Officials in Oakland, California, announced the launch of a guaranteed income pilot program this week that will provide direct monthly payments to low-income minority families in the city.
The initiative, which is one of the largest guaranteed income experiments to be conducted in the United States to date, aims to find out if providing regular payments low-income families will lift them from their economic plight.
The program, called Oakland Resilient Families, will send 600 families in the city $500-a-month payments over the next 18 months as part of an effort to eliminate racial wealth inequalities in the city, which the program argues is the result of “ongoing systemic racism.”
Though similar in many ways to universal basic income, Oakland’s guaranteed income program is not designed for everyone, but specifically for low-income black, indigenous, and people of color, or BIPOC, families — groups the city says suffer from the greatest level of wealth disparity. Recipients of the payments will be able to spend the money in any way they choose.- READ MORE
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