Formerly Bankrupt Stockton Lays Plans For Next Bankruptcy

If you just emerged from bankruptcy, part of your plan to stay solvent probably doesn’t include “handing out free money,” but that’s precisely what the city of Stockton, California is going to try.

Michael Tubbs, the 26-year-old mayor of Stockton, California, thinks handing out $6,000 a year to low-income residents (with no strings attached) is the way to lift people out of poverty.

“Stockton is absolutely Ground Zero for a lot of the issues we’re facing as a nation,” Tubbs told CBS San Francisco (video below). “Ideally, I would like to serve 100 families for 18 months at $500 a month.”

Stockton is experimenting with a welfare program called “universal basic income,” which gives low-income residents $500 a month, no questions asked. The money is coming from a private grant.

The California city, which went bankrupt in 2012, has recently made strides to become more economically viable, but is still struggling.

Mayor Tubbs, who was endorsed by Barack Obama, took office in January 2017. He is Stockton’s first black mayor, and its youngest-ever at age 26.

You may remember Stockton from such hits as “Hey, let’s give lots of money to a downtown developer for 14 units of affordable housing,” “Even though we went through bankruptcy, we didn’t address our huge underfunded pension liabilities,” and “our mayor was arrested for embezzling from a kids club.” Mayor Tubbs owes his office to the last scandal involving previous mayor Anthony Silva.

“Universal basic income” is the latest repackaged welfare state socialism, and its been tried before in the SIME/DIME “negative income tax” experiments. The results, as anyone not on the left could have predicted, were disasterous: people worked less and families broke up more often.

Those who can’t learn from the mistakes of others are doomed to repeat them. We have plenty of evidence that guaranteed income rewards idleness and discourages work. Combine that with California’s legal cannabis, and you have the Full Subsidy for Potheads to Play Video Games All Day Act. The only question is whether its a sincere (doomed) attempt at implementing a socialist fantasy, or a cynical ploy to payoff off supporters under the guise of “guaranteed income.” Either way, it’s destined for failure, and will help lay the groundwork for Stockton’s next bankruptcy.