous economic and political advantage to being in the center of it all.

      • by slack_justyb ( 862874 ) on Sunday July 18, 2021 @01:12AM (#61593433)

        This program trades investment for consumption.

        Yeah, that's what this economy was built on. I mean, I get it. I don't like it any more than the other person, but the US economy isn't well known for it's established investment and saving ethic. Telling the people who this program targets to "just save money" or "invest it" is asking the wrong group to solve a problem they didn't create. And telling the people who did make this an issue to change the economy will just get them voted out of office for being "out of touch".

        I'm not a giant supporter of this bill but shy of "hey let's change every aspect of our economy overnight!" There's basically not a whole lot they can do that's going to be in the favor of the public.

        America has a $680B trade deficit, which is the excess we consume over what we produce.

        And? I mean there was a point to talk about that, and that was like back in the 90s. That ship already left port, hit an iceberg, and sank. The selling of goods as opposed to the making of goods is the primary mover and we're not leaving that unless some group decides to start making inroads on that for the next three decades. Good luck on that, we've got political parties that couldn't agree to have lunch together, much less embark on some retooling of our country that'll take a political forever to do.

        Thick or thin, the US is "consume, consume, consume" and I'd bet a shiny quarter that there's not a solution to that anywhere within my lifetime, nor most of the people on Slashdot's lifetime for that matter. This bill that you're calling out, what would you have rather CA done? Toss a monkey wrench into the gears of the US economy? You think that would win the hearts and minds of the people? You think that would get them reelected so that they can make that policy long term?

        People like consuming, politicians like drawing lines in sand, and corporations love money. You got three really big things all working to keep the keeping on, keeping on. So you're like, "we shouldn't be this way!!" And that's living in a dream world that doesn't exist and it's that fairy tale crap that most people are done with. The political and lobbying is such, we're not even ready to have a talk on the what we should and shouldn't be doing. When the different party members can sit down with each other and have a discussion for longer than five minutes, then, then we'll have a bit of progress. When lobbying rules get reformed, when money gets out of elections, then we'll have a bit of progress. But until we get those parts and a slew more, all this that you're talking about is just unicorns and fairy dust.

      • America has a $680B trade deficit, which is the excess we consume over what we produce.

        That means we get stuff in exchange for paper. It's not a big deal.

        • Its the rate that money printing is happening that is the big deal

          I would argue that there is at least some correlation between the trade deficit and the federal deficit, and that the federal deficit is clearly and primarily monetized by printing now. It doesnt even matter that China hold what is probably $2 trillion of our federal debt now, since the biggest player in our debt from now on will forever be the federal reserve.
          • This is all true, and yet I would rather have "things" than "paper."

          • by Anonymous Coward

            China holds about $1T of the fed debt, and they don't want it anymore. Which has the potential to push up rates. With the US-China relations the way they are right now, the question is whether China in the future will basically "eat" the US inflation, but buying US debt, and devalue their currency. That's what they have been doing for the past 20 years, and why the US has experienced almost no inflation. Even after printing trillions of dollars after the GFC, there still wasn't much inflation, that's be

            • Nothing can push up rates if the Fed doesn't want them to get pushed up.

              The Fed has infinite dollars.

              • Well, technically, yes, but you have to be careful in this game with just creating money. It's a delicate balance, even if you're the leading world currency. As the world leader, you can push your printing a bit more than, say, Eritrea, because countries will not immediately stop accepting your currency and demand that you pay in something more stable, but if you overdo it, even your army will not keep everyone in line to continue selling you stuff for your funny green paper.

      • by Smidge204 ( 605297 ) on Sunday July 18, 2021 @07:02AM (#61593897) Journal

        Investment does not necessarily equate to production of value.

        I can "invest" in real estate, e.g. buy a bunch of apartments in a major city and rent them out. Am I creating anything of value? No. If anything I'm just hoarding value by jacking up the price of living space.

        I can also "invest" in businesses by buying stocks, but that does not necessarily produce anything of value either. Unless I'm buying those stocks from the business, that money is only going to other investors (and middlemen). I might be invested in the company, but I am not actually investing in the company. That's a huge difference.

        Or I can "invest" in any number of economically useless financial instruments, none of which result in anything but money being shuffled around with middlemen taking their cut every step of the way because that's all most of it was ever designed to do.

        That's not investing, that's just buying more money.
        =Smidge=

        • That's not investing, that's just buying more money.

          Wish I could upvote this forever. That's the most succinct description I've ever seen.

      • Sadly, they don't.

        Investing only makes sense in an econmy that is growing. Why should I invest in an economy like this, though?

        What I do is that I buy real estate to park my money in something tangible. That's it. My money is not getting more that way, other than by simple fiat of market because if everyone wants to buy real estates, prices for real estates go up. This is basically why our economy still looks kinda stable when in fact it is stalling.

        We have plenty of money on the supply side looking and eve

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      There is no such thing as "hoarding money". It economically makes no sense whatsoever because of inflation. If I "hoard" $1000 into the bank, inflation of 4% will eat $40 of its purchasing power within a year. And the next year. And the next. Money needs to be invested in order multiply. Rich people invest the money into the new projects like "Blue Origin" or "SpaceX", thereby creating new jobs. That is how Google, Uber, Tesla, SpaceX, Amazon, Ebay, Facebook and others came to be. UBI means taking money fr
      • If I "hoard" $1000 into the bank, inflation of 4% will eat $40 of its purchasing power within a year.

        Absolutely true. However, for a rich person who "invests" that same $1000 into stocks or other assets that generate interest, there is either a minimal loss in purchasing power (which is offset by other forms of wealth not generally available to you and me), or a gain in purchasing power as those investments generate more than 4% of interest. That absolutely encourages the wealthy to hoard money. Why wouldn't they? They get more benefit from letting the money accumulate than by spending it. Both the money m

        • However, for a rich person who "invests" that same $1000 into stocks or other assets that generate interest, there is either a minimal loss in purchasing power ..., or a gain in purchasing power as those investments generate more than 4% of interest. That absolutely encourages the wealthy to hoard money. Why wouldn't they?

          Investing in interest-bearing assets is not hoarding money. That should be self-evident: They obtained the assets in exchange for the money, ergo they don't have the money any more, so they can't be hoarding it.

          Anyway it's a bit pointless to complain about hoarding of money or stocks or similar goods which cost essentially nothing to make and can neither be usefully consumed or utilized as a means of production. Even if they were being hoarded no harm would result to anyone. If one were hoarding land or com

      • There is no such thing as "hoarding money". It economically makes no sense whatsoever because of inflation. If I "hoard" $1000 into the bank, inflation of 4% will eat $40 of its purchasing power within a year. And the next year. And the next. Money needs to be invested in order multiply. Rich people invest the money into the new projects like "Blue Origin" or "SpaceX", thereby creating new jobs. That is how Google, Uber, Tesla, SpaceX, Amazon, Ebay, Facebook and others came to be.

        Google, and others "came to be" by spending years selling a product (often that product was you), amassing massive amounts of corrupt tax-free revenue that's parked in offshore tax havens, and then using some of their obscene billions to "create jobs" while having the financial freedom to not give a shit one way or another if the project ultimately succeeds or fails.

        UBI means taking money from the people who were capable of earning it and giving it to the people who were not able to earn it. Essentially, any form of redistribution, including of course UBI, punishes success.

        First off, with a statement like that, I wonder how you feel about Social Security, the largest "redistribution" in America that sustains lives

      • If I put 1000 bucks in the bank, I lose 40 bucks due to inflation. If I "invest" it in a business in this economy I lose 1000 bucks becasue the business will fail. It's more sensible to lose 40 bucks.

        Do you see the problem? I would love to invest my money in something sensible. I would love to invest it in something that will at least break even. All I can do, though, is to either push the real estate prices up or keep blue chips at an artificial high because NOTHING else comes close to having a chance of a

      • 1) You are incorrect. There is no hoarding of money IF YOU ARE POOR. But once you hit a certain amount, everyone starts trying to make sure they do not LOSE money rather than concentrate on making money.

        This is particularly true of the corrupt and criminal. Drug dealers are reknown for burying cash. People like Mike Tyson are known to withdraw millions of dollars in cash.

        2) Venezuela never gave out money. They are not now and never were socialists. They were a Tyranny.

        3) Because you never lived under

    • Yep. Marginal propensity to consume (MPC). It doesn't necessarily require spending incoming on discretionary items because the money that often goes to unmet, inelastic, basic needs like food, transportation, and shelter.

      • "Require" is the wrong wording; "lead to wasting." There's always waste but people who are on the brink are less likely to buy a Ferrari than make a Tracfone payment, get themselves out of near eviction, pay the power bill, etc.

    • Stimulus for the consumer class during a demand gap is almost certainly economically beneficial, but given the inflation in lots of basic goods I'm not sure there's any demand gap left.

      In the long term I'm also not sure this won't result in more single mothers and the associated non politically correct results, everything can have unintended consequences. Nature is not some ethical machine which provides progress for universally ethical decisions, it's just some bullshit which happens working towards heat d

      • Have you ever entertained the idea that the lower demand, and hence the need to increase the price to stay profitable with lower sales, is due to the disability of more and more people to buy these basic goods?

      • What does Nature have to do with politics or markets?
        . .NOTHING, it is all man-made.

    • The money will go to Walmart I bet
    • I've read the same article from three different sources and all refer to the same woman who is going to buy electronic toys for her brother and save for a down payment on her new "dream" car. Hardly seems like the proper sort of poster girl, but there it is. This is clearly a press release from Newsom and friends. One more reason to dump him.

  • by bobstreo ( 1320787 ) on Saturday July 17, 2021 @11:26PM (#61593299)

    $1k per month in California is next to "nothing".

    $1k per month where I live is 50% of my mortgage, power, natural gas, internet, phone and food every month.

    • So mean, Imagine telling that 24 year old girl the subject of article she should get a job, should have gotten a job years ago, but she wakes up and doesn't feel like going to work. She's still a "foster kid"!

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Sunday July 18, 2021 @08:20AM (#61594075) Homepage Journal

      For someone on a low income it's hugely significant. I doubt they expect it to provide a high quality of life for people but it will certainly help many get out of a hole and start working they way back up.

      Often when people are struggling the lack of a few bucks for basic things they need, even stuff like money to get the bus to a job a bit further from home or to buy a textbook for their kid, or the pay this month's cellular bill so they can find work and stay in touch with their support network all makes a massive difference.

  • by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Saturday July 17, 2021 @11:47PM (#61593347) Homepage
    This isn't UBI, or anything close to it. It's yet another welfare program, administered through yet another channel. The bureaucracy and overhead will cost more than the program hands out. These people are eligible for (and almost certainly collecting) welfare. Why does yet another program need to exist?
    • by Rockoon ( 1252108 ) on Sunday July 18, 2021 @01:49AM (#61593473)
      ...because its harder to get your own cronies in running an existing program, than it is to create a new program for them to run.

      None of the people involved are funding this, but they are involved in this, because its another pile of money.
    • by tomhath ( 637240 )
      It is welfare, but calling it "guaranteed income" sounds so much warmer and fuzzier.
    • Why does yet another program need to exist?

      Because the federal programs are garbage, designed to create a permanent underclass.

      • Why does yet another program need to exist?

        Because the federal programs are garbage, designed to create a permanent underclass.

        Greed N. Corruption will ensure that UBI is nothing more than Welfare 2.0 for the unemployable masses, fighting to hold back every penny they own that might be threatened with fiscal responsibility in order to hoard obscene amounts of money they'll never be able to actually spend.

        Programs turn into garbage programs because of Greed. Future programs will be no different no matter who manages them. There will be a permanent class of humans alright; the unemployable. As more and more of the human population

        • That's when the death panels from the Medical Industrial Complex, come marching in.

          The death panels are already there. They are operated by the insurance companies, just like they were before Romneycare. Since the insurance companies are written into the law, and not forbidden from denying care, the death panels are effectively written into the law as well.

    • Ah, you touch upon the cogent point. Out here in CaCaLand everything is about setting up programs with lofty goals. Goals that are, BTW, never measured or set up so they can be measured. The point is the program. It is, to all politicos out this way, a bag of money to skim. And, skim they do. That is all programs mean out this way.
    • This isn't UBI, or anything close to it. It's yet another welfare program,

      Spot on. Note TFA didn't call it UBI because it's clearly not. What would a "targeted UBI" be? If it's targeted, it's not universal.

      So yes, this is just going back to welfare as we knew it and got rid of in the '90s.

    • Because everyone gets to vote.

  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday July 17, 2021 @11:57PM (#61593371)
    Since the '70s were due to automation and process improvements. The website Business insider had an article describing it that you can Google to find the sources. We've had massive job losses due to automation process improvements that no one is talking about because everyone goes on and on and on about AI. A few people who aren't going on and on about it well then blame outsourcing. And yeah outsourcing is responsible for the other 30%, but the fact is we just don't need as many people working as we used to and it's devaluing the value of everyone else's labor. That's why every year we all seem to earn a little bit less. It's supply and demand, and there's an oversupply of Labor thanks to all this automation and all these process improvements.

    It's high time that some of the fruits of all that progress and automation you spread around. Remember that if you have more money than you can spend it becomes savings. If you have more money than you can save it becomes power. Redistributing wealth isn't about quality or Justice or any of that nonsense. It's about power. If you're on the left you can justify redistribution with morals and morality and that's fine and whatever. But if you're on the right you'd better figure out how you're going to redistribute wealth if you care about freedom. Because money is power and people with all the money have all the power and they're the only ones who have any real freedom. And I know what you're thinking, I'll just get me some money and as long as I have enough I'll have enough freedom. But those people who have more money and more freedom than you are always going to be trying to take your money and your freedom. And eventually they'll succeed.
    • 70% of jobs lost to automation? Sure. Of course, more than 90% of the population used to work in agriculture. Then we invented tractors. Times change. Not many people want to go back to farming by hand, working 12+ hours a day, 7 days a week. In a few decades, the idea of working on an assembly line will sound equally horrible.
      • Process improvement. Remember those stories about how UPS drivers don't do left turns? Take that and add a million additional examples of it. Computers made it possible to find efficiencies at a level that was unheard of. But it wasn't like the assembly line where it was a sudden thing. It took time to identify those inefficiencies and correct them. That process has been going on for 50 years. The result is a massive destruction of jobs that nobody talks about. You don't even really notice it happening beca
      • 70% of jobs lost to automation? Sure. Of course, more than 90% of the population used to work in agriculture. Then we invented tractors. Times change. Not many people want to go back to farming by hand, working 12+ hours a day, 7 days a week. In a few decades, the idea of working on an assembly line will sound equally horrible.

        Times do change. Often faster than you assume. Seems not many younger people working shitty jobs today want to go back to working at all, when they're sitting on their ass at home receiving a healthy government check. This is why many businesses are struggling to find humans who want to work.

        In a few decades, the idea of forcing a human to work for a living, will sound horrible.

        • I mean yeah nobody really wants a shitty paying job it's also a shitty job, but young or old Americans are obsessed with work. The numbers are in and the red states that cancel the extended unemployment early didn't see an uptick in employment.

          It turns out the actual reason isn't that people in America won't take a job unless it pays acceptably. We already knew that because those people already had those jobs pre-pandemic. There's three reasons why restaurants have a worker shortage. Child care is the f
          • Americans are stupidly hard-working. We at work longer hours than the freaking Japanese.

            While I can agree with some of the reasons you've stated that affect employment (or the desire), it's stupid to even try and compare Americans to the Japanese. They work insanely hard because that discipline was driven into them through centuries of respecting that mentality.

            Americans are forced to work insanely hard in order to simply survive. There is no greater evidence of this, than the gig economy. Ask any part-time Uber/Lyft driver. Or most anyone forced to take on more than one job, or an additio

  • There's NOTHING new in the idea of having government pick the pockets of some people and put the money into the pockets of others, based on political policy prefs and political alliances. There's nothing unique about taking money from middle, or upper-middle, income people who work hard for it and giving it to favored groups of poor people (often buying their votes and fealty) while claiming all along that the intent is to "soak the rich" but of course never actually soaking the rich at all. It's just Marxi

  • by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Sunday July 18, 2021 @07:47AM (#61593985)

    "If you look at the stats for our foster youth, they are devastating," Senate Republican Leader Scott Wilk said. "We should be doing all we can to lift these young people up."

    I agree. So when exactly are leaders going to start promoting the benefits of a sound family unit, especially a father figure, so that you can possibly start addressing the causes of children in foster care, along with many other issues plaguing our youth today?

    No matter your thoughts on traditional families, single-parenthood has obvious downsides regardless of what "independent" beliefs are being championed. Perhaps the most dangerous is the decline for younger people to have children or even get married. Our future will not be a kind a loving one when a country is divided into two distinct age groups; those who are too old to work or care for themselves, and the young and vibrant who have zero desire to tend after the old and dying. The continued extinction of the middle class, is represented in more ways than most assume.

    • You are an obvious outlier. You are rational, logical, and might, jut might, be one of my neighbors somewhere here in CaCaLand. I doubt it tho. Only ~30M people here and it seems that odds don't favor more than two in the entire state. My wife and I are those two. This is another program set up to skim. It will devolve into another welfare program for the bums and junkies that litter the streets and live in the underpasses. Housing is offered, but is refused. Counseling is offered, but ditto. 90% of
  • by Nyl ( 8390867 ) on Sunday July 18, 2021 @07:54AM (#61594011)
    They promise 'Universal' income but it never is, it's always just for some and not others, just more welfare. In the name of 'fairness' most will work and some will not.
  • But at long term, they should be aiming at helping the small business, at expense of the megacorporations if needed.
     

  • by AmazingRuss ( 555076 ) on Sunday July 18, 2021 @09:47AM (#61594243)
    Seriously. That's the question under all this. A solid fraction of the population will never be of any economic use to anyone, for anything, and the fraction grows in parallel with automation. They literally are incapable of generating income to feed and house themselves. Train them? For what? Half the population has 100 IQ or lower, and aren't going to be trainable for the skilled work that remains. Leave them to starve, and they'll turn to crime for survival... and it costs a lot more to lock people up than it does to pay them to live. You're either for feeding them, or for letting them starve. I find it amusing that so many that identify as Christian are in the latter camp. Personally, I'm on the fence... but I don't lie to myself about it.
    • In the times of ample everything (for most countries) it is a shame people still have to work just to live. But a Utopia where only those that want to work, do - won't exist for a long time, if ever, since there are also those types that want to hold power over others. Can't hold power over and control others if everyone is free to live however they want.
    • The key problem here is that people who are starving are not just sitting down and dying peacefully. Operating firearms takes way, way less IQ than 100.

      I've been in the army, trust me, I have proof for that.

      You will pay for them. One way or another.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      That's a question that nature answered millions of years ago, and the answer is, "yes, absolutely, useless creatures should starve to death."

      Those who cannot pull their own weight are quickly dispatched by starvation, predation, or other natural processes, leaving more resources for those who use them more effectively for survival.

  • "Now there is momentum, things are moving quickly," until they run out of other peoples money.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18, 2021 @10:45AM (#61594391)

    Welfare is supposed to be guaranteed income that is "targeted."

    What this program really is, is handouts for political desirables. The only qualification will be low income and registered democrat.

  • Everyone is pregnant. What can go wrong?!?
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Gov Newsom continues to throw lots of money to the public in an effort to make recall vote fail. Not all of the public, just those that may be easily swayed to vote for him.
    This is not free money even if coming from private parties and passed thru the government.
    California (and all other states) should not be in a continuing series of 'emergencies' that are used as an excuse to government to spend money we don't have. We are being trained for constant continuing 'emergencies' that allow Government extra p

  • With every new story coming out of California, I feel renewed relief and gratitude for escaping from there a few years ago. With luck, I will never have to visit this snake pit again.

No spitting on the Bus! Thank you, The Mgt.

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