The Cook County, Ill., Promise Guaranteed Income Pilot will send 3,250 residents $500 each month in cash assistance for two years. Citizenship will not be a requirement, meaning illegal aliens will be able to apply for the grants.
To qualify for the program, you must be a Cook County resident and earn a household income of or below 250% of the federal poverty level or make less than $69,375 for a home of four.
“This pilot is open to all residents of Cook County, regardless of your immigration status. This means that if you are undocumented, or your household is a mixed-status household, and you meet the eligibility criteria above, you are eligible to participate,” the website states. “We will not share information on immigration status with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.”
Guaranteed income pilot plans have been popping up all over the country in recent years. These are different from the Universal Basic Income (UBI) plans that have been promoted to take the place of direct transfer payments to the poor. The Guaranteed Income plans are generally less ambitious and, so far, have proven themselves to be a bust.
The program is being funded by the American Rescue Plan Act dollars, a White House relief plan to assist those impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said she hopes to make the program permanent in the next few years.
“When people in communities are struggling to make ends meet, the most helpful thing we can do is give them cash,” she said in a video advertising the program. “Decades of research shows that participants use the cash benefits wisely.”
Actually, the most helpful thing a government can do is create the conditions for business expansion that will create good jobs. Eventually, the money in these pilot programs runs out and the poor people who received the aid are no better off than before.
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But if they have a good job, they can get off public aid and contribute to society. Unfortunately, that concept is too simple for most left-wingers.
The Fund for Guaranteed Income hopes these families can use the cash support to offset some of their medical expenses, and that the funds will also improve the recipients’ physical and mental health. Compton Pledge had promised in early press releases that Jain Family Institute, the independent research group it contracted to measure the success of the pilot, would be publishing data on the impact of the program at regular intervals, but it has not yet done so. Initial findings from a separate guaranteed income pilot in Stockton, California show promise, however. In March, the pilot reported that the recipients of its $500 per-month stipend showed statistically significant improvements in their mental health versus the control group, moving from likely having a mild mental health disorder to likely being mentally well. One year into the two-year pilot, Stockton recipients had spent 37% of their allotments on food, 22% on home goods and personal clothing items, and 11% on utilities. They spent less than 1% on alcohol and tobacco.
These guaranteed income programs miss the boat on poverty. It’s not a question of a lack of money. It’s a question of being left out of the economy due to a lack of education, bias, or lack of opportunity. It’s where the government has skewed employment opportunities away from where the jobs are needed.
Given all the cash being thrown around because of the pandemic, you can hardly help people think that giving money to the poor to solve their problems might be a good idea. But it isn’t, and these “experiments” will peter out in a few years.
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