Economy
Twitter’s Jack Dorsey Donates $15 Million to Universal Basic Income Programs
Mayor Michael Tubbs says that Dorsey’s donation will be able to fund universal basic income pilot programs in dozens of cities next year.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has donated $15 million to a group of mayors who are enacting universal basic income programs throughout the United States.
The donation is Dorsey’s second multimillion dollar donation to the group Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, founded by Stockton, California, Mayor Michael Tubbs. In July, the tech billionaire would gift $3 million toward the group’s efforts.
“Thank you Mayor and to all the Mayors of @mayorsforagi for these universal basic income pilots!” Dorsey tweeted on Dec. 8. “I hope they inform federal policy in the future.”
Mayor Michael Tubbs says that Dorsey’s donation will be able to fund universal basic income pilot programs in dozens of cities next year.
“With Jack Dorsey’s donation, we’re going to be able to pilot a guaranteed income in up to 30 cities in this country next year,” Tubbs told Yahoo Finance.
“While we’re thankful for Jack’s donation, it’s also just a striking indictment on Senate Majority Leader McConnell and the Republican-led Senate that we’re having to talk to tech CEOs, their generosity, to do what’s necessary to provide for some of the basic necessities of our constituents in terms of being able to afford food, afford rent, and afford to stay home when they’re told to quarantine for 10 days or for 14 days.”
Made up of 30 mayors, Mayors for a Guaranteed Income is currently running $500 a month UBI pilot programs in multiple cities, including Newark, NJ, Stockton, CA, and Chicago, Illinois.
In April, Dorsey announced that he was moving $1 billion of his own wealth into an organization called “Start Small LLC” to fund universal basic income projects, Covid-19 relief organizations, and girls’ health and education initiatives.
The tech mogul donated $5 million dollars from Start Small to the Andrew Yang’s Humanity Forward nonprofit which has launched a UBI program in upstate New York giving 20 residents $500 a month for five years.
He had also endorsed Yang’s 2020 presidential campaign that envisioned a “Freedom Dividend” of $1,000 paid monthly to working-age Americans.
The idea of a universal basic income being issued in the U.S. has also recently been called for by billionaire Bill Ackman, the chief executive of the hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management.
Ackman’s idea is that government could create an investment account for every child born in the country, a program that the billionaire calls “Birthright.” The funds would be invested at birth in zero-cost equity index funds and be prohibited from withdrawal until retirement.
UBI was also recently touted by former Goldman Sachs CFO Marty Chavez as a way to stave off revolution as the wealth gap continues to increase.
“My personal view is that if you’re just being pragmatic and looking at inequality – and not thinking about some abstract concept of justice – you don’t want the inequality to be so extreme that it leads to revolution. So you ought to be prepared to pay to decrease that probability,” Chavez said.
“This is what I say to, you know, friends who you might call ‘oligarchs,’ right? Why it would make sense for everybody to have some baseline income and why we should all pay for it.” he added.
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