permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

Can a Bay Area Startup Incubator Reinvent Income? — The Ringer
https://theringer.com/y-combinator-basic-income-oakland-project-dfa50a9eaf50#.n56vqy5g2

[YCombinator sponsors Hacker News - a great news source, computing and
general]

Y Combinator has been called the world’s most powerful startup incubator,
but now it’s testing something completely different: investing in people’s
lives, not their businesses. A few weeks ago, the startup incubator
announced a pilot program on basic income in Oakland, California. The idea
of a basic income — a stipend guaranteed to each person to cover essential
needs — is gaining momentum. Finland is considering it. So are four cities
in the Netherlands. Canada is planning a provincial test project in an
Ontario community. In Switzerland, voters recently rejected a proposal
introducing basic income, but it’s notable that the vote happened. Many
details of the Oakland project need to be worked out, but the premise is
simple: A group of residents will be given stipends, and Y Combinator will
research how that income affects the recipients. Y Combinator’s ambitious
project is unusual because it’s a private organization — not a government —
initiating a study on a social-safety net. “We want to run a large,
long-term study to answer a few key questions: how people’s happiness,
well-being, and financial health are affected by basic income, as well as
how people might spend their time. But before we do that, we’re going to
start with a short-term pilot in Oakland. Our goal will be to prepare for
the longer-term study by working on our methods — how to pay people, how to
collect data, how to randomly choose a sample [participant], etc.,” a Y
Combinator blog post says.