PBS News Hour

JOHN YANG: It's not a new idea.

No strings attached payments to provide people with a financial floor what's called a guaranteed basic income.

It actually dates back to 16th century England.

Today, it's been tested in dozens of pilot programs across the country and cities as big as Baltimore and as small as Yellow Springs, Ohio population about 3,700.

Some of them use taxpayer funds.

Others use private contributions or foundation grants.

Stockton, California was among the first to launch a pilot program in 2019.

Earlier, I spoke with Stockton's mayor at the time, Michael Tubbs.

He's also founder of a group called Mayors for a Guaranteed Income.

I asked him about the genesis of Stockton program.

MICHAEL TUBBS, Founder, Mayors for a Guaranteed Income: That the crux of all the issues from homelessness to crime to education was his persistent poverty and economic insecurity.

So my first 100 days, I gathered my team in the office and I said, you guys, I want our legacy to be an anti-poverty, a pro-economic security administration.

So let's come up with all the ideas for how can we, as a government, ensure that people have enough to live and survive and eventually thrive.

And through that my team came back with this idea of a guaranteed income, citing work that was happening in places like Kenya, and in Mexico and Brazil, that had heard their guaranteed income from studying Dr. King in college.

So I was familiar with the idea.

So I said, well, let's do it.

JOHN YANG: And as I understand it, the program ran for two years, you had 125 participants from neighborhoods where the median income was at or below the city's median, which I think was about $46,000.

They got $500 a month for two years.

What did you find?

MICHAEL TUBBS: So many people said the money would be spent on drugs and alcohol, that people would stop working, or that people would use that money to commit crimes, et cetera.

And what we saw was that people spend money the way you and I and the viewer spend money.

We saw them be two times less likely to be unemployed.

We saw them spend the money on things like utilities, and necessities and food and on their children.

But we also saw health impacts.

We saw those with a guaranteed income saw their stress decrease, just a small amount of money was enough, not for people to become millionaires, but for people not to be evicted for people to take care of their children, for people to be able to pay to get their car fixed for people to live and contribute to their communities.

JOHN YANG: So everything you just said it sort of contradicts or counters what the critics say, because the critics say that this takes away the incentive to work, that this will foster bad spending decisions.

But it sounds like that -- that's not what you found in Stockton.

MICHAEL TUBBS: That's not what we found in Stockton, increasingly, from any of the dozens of pilots happening across this country in this world consistently, which suggests to me, John, that part of the issue is not just a data issue, but a storytelling issue that we have to get people to see the myths, the lies, the prejudices and stereotypes and the biases we have against people who may have less money.

JOHN YANG: And what happened when the program ended.

I mean, these people in the pilot program had this income floor.

What happened when that that was taken away?

MICHAEL TUBBS: What we saw half of it was taken away, it was people were able to use this money and do things to set them up to be better off than where they started.

So what I mean is several people went from part time to full time work.

So although they're not receiving the guaranteed income, they're receiving the income that comes with a better paying job with benefits.

Or some people use the money to save up to pay for the deposit necessary for rent in a better apartment or some people paid off credit card debts.

And so folks were able to use the money to pay off the little things that were holding them back.

So now they're in a much better position than they were couple of years ago before they're a part of the program.

JOHN YANG: Do you see guaranteed income programs, supplementing government assistance programs, or replacing government assistance programs?

MICHAEL TUBBS: I see as a supplemental I see it really as an extension of the social safety net, I see it as our 21st century, um, Social Security in when in the Great Depression, we decide that folks who are older, deserve to have a little bit of cushion post 65, because they've done so much for our communities.

And also think our current government programs should take note about what makes guaranteed income works because it's the money but be it's also the trust, that maybe people don't need to do a bunch of paperwork.

Maybe folks don't need someone to sit down and make them come in and set goals.

Maybe a lot of folks just need cash.

And maybe that will make some of the investments we make as a government that much more efficient.

JOHN YANG: Sort of along those same lines.

Why is it so important that these payments have no strings that they can spend on whatever they want?

MICHAEL TUBBS: Because folks' finances are so volatile that month to month needs change, right.

And for example, for folks in current government programs if you need money for food that's how that's the only place where you need money.

We know that one in two Americans already can't afford when $500 emergency.

So it's really about providing people with a contingency in their ability to use their mental acuity to make decisions, because month to month, those needs may change.

JOHN YANG: These programs, the pilot programs, some of them use government money, some of them use private donations, some of them use grant money from foundations.

If you were able to make this permanent across the country, how do you think it should be funded?

MICHAEL TUBBS: We are able to make this permanent across the country.

And again, I think the child tax credit is a huge start, which is a guaranteed income.

I'll be it for families with children.

So state governments, county governments, local governments, we're doing pilots there, because those governments can't deficit spin.

They have to have a balanced budget every year.

Our federal government can, and we do, we can also raise revenue.

We can legalize cannabis nationwide and use a tax revenue for that to pay for guaranteed income.

We could close in 2017 Trump tax cuts, which gave $2 trillion away to the richest among us, and we could close other tax loopholes and create a guaranteed income.

There's no shortage of ways of paying for it.

I really believe the question is how do we build the wheel?

How do we make a necessity?

It's a political question.

We have to organize and demand of our elected officials that this is what we need and let them know this is not scary.

This is not an extreme position.

This is not a utopian position.

This is a position that Republicans and Democrats alike are both suffering and that's pretty slim.

This anger we see.

This raging populism we see comes from economic anxiety in some ways.

So this is not a partisan issue, which is a long answer to say it's a political question, but we've been doing the work to build political will, it will continue pushing until we get there.

JOHN YANG: Michael Tubbs founder of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income.

Thank you very much.

MICHAEL TUBBS: Thank you so much for having me.