America’s First ‘Guaranteed Basic Income’ Program Offers People $500 A Month, Gets Off To Rocky Start

America’s first ever city-led “guaranteed basic income” program, which is offering $500 a month for 18 months to randomly selected residents of Stockton, CA, is experiencing an unexpected snag: people aren’t signing up in the numbers they expected.

As reported by CBS Sacramento a few weeks ago, the experimental program, the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED), intends to test the effectiveness of the radical concept of a guaranteed basic income. It will be the first basic income program implemented by a U.S. city.