Oakland Guaranteed Income Experiment

mic.com/articles/144927/basic-income-in-california-100-oakland-residents-will-get-a-salary-just-for-being-alive?utm_source=policymicTBLR&utm_medium=future&utm_campaign=social#.zYE7ce0Ko

Your thoughts.

Where are they getting the money from? All other questions are meaningless if they cannot sustain this money flow, as we all know how well that will work out.

The money is coming from a private company.

And where is this private company getting its money from? Furthermore, is this going to turn into something sustainable, or just a fancy act of charity?

Fuck, now I ironically wish I lived in Oakland.

It's a six months to a year study to see what 100 people will do when given a basic income.

Alaska has UBI.

Not quite. It has guaranteed income but it's not set at UBI level - you can't live off 2k a year in Alaska.

it's still a bigger experiment than this. and rural living in Alaska can be pretty low-cost compared to urban Oakland living.

Boy, I wonder what could possibly go wrong…

Where can we get the money after the experiment? Well, we have this port that we don't tax….

The port of Oakland has the effect of an oil field or coltan mine. It is a resource compelling outside interests to keep Oakland crippled. Because Oakland has a corrupt government and impoverished people, we have no power over the port. We can't even fucking tax the thing, let alone impose environmental regulations. The port poisons us, as China dumps goods, driving up the trade deficit.

I found a crack pipe on my porch the other day. It had a sticker on it that said Made In China. The sell us the crackpipes. Damn. Retribution for the opium wars is a bitch.

cheap-ish if you want to live in the bay area

crime as always is exaggerated.

I live right outside the Bay Area right now, but there are a lot of anarchists in the East Bay and I also work in the South Bay.

It's still fairly expensive though :^(

Anything that makes capitalism "nicer" and "softer" is just bribing us not to attack it.

UBI sounds like a corporate pyramid scheme for the purpose of service privatization.

i.e. giving everyone a stipend of $5000 a month or whatever would force the government into massive austerity and privatization of things like public transport, public schools, and so on.

It's a huge scam when you really think about it.

Honestly I'd take the bribes at this point. At least I can live off bribe money.

What about autoreductions?

Unless you have your own coal mine or an unlimited stash of firewood, I think you underestimate the cost of living up there.

Fuel for heating and cooking is an absolute necessity, and it tends to be more expensive the further away from civilization you are.As does food, and pretty much everything else, since it all has to be shipped in.

And if they end up removing some of the material restrictions between the working class and access to higher education that would deliver class consciousness to them, bring it on. A society where knowledge of diamat is as common as high school graduation is now can only be a good thing.

Just like in Sweden.

My mouth is watering.

Then close the fucking borders or give UBI to natives only. And then have a permanent class of foreing slaves to work for you

UBI is a pretty dank concept for the most part, and has been shown to work in third world countries. It's pretty much inefficient though in developed countries, and tends to just increase the power of government.

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Assuming current laws protecting corporations over businesses are in place.

Your forgetting that the money will go back into the system as tax.

Your a fucking lifestylist shit bag who has never owned a business in your life, because if you did you would understand that corporations == businesses.