You can’t throw a rock without hitting a wandering conversation about Universal Basic Income these days—but in our office, we’re still skeptical. For the first in a two-episode series exploring guaranteed income and its sister idea, guaranteed jobs, UBI expert Scott Santens and Sukhi Samra, the executive director of a real-life UBI experiment in California, join Nick and Paul to make the case for a universal basic income.
Scott Santens is a prominent UBI advocate with a crowdfunded income via Patreon. As a writer and blogger, his pieces advocating for basic income have appeared in The Huffington Post, The Boston Globe, TechCrunch, Vox, the World Economic Forum, and Politico. He is on the board of directors of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network, a founding member of the Economic Security Project, an advisor to the Universal Income Project, a founding committee member of Basic Income Action, and founder of the BIG Patreon Creator Pledge.
Twitter: @scottsantens
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens
Sukhi Samra is the Executive Director of the Stockton Empowerment Demonstration (SEED), a pilot program to test a universal basic income in Stockton, CA. SEED is the country’s first-ever city-led Guaranteed Income Initiative.
Twitter: @stocktondemo
Further reading:
Our Vision for SEED: A Discussion Paper: https://www.stocktondemonstration.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/SEED-Discussion-Paper.pdf
What would a universal basic income mean for America? Stockton thinks it has the answer: https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-pol-ca-basic-income-stockton-reparations-20190415-story.html
The Progressive Case for Replacing the Welfare State with Basic Income: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-progressive-case-for_b_12236546
Nick Hanauer:
Hey, Pitchfork Economics listeners. On an upcoming episode, we’ll be talking about this really core neoliberal economic idea called Marginal Productivity. It’s the neoclassical economic idea that the market, because it’s perfectly efficient, always pays you exactly what you’re worth. So we want to hear from you, whether you’re a minimum wage worker or an executive, or anything in between. Do you think you’re paid exactly what you’re worth? Tell us what you do and whether you get paid what you’re worth, and we’ll try to play it on the show. And here’s the number. 731-388-9334. Thanks.
Nick Hanauer:
A lot of reason that people need UBI is because they are so poorly paid by their employers.
Sukhi Samra:
Knowing poverty injury is personal, and so recognizing that the solutions that we have to take are personal as well.
Scott Santens:
Our existing safety net, being built on conditionality, actually causes a lot of problems.
Speaker 2:
From the offices of Civic Ventures in downtown Seattle, this is Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer, where we explore everything you wish you’d learned in Econ 101.
Nick Hanauer:
I’m Nick Hanauer, founder of Civic Ventures. In this episode of Pitchfork Economics, we, that is me and Paul Constant, are going to explore UBI, otherwise known as Universal Basic Income. So, Paul, what is Universal Basic Income?
Paul Constant:
Well, it is a theory that’s grown in popularity, I think over the last ten years that I’ve been paying attention, anyway. It’s a model for providing everyone with a sum of money no matter how much money they already have or whether they’re employed or unemployed. The whole point is to reduce poverty and increase economic equality among citizens and also to spur spending. Yeah, and there’s all sorts of flavors of Universal Basic Income, different plans, different amounts, and there are a ton of proponents for it, from Elon Musk to presidential candidate Andrew Yang, our friend Chris Hughes. And both progressives and conservatives, there are wings that think this is a good idea. On the conservative side, it should be noted that a lot of the support for UBI comes as a replacement for the safety net. In other words, we’ll give you cash, but we won’t give you food stamps or Medicaid or whatever it is.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah.
Paul Constant:
But anyway, I think the general idea is that it will create more economic stability for people, derisks people’s economic fortunes and just generally is good for the economy overall.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah, and any idea that has fans ranging from Richard Nixon to Cory Booker is at least something you want to take a look at because there can’t be too many of those in the political universe.
Paul Constant:
Yeah, and there’s a bunch of thing that proponents think will be a benefit. So if you have a UBI, you’re now effectively compensating people for critical, but traditionally unpaid work, like raising children.
Nick Hanauer:
Right.
Paul Constant:
Right? So you could look at it like that. You certainly may spur increased entrepreneurship and innovation because now people have more of both an ability and a willingness to take more risk.
Nick Hanauer:
Sure [inaudible 00:03:48]
Paul Constant:
Right? Because there’s a little bit of security. It obviously can drive consumer spending, and it’s a way of sharing increase productivity. Productivity increases effectively becomes shared by everyone. That’s another big benefit that the proponents argue for.
Paul Constant:
On the other hand, in the interest of transparency, I will say that I am not a big fan of UBI because I think that 90% of the challenges that face our economy can be cured simply with higher labor standards. A lot of reason that people need UBI is because they are so poorly paid by their employers. And, of course, their employers would love you to believe that that circumstance is immutable, right? That there’s nothing you can do about the fact that they pay you poorly, and the whole world will come crumbling down if they’re required to pay you fairly. And so lots and lots of employers and wealthy people have a big stake in the UBI idea.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah because then it could wind up being a subsidy for bad employment.
Paul Constant:
Exactly. There are a couple of really big problems with UBI. The first is the expense. So if you’re going to give people enough money to matter, that’s in the range of $10,000 a year, right?
Nick Hanauer:
Right.
Paul Constant:
I mean, a thousand would be nice, but it’s not like-
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah, I think a thousand a month is one of the popular plans.
Paul Constant:
Yeah.
Nick Hanauer:
That’s Andrew Yang’s plan.
Paul Constant:
But with 140 million workers [inaudible 00:05:21], I think 140 million, 150 million is about the right number.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah.
Paul Constant:
That’s 1.8 trillion dollars or something like that. That’s a lot of money.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah.
Paul Constant:
And it’s not clear where that money would come from. You could say tax the rich, except that the top 1% only earned about 2 trillion dollars a year in aggregate. So where do you find 2 trillion dollars? That’s a big question. But the other thing is, my personal observation of humans is that they need stuff to do, that very few of us function highly or well in the absence of a compelling reason to go do some stuff.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah. For sure.
Paul Constant:
And I recognize that there are some small proportion of people who would just thrive if given that flexibility and freedom, but I have not met that many people like that in my life. People tend to come at UBI from two directions, which I think is really interesting. And the first direction is Andrew Yang, and his idea is that truck drivers are going to be replaced by automated driving, and they’re going to need some money. And that’s basically his argument, which is sort of a dystopian take.
Nick Hanauer:
But our friend, Rutger Bregman, who was on a previous episode, is coming at it from a more utopian standard, where he says it’s just enough money that you could say have a general strike or something like that, where you don’t feel like if you lose your job that you’re ruined. And it’s sort of a, I don’t want to say a safety net because we use that term a lot and it’s already loaded, but that it’s just enough money that you feel like you can be able to say no. You have more agency in your life. And so you have these two sort of competing viewpoints, this dystopian and this utopian, and I’m interested in talking to people who come from both places and just see. Because I’ve only been thinking about it for years from the dystopian angle, but when I heard Rutger make the utopian angle, it made it a little more interesting to me, and so that’s what I hope to investigate today.
Nick Hanauer:
There’s one person in America who’s really done more talking and thinking and expounding on the idea of UBI than pretty much anyone, and that’s Scott Santens, so I gave him a call.
Scott Santens:
My name is Scott Santens, and I’m a writer and basic income advocate.
Nick Hanauer:
Something that I’m very interest in, and I think that Rutger Bregman phrased it this way. There seem to be sort of two arguments for UBI, and one is the automation one, which he framed as sort of a dystopian argument And then he framed his own as the utopian argument, which is that, not so much that your jobs are going to go away, but you would have a little more money with which you could say no to certain things and that it could encourage a strike and things like that. Do you agree with that framing or is that clear enough? Have you heard his argument against that?
Scott Santens:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m familiar, and that’s actually one of my favorite arguments too. And it’s called the argument that’s the power to say no and the freedom to say yes. So it’s saying that it’s really important that you should be able to refuse to work, and that does not exist now. It’s because we don’t enable that that we see so many of these problems around us.
Scott Santens:
If you cannot refuse, then of course, essentially employment is not consensual. And the power dynamic is all for the employer, and they can offer whatever they want. It could be really low wages, as low as they can go. It can be poor working conditions. It can be doing work that people don’t actually want to do, but they feel that they need to do it because they don’t have any other choice. So the power to say no is a big one.
Scott Santens:
And then of course, the freedom to say yes is saying that you should also be able to pursue unpaid work, and this is something that, say, the minimum wage doesn’t address at all. It doesn’t help anyone who wishes to pursue unpaid work. It doesn’t recognize anyone who is doing unpaid work, but Unconditional Basic Income does do that. It essentially subsidizes unpaid work where people could choose volunteering in greater numbers. They could choose care work at home or for others. It could be any of many different forms of unpaid work that don’t essentially recognize now. That becomes an option once there is an Unconditional Basic Income underneath everybody.
Scott Santens:
So I do recognize that argument, and I use it quite often myself, but also there are many arguments for basic income. Look at social justice. It could look at racial justice. I mean, it’s crazy that we’ve built a system where you’ve got a mass of difference in meeting incomes between Black and White. You’ve got a mass of difference in wealth between Black and White, and to address these things is really important to do. And our existing systems don’t do that.
Scott Santens:
Like one of the most powerful arguments that there is that’s in addition to these other things is that our existing safety net being built on conditionality actually causes a lot of problems. So in our fear of providing to the “undeserving,” then we create things like, say, we only want to provide assistance to people who are not employed or not working. And it, in so doing, can essentially punish people for working because then you pull away the benefits for doing that, which means that we’re effectively disincentivizing accepting employment. [inaudible 00:11:34].
Scott Santens:
And because it’s conditional, then we also create the stigma where people don’t even want to accept these benefits even when they need them because they all don’t want to be like those people, or people who should be, who we should actually, by the terms of considering deserving and undeserving, the error rate is high so that people don’t qualify for these things that should. So as an example, if you look at those living under poverty, 13 million people right now are entirely disconnected from our federal safety net programs. So these are people who have completely fallen through the safety net. It’s completely ignoring them. It’s giving them nothing. So an Unconditional Basic Income finds all of those people and lifts them up. It’s gets rid of all of these conditions that are there right now.
Nick Hanauer:
I’m glad you brought up the safety net because that’s one of my, one of the things that makes me the most skeptical is that sometimes I feel as though the people who are pushing for a UBI want to eliminate the safety net entirely. And I find that, knowing human nature as I do, I know that people are going to get in over their heads. And if you give them a certain amount of money each month and say I’m sorry, that’s it, that’s just not going to work for some people. I mean, especially if we keep our health care system the way it is. A UBI is not going to cover the gaps in coverage. It wouldn’t even, you wouldn’t be able to pay off an ambulance ride with a UBI for many, many months. So what do you think about that argument against it? Do you think that I’m mischaracterizing the idea that some people are using it as a lever to sort of undermine the safety net?
Scott Santens:
There are certain people who would prefer such a system, but it’s also a small minority of people who support Basic Income. So it’s, I don’t think it’s fair to make that argument because it’s such a small minority of people who feel that way.
Scott Santens:
It’s almost like, I don’t go after people who go for universal health care. And I want universal health care too. I think that’s very important. It doesn’t make sense to me say, well, sure you want universal health care, but then that would replace everything and then it’s all we have is universal health care. It doesn’t make any sense to have singled that out, where, when I talk about Basic Income, and when most people talk about Basic Income, we’re talking about a foundation that’s underneath everybody. And then, of course, when you have that strong foundation, then you can build on top of it with programs that actually make sense.
Scott Santens:
We need to decouple health care just as much from jobs as we need to decouple income from jobs.
Nick Hanauer:
To be clear, I’m not saying that I think humans are terrible and will only buy, gorge themselves on soda if you give them a check. I am saying, though, that there are disasters that you can’t prepare for in the case of a life, and for many people, they would exceed the bounds of what Basic Income provides. And so they’d need assistance to overcome those hurdles that are placed in their way.
Scott Santens:
Certainly, but I feel that a big part of our problem is the absolute lack of distrust. Our system is built on distrust instead of trust. So we’re saying that we’re worried that a few people are going to do this, and this is bad, so let’s design the system around all the bad people is like our current logic, whereas it should be saying, well, most people would do this, and that’s good. In fact, I couldn’t even think about that. They’re very creative, and they come up with all kinds of things, and they don’t have limits on them. So let’s actually design for that instead of punishing those people for the few people. That makes far more sense, I feel.
Nick Hanauer:
In recent, in the past few months, the conversation is been broadened by Andrew Yang’s Freedom Dividend, which would give a thousand dollars a month to every American. What do you think of Yang’s plan, and are you a supporter of it, or do you have a different idea for what a UBI would look like?
Scott Santens:
I just wrote my most recent article that I published, [inaudible 00:15:58] a couple of weeks ago now, was a deep analysis of Yang’s Freedom Dividend. And I said that it was the most progressive policy being proposed by any of the democratic candidates. It is an extremely progressive policy. And would I improve it if it were up to me? And how would I do that? Yes, it certainly can be improved.
Scott Santens:
My main issue with it, as far as the best way to improve it with one thing, would be to make sure that kids get a portion too, essentially adding a child allowance to the Freedom Dividend because right now it’s only adults over eighteen getting a thousand dollars a month. But the way that we define poverty in the US is at the household level, where $12,000, around $12,000 for one person is the poverty level. But then as the household grows, so that each additional member is essentially around an additional $4,000. So that’s why when I suggest my plan, I think the best way to do would be $12,000 per adult and $4,000 per kid. And of course, distribute it monthly.
Scott Santens:
But without that, Yang’s dividend still would massively reduce poverty in the US, essentially mostly eliminating it for citizens. Those who are excluded are the illegal immigrants or immigrants who are not yet citizens. So, but for the most part, it would radically decrease poverty by around 80%, and it would decrease inequality by around 15%. So these are massive improvements. And again, if you look at how I mentioned that 13 million people right now in poverty are getting nothing from the government, then all of those people would get a thousand dollars per month, and that would just be massive.
Nick Hanauer:
So you have a Patreon, which we will link to in our show notes. Is what you’re doing with a Patreon what you would be doing with a UBI? Would you be using it to be a politically active person? Is this, are you sort of living your UBI dream through Patreon?
Scott Santens:
Yeah. So I think Patreon provides a really interesting look at even the future of work and also the redefinition of work that we need to, that need’s to part of this conversation as well because I’m essentially creating my own job or work. I’m pursuing something that’s important to me, and the only way I can do it is actually because I have this floor under me that enables me to do this.
Scott Santens:
So some people will look at this and go, “Oh, Scott, aren’t you getting paid to do this? Aren’t you doing work and then getting paid money in exchange for it because you’re doing a certain thing, and people are supporting that?” It’s like, well, you can look at it that way, but it’s not the way that I would suggest looking at it. It’s just like the same thing with all work. Work that we do is the work that we can only do because we have the resources to do it.
Scott Santens:
If you get a job somewhere, it’s weird how you have to for, say for two weeks before you get your first paycheck. And it’s like your employer is just pretending that you don’t need money for two weeks. It’s just assuming that you already have enough, but you need money in order to pursue work, and there is so much more to work than just what we get paid for.
Scott Santens:
So I don’t see myself as earning a wage or a salary or something, but I have that income that I can count on every month, and that enables me to pursue unpaid work. I’m able to publish that for free. I’m able to put stuff into the public domaine, into the creative commons, instead of selling stuff, and not having the rights to it because I sold the rights. These kinds of things. So it’s really empowering to be able to create your own work and decide for yourself what’s important.
Nick Hanauer:
We like to ask everybody who comes on the show, “Why do you do this work?” And we’ve talked a lot about why you’re specifically interested in UBI, but I guess I want to ask you specifically why you do this sort of public advocacy work and if it’s something that you’ve always had in you or if you feel so strongly about the issue that you’re moved to become this sort of public advocate or if you’ve always been sort of an advocate and then you found the issue.
Scott Santens:
I think we’re better than this, essentially, and I’ve felt that way for a long time. I think that the way that we’re doing things right now is prohibiting us from better things. I think it’s hurting people. I think people are suffering that need not suffer. I think that we’ve got a society built on distrust and people who are fearful and increasingly insecure. And especially more recently, you’re seeing people really look for the source of their problems being, say, immigrants or something else that’s not the actual problem. The problem is that we’ve built a systems that are making people worse off instead of better off.
Scott Santens:
So what brings me to this is saying that we have the ability to actually create a better world. And I think, personally, that an Unconditional Basic Income is one thing that we could do that would have the most wide-ranging effect across a great many things in society that we consider harmful or bad and also improve so many things that we consider to be good.
Nick Hanauer:
Is there anything else that you thought that our audience should know while we have you on the phone?
Scott Santens:
I would like to talk just a little bit about higher minimum wages. It’s a good discussion to have, and it can be a whole other discussion, which I think it would be good to discuss with Nick sometime too. But I think that we can do two different things when we’re looking at the interactions of Basic Income and Minimum Wage. So on the one hand, we could do Basic Income and Minimum Wage, and if we did that, then of course, we would improve people’s incomes further above basic income for those who can find those jobs. And that would be good for them.
Scott Santens:
And at the same time, we would accelerate automation because, of course, automation is always going to get cheaper. And as minimum wages rise, then that just makes it more worth while for the employer to invest in automation. And I think that could be a good thing. I think that if we go that route, we should acknowledge that a higher minimum wage will be accelerating automation. And I think it’s even more important in that case that the UBI should be indexed productivity so that as more and more automation happens and the UBI grows more and more, so that people are lifted higher and higher. So that’s absolutely something we can do, and I think that there’s a discussion to have there.
Scott Santens:
On the other hand, if people feel that work is important and that people should have a job no matter what it is, that there’s something to finding some kind of work that helps you find your purpose do to something, then we could leverage UBI to actually make work more affordable for everyone. So we could actually not have a minimum wage at all, whereas right now, that would be really harmful.
Scott Santens:
Under Based Income, because you have the floor, then you again would be allowing people to chose for themselves what makes sense for the cost of their labor. If an employer is offering some work that people don’t want to do, then that employer, in order to attract workers, will need to actually pay a good wage in order to, with Basic Income, to accept that. So the UBI already would push up wages beyond even the higher minimum wage in those conditions.
Scott Santens:
And then for those employers who are offering jobs that people really want to do, and let’s say someone would actually enjoy working for $7 an hour on top of their basic income, and they wouldn’t be able to have that job if it was a $15-an-hour job, then you could actually spread out the labor more because you could have more of those jobs that people could accept. And that would be something to consider as well. If we feel that it’s more important to make sure that everyone can get a job who wants a job, then that’s a potential route to go. So I think that there’s a great debate to be had there as far as the interaction of Basic Income and Minimum Wage in the future, and that we should decide what it is, which path is most important to us.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah. I feel sort of duty bound to push back just a little bit at the idea that raising the minimum wage increases the speed of automation. I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Certain industries are always looking to automate, to replace low-wage workers no matter what. I have not seen anything that connects the Minimum Wage with the speed of automation. That’s something that people use to threaten workers who want to raise minimum wage, but I have not seen anything along those lines.
Scott Santens:
Yeah. I would say historically, that’s accurate. I’m talking about that we are existing right now in a time where these two lines are beginning to intersect. So if you look at, say, 20 years ago, and we’re talking about automation, and people are using that threat saying if you raise minimum wage, then you’re going to automate away the job, well, we didn’t have the technology that was cheap enough and capable enough to do that. We can only do that for more expensive labor and even labor that much more routine.
Scott Santens:
Where we are at this point in time and going into the future, in the next five to ten years, this is where technology has become cheap enough to do that, where we’ve got artificial intelligence that can actually do non-routine labor that it couldn’t do before. And it’s getting cheaper and cheaper, and that we’ve got robots and these machines that can actually do this too at a cheaper lever than they could’ve before, that were really limited to industrial robots. So right now, it’s just happening where you are making the point where robots are getting down to the point at the $15-an-hour minimum wage [inaudible 00:27:08] and $16 an hour or $17 an hour or around there. And so it’s just expect more of that.
Scott Santens:
And again, I want to welcome that as a possibility, saying that maybe we want to accelerate automation. And if we do that, if we want to have more and more stuff automated, then we should make humans more expensive than robots in order to encourage the robots instead of humans. I think that we should be doing that. If a robot can do a job, a robot should do that job.
Nick Hanauer:
Thank you for that. Thank you for this conversation and making the time for us. I really appreciate it.
Scott Santens:
Yeah. Thanks. Happy to talk.
Nick Hanauer:
Take care. Thank you.
Scott Santens:
All right. Take care. Bye now.
Annie Fadely:
I’m Annie Fadely, professional policy and art at Civic Ventures, and it’s time for a little history. The idea of a minimum income first showed up at the beginning of the 16th century. During the Renaissance, it occurred to people that taking care of the poor didn’t have to fall just to the church. The humanists, most notably, the professor Johannes [inaudible 00:28:14], developed the idea of a guaranteed minimum income. [inaudible 00:28:17] thought that local government should give all of their poorest residents just enough money to get by on the grounds of morally required charity. That like of thinking caught fire and inspired welfare thinking and policies in Spain and England designed to help the poor before they became desperate.
Annie Fadely:
There was another idea that came of the scene at the end of the 18th century, an unconditional [inaudible 00:28:36]. It’s credited to mathematician and political activist Antoine Caritat, who was sentenced to death for his role in the French Revolution, but while in prison, he wrote a book containing plans for a social insurance system that would reduce an inequality, insecurity, and poverty. His idea was to create a pool of money that could be disbursed to families who had fallen on hard times, whether that be poverty or the sudden death of the bread winner. And he also inspired the development of Europe’s social insurance systems in the 1800s. Although those systems are based on entitlement to benefits by having paid contributions to the pot of money, the existence of social insurance at all brought society much closer to the idea of an unconditional basic income.
Annie Fadely:
A number of thinkers in the 19th century spun off of all these theories to develop more ideas about guaranteed income, including the French writer Charles Fourier. He argued that because modern society inhibited an individual’s right to support themselves off of the land by hunting, fishing, gathering, and grazing their cattle on common grounds, then civilization owed subsistence to everyone who was unable to meet their needs in the form of a simple hotel room and three meals a day for the poor. His ideas were so popular that people started calling themselves Fourierists, and one such Fourierist, Joseph [inaudible 00:29:39], is credited with writing down the concept of a true basic income for the very first time. He proposed giving every citizen a periodic payment based on the rental value of all real estate in their area. He argued that this would end the domination of capital over labor, but he stressed that anything over the minimum required to survive would still need to be earned.
Annie Fadely:
Eventually, all of these ideas merged and became the Universal Basic Income as we know it today, but that’s the root of where the theory comes from. Lots of folks, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others have advocated for and even tested this idea in different forms and for different reasons. Paul and Nick will talk a bit more about some of that later in the episode, but for now, I hope I’ve filled your history bucket to the brim.
Nick Hanauer:
When I was talking earlier about the conflict between dystopian and utopian reasons for UBI, I think one of the better sort of utopian proponents for UBI is Sukhi Samra, the executive director of the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration.
Sukhi Samra:
Thanks. This is Samra. I’m the director of the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration, otherwise known as SEED.
Nick Hanauer:
First of all, tell me what SEED is doing in Stockton with the guaranteed income.
Sukhi Samra:
So SEED, or the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration, is the nation’s first [inaudible 00:30:56] demonstration. We’re giving 125 residents in Stockton a guaranteed income of $500 a month for 18 months. We started in February of 2019, and the last disbursement will be in July of 2020. The cash is truly unconditional. We require no work requirements, no strings attached, and no restrictions on how the money can be spent.
Nick Hanauer:
Can you tell me a little bit about how you came to this and to the guaranteed income as an idea.
Sukhi Samra:
So Stockton [inaudible 00:31:22], we really believe is a city on the rise. We’re also seeing that this [inaudible 00:31:25] is struggled. Enough folks continue to lag behind the rest of the state in the nation. One in four Stocktonians live in poverty. Our citywide unemployment rates continue to hover at around 7%. We’re eighth in the nation for child poverty.
Sukhi Samra:
We also know that poverty is deeply connected to all the other issues that we’re facing in the city. So, for example, poverty is deeply connected to homelessness, to high crime rates, and to low rates of educational attainment. [inaudible 00:31:48] change just wasn’t going to be enough and that we need something as controlled as it was and innovative, and that we needed to put in place a program or an initiative that didn’t just skirt around the edges, that [inaudible 00:31:57] got to the root cause of poverty, which we realized was cash. And that’s [inaudible 00:32:00] seed, or as a guaranteed income demonstration.
Nick Hanauer:
Do you have a personal connection with Stockton, or did you choose it for the reasons that you just mentioned?
Sukhi Samra:
So I don’t have a personal connection to Stockton, but I do have a personal connection to Central Valley. I’m from Fresno, California, which is two hours south of Stockton [inaudible 00:32:19]. Similar city in terms of demographics, in terms of the issues faced, but the leadership there is a little different. We don’t have the same young energizing visionaries as that, as near as much as we have with [inaudible 00:32:31] in Stockton.
Nick Hanauer:
He is great. He’s a pretty amazing speaker.
Sukhi Samra:
Yeah.
Nick Hanauer:
Where does this money come from for SEED, SEED’s purposes?
Sukhi Samra:
The SEED is fully [inaudible 00:32:39] funded. No tax-free dollars are being used for the demonstration. Our initial and biggest donor would be economics security projects, a network of individuals based in [inaudible 00:32:50], New York, who are [inaudible 00:32:52] income, and we’re also funded by host of other foundations and individuals donors.
Nick Hanauer:
Obviously, it’s too soon to have any official results, but can you talk a little bit… have you seen anything, or do you have any anecdotes you can share with us?
Sukhi Samra:
So as I said, it’s a little bit early to know the results [inaudible 00:33:10]. The results [inaudible 00:33:13] won’t actually be published until the end of next year, but we do have a group of recipients known as our [inaudible 00:33:19] cohorts, and they have opted in and are voluntarily sharing their experience with SEED and with receiving the additional $500 a month. From them, we’ve heard that they’re moving the money on everything from just everyday necessities, as food, rent, gas, medicine, to some margin investments, like saving up a retirement or paying off their student debt, their student loans, to finally be able to move from one part of town where they didn’t feel so safe, to be able to put a down payment on a house in a different part of town. But I think there are two stories that I can share that are a little more detailed.
Sukhi Samra:
The first of them is a recipient named [inaudible 00:34:04], Jr. He’s a native born Stockton man, and his wife is [inaudible 00:34:09] hardship as it is with his [inaudible 00:34:11]. He grew up in south Stockton, which is [inaudible 00:34:14] part of our city, in a public housing development. He dropped out of high school, moved to Arizona, where he wanted to join the marines, and was about to join the marines, then got hit by a drunk driver and shattered his [inaudible 00:34:27]. So he wasn’t able to go.
Sukhi Samra:
Today, he lives in north Stockton, and he’s the supervisor of a [inaudible 00:34:33] company. He has two kids, and he’s care-taking for his wife. In just four months, he talks about how having money has really changed his life and changed the way that he engages with the city, has changed the way he feels. In conversations with me, he’s told me that before he got SEED, he used to be super depressed and had a hard time getting up every day, but now that he’s received the $500 a month, he feels so much happier. He’s able to spend more time with his kids. He talks about finally being able to sit down at the dinner table with them and being able to involve them with stuff that really matters to him. So it’s being able to sign them up for tutoring, being able to sign them up for sports and softball… like softball for the first time. That [inaudible 00:35:11].
Sukhi Samra:
And then the other recipient is a woman named Lorraine. She’s a single mother of two. She also lives in north Stockton, and she talks about how already the $500 a month is making her so much happier, so much less stressed. When she talks about SEED, she says that it’s lifted a weight off her shoulders and that because of the additional $500 a month, she feels like she’s finally able to breathe.
Sukhi Samra:
And I think those two anecdotes just show that, even though we’re only five months into the first month out of the full 18 months, already SEED is having, and unconditional cash is having, such a transformational effect on the lives of our recipients.
Nick Hanauer:
So you said there’s… SEED is going to start discussing the results at the end of next year. Can you talk about how the results are going to be shared? Is it going to be like an academic paper, or what is the reporting process going to look like?
Sukhi Samra:
So [inaudible 00:35:58]. So we’re working with 18 of independent evaluators and researchers, Dr. [inaudible 00:36:02] at the University of Tennessee, Dr. Amy [inaudible 00:36:05] at the University of Pennsylvania, to do the research and evaluation of SEED. They’ll publish a paper at the end of next year, and then there will be a preliminary analysis and results, and then a final paper in 2021 that has the full quantitative and qualitative findings.
Sukhi Samra:
In the mean time, though, and what I think is really exciting, is that starting in October of this year, October of 2019, we’re going to make live a community dashboard that’s going to start displaying some of the data in a raw, aggregate form in real time. So starting this fall, close to April, we’ll be able to see things like who is actually… like what’s the demographic composition of our recipients and how folks are spending the money. And our dashboard is going to be, and what’s displayed on that dashboard, is going to be determined through a rigorous community engagement process. So we’re really committed to making sure that, even though only 125 customers are receiving the money, that SEED is really an initiative that is owned by the community. And so one way we’re going to do that is by hosting these service groups that’ll help us determine what data we’re sharing out with, not only the Stockton community, but the nation and the world at large.
Nick Hanauer:
Obviously right now, I think the biggest proponent, or the one with the loudest megaphone, of guaranteed income is Andrew Yang, and I was wondering, obviously your plan is very small in scope, but is there anything that you would like to point out and any difference between what is going on in Stockton and what he’s talking about? I just think that right now, that is the number one thing that people are seeing when the google guaranteed income, and I think it’s important to highlight the differences and similarities with what SEED’s doing.
Sukhi Samra:
I think one of the biggest difference is that in Yang’s proposal, he calls for a guaranteed income to really replace the other thing, the thing called the benefit system. For us, it’s really important that SEED is supplemental and that we’re not talking about a guaranteed income as a replacing TANF, or what in California is known as CalWORKs, or replacing [inaudible 00:38:08] We’re talking about it being supplemental and how does a guaranteed income and an income floor become part of the 21st century social contract and how to we restructure the social safety net, not that we’re replacing what currently exists, but so that we’re adding to it so that folks who are struggling today despite being in all these other complex benefits are able to make it.
Sukhi Samra:
Okay. Think if there are other proponents of a guaranteed income nationally as well. Most recently, Representative Rashida Tlaib announced her Building Our Opportunities to Survive and Thrive Act, the BOOST Act. It goes on the progress that we’ve made over the past couple of years to make sure that the economy is really working for everyone. Her bill goes further than what we’ve seen other bills do by eliminating [inaudible 00:38:54] for work, meaning, merely what we’re doing is softening, and essentially providing, a guaranteed income for those who are going to need it the most. And if passed, that Act and benefit [inaudible 00:39:03] 100% of adults and children who are in the poorest 20%.
Nick Hanauer:
That’s a pretty huge distinction to make-
Sukhi Samra:
Yeah.
Nick Hanauer:
Yang’s. So that’s… I appreciate that. How did you settle on the $500 figure because I know Yang’s is a thousand, and I’ve heard lots of different numbers thrown around by different programs.
Sukhi Samra:
Yes. So at the time that we are in our design and planning stage of what is SEED going to look like, who is it going to serve, how much is it going to be, I think one of the statistics that was really standing out nationally was that one in two Americans can’t afford a $400 emergency. I think that statistic has changed a little bit since then, but that was really the root, and one of the impetuses behind why we decided on $500 a month. It’s a little bit more than that $400 number, so making sure that folks are really able to have that additional cash to cover an emergency when it comes up.
Sukhi Samra:
And the other thing was that also being in that design and planning phase, we held a couple of focus groups in Stockton, and mostly with mothers, and the one number that they kept coming back to was an additional $500 a month would help them, in the summer when their children came back home, pay for ACs, a [inaudible 00:40:13] rising cost in ACs, for air conditioning. Or help pay for extra food that comes with having children at home during the summer, even though I think that the $500 a month came from both the federal, or the statistics that was hovering around nationally, as well as our conversations with the community.
Nick Hanauer:
I assume that, at least some of you at SEED are interested in the idea of this being a national policy. Is there any sort of discussion of what the next steps might be? Is SEED at all interested in what making more Stocktons would look like or anything like that?
Sukhi Samra:
Yeah. And the crazy thing is that even before [inaudible 00:40:49] out, and even before stories started coming out of our program, we’d already been approached by municipalities from… For example, we had been approached by Chicago, we’d heard from folks from D.C., we’d heard from folks in Nashville, who are interested in replicating what we’re doing and learning from what we’ve already done since we’re the first, [inaudible 00:41:07] most of this [inaudible 00:41:10] trouble. For example, Chicago and [inaudible 00:41:12] have both launched task forces to explore how a guaranteed income could slash the poverty [inaudible 00:41:19].
Sukhi Samra:
Nationally, we’ve seen a new conversation around, again. How do we make sure that an income floor is part of our new social contract? We’ve seen them both in conversations during expanding, that yes, you see it with a low earned income tax credit. And again in conversations or in bills like Representative Tlaib’s Build Act. Did they already… And again, we’re only interested in what we’ve seen in Stockton really leading the way around what a working economy looks like. I’m excited and really hopeful that more data comes out and more stories come out, that that momentum will only grow and that the movement will only get stronger and stronger.
Nick Hanauer:
I’m a writer, and so I’m always very interested in the words that people will apply to this and this idea of different formulations. There’s Universal Basic Income, there’s Guaranteed Basic Income, and obviously universal and guaranteed are different. They are very different things. I noticed that you don’t have the word basic in there. Can I ask why guaranteed income is your preferred terminology for it?
Sukhi Samra:
Well, there’s two reasons that we went with guaranteed rather than basic or universal. One, [inaudible 00:42:29] 125 folks. That’s not universal [inaudible 00:42:31] Stockton. Two, we didn’t go with basic because we recognized that $500 a month isn’t enough to meet the most basic needs. $500 isn’t going to pay for rent and bills and electricity, but it is a little bit more than what folks might otherwise have. Third, the reason that we chose… we went with guaranteed is to really boot our program and the social justice issue of the idea of a guaranteed income. So Martin Luther King, Jr. referred to an advocate of [inaudible 00:42:59] income, so for us, it’s really about continuing that legacy and making sure that the work that we’re doing in Stockton is rooted in, and is really addressing, the entrenched racial and gender stereotypes that go along with poverty.
Nick Hanauer:
To hear you talk about the social justice aspect of it is pretty informative. I think it’s something that, based on my personal experience, have not encountered in this space, so thank you for sharing that.
Sukhi Samra:
Yeah. Going back to, I think one of the first questions you asked me was why do I do this for, and I think in [inaudible 00:43:31], I’m a woman of color. For me, it’s incredibly important that I use my position and the privilege and the luck that I’ve had led to me being in this position to really bring along other folks who look like me. And I think a guaranteed income is the way to do that.
Sukhi Samra:
I grew up on the edge of poverty. My mom worked multiple jobs to make sure that we could make ends meet, and then after working 14, 15 hours a day, would come home to care take for not only me and my two sisters, but also [inaudible 00:44:00]. And so for me, knowing poverty injury is personal, and so recognizing that the solutions that we have to take are personal as well.
Nick Hanauer:
Have you noticed that in your interactions with people… I assume that you have talked to a fair amount of government employees. Has there been a difference of the way that people have discussed guaranteed income in the time that you’ve been working on it?
Sukhi Samra:
Yeah. I think, and this is going back with the movement and the momentum that started [inaudible 00:44:28] SEED, but when we first launched back in October of 2017, and announced that we had gotten this $1 million and issued the economic security project to give people money, to give people money without strings attached, it was seen as such a crazy idea. But since then, I think a guaranteed income has really evolved into something that’s viable and something that could be implemented, either via. the local government, statewide, or nationally. And I think we’ve really seen [inaudible 00:44:57] gain traction.
Sukhi Samra:
And I think we were also just seeing a national discourse more than emphasis on making sure that the economy is working for folks today… rather, that’s in my everyday conversations with other colleagues and coworkers or with my friends that also did go to Stanford too, friends in Stanford. I’ve definitely seen the conversations shift focus with more urgency behind the need for solutions that really get to the root causes of poverty, really get to the root causes of why isn’t our economy working for everyone. Why are folks working one and two jobs and still struggling to make ends meet because we’re the richest country in the world, that shouldn’t be happening.
Nick Hanauer:
Is there anything else that you wanted to share with our listeners?
Sukhi Samra:
Thank you [inaudible 00:45:36] so much for the opportunity to talk about the work that we’re doing in Stockton. We get a super exciting moment to explore ideas like a guaranteed income and the solutions to the issues that could make [inaudible 00:45:45] the best.
Nick Hanauer:
Thank you so much for sharing what you’re doing down there. It’s been super informative.
Sukhi Samra:
Of course. Thank you.
Nick Hanauer:
So Paul, that was a super interesting exploration of UBI from a couple of very interesting people. I remain somewhat skeptical, but it is a super interesting and importing idea to be explored, and we should experiment. Trying these ideas in some places almost certainly will tell you more about whether it makes sense or whether it doesn’t.
Paul Constant:
Absolutely. And I think as with pretty much everything in politics, I think intent has a lot to do with it. I really appreciated what Sukhi was saying about how this is not a replacement for a social safety net because I think that a lot of libertarians sort of endorse a UBI in bad faith because they just want to wipe out that social safety net. When you see people who are experimenting with different ways to handle that, I think you’re really, you’re really seeing that there’s something more to this idea than just a cure all.
Paul Constant:
One of the only real examples of Universal Basic Income is income that we have in practice is in Alaska. There has been a permanent fund dividend since 1982 that distributes some share of oil revenue to residents. So in 2018, every Alaskan got a check for $1,600 per person. And then, this last year, Governor Mike Dunleavy, who leans a little libertarian himself, cut $400 million from the state budget because he promise to increase the dividend to $3,000. And basically, he has devastated the public university system in Alaska in order to get that check up to the level that he promised. And then a number of other cuts, senior benefits, homelessness services, Medicaid, they’ve all been pretty much gutted in an effort to get the number up to some arbitrary number. And to me, that’s sort of the dark side of what can happen with the UBI if you’re coming at it from a place of bad faith.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah, and notably, he did not increase taxes on the oil companies or rich people to increase that. He steals services from poor people to do that.
Paul Constant:
Yeah, and not even just… not even poor people. Alaska had a pretty good university system in it, and he just… I mean, he put teachers out of work, he… Yeah. It’s just devastating for everyone. It will be devastating for everyone for generations in Alaska. Yeah. When you look at it, the $1,400 that he added to the check, which $1,400 is a big deal, it nowhere equaled the benefits that most Alaskans were seeing from all of those other services that he gutted in order to get the check up to that number.
Nick Hanauer:
For sure. Well, in the next episode of Pitchfork Economics, we’re going to be talking about a similar, but different, idea called UBJ, which is Universal Basic Jobs.
Speaker 2:
Pitchfork Economics is produced by Civic Ventures. The magic happens in Seattle in partnership with Larj Media. That’s L-A-R-J Media and The Young Turks Network. Find us on Twitter and Facebook at Civic Action. Follow our writing on medium at Civic Skunk Works, and peak behind the podcast scenes on Instagram at Pitchfork Economics. And one more, you should definitely follow Nick on Twitter at Nick Hanauer. As always, a big thank you to our guests, and thanks to you for listening from our team at Civic Ventures. Nick Hanauer, Zach Silk, [inaudible 00:49:20], Jessyn Farrell, Stephanie Ervin, David Goldstein, Paul Constant, Steven Paolini, and Annie Fadely. See ya next week.