The Austin City Council, always on the cutting edge of finding new ways to waste taxpayer money, has come up with a doozy: paying people $1,000 a month for breathing.
The Austin City Council will consider approval of a $1.18 million universal basic income (UBI) pilot program that will award 85 families $1,000 per month for one year.
It is part of the “Mayors for Guaranteed Income” initiative of which Austin Mayor Steve Adler is a member, along with Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg. “Even prior to the pandemic, people who were working two and three jobs still couldn’t afford basic necessities,” reads that website.
“COVID-19 has only further exposed the economic fragility of most American households, and has disproportionately impacted Black and Brown people.”
At a Monday morning roundtable about the topic, Adler said that a couple years ago when this topic was first broached with him, he was initially “questioning of such a program.”
“There’s always a question about using taxpayer dollars [this way],” Adler said, adding, “[but here the beneficiaries] might know better than we do how to spend this money.”
I’m pretty sure that the average Austin taxpayer knows that they know better how to spend their own money than letting the Austin City Council hand it out to randos. (Actully, I doubt it will be handed out to rando or “deserving” families; I fully expect it to be yet another mechanism to rake off graft to the hard left.)
The first such program began in Stockton, California in 2020 and it has extended to dozens across the country.
On the council’s Thursday agenda, the pilot program falls under the city’s Equity Office and the funding will come out of the General Revenue fund. Chief Equity Officer Brion Oaks said on Monday that the pilot will inform the city of best practices to implement a larger program down the road.
You may remember Brion Oaks from such hits as “Defund The Police And Give All The Money To Leftwing Activists.” What do you think the odds are that the families Oaks will pick for this program will have connections to radical leftwing Democratic social justice activists?
The program’s design, including which families will take part, is still up in the air and will begin to be sorted out after the council approves the item this week. He did say that “housing insecurity” will be prioritized in that selection process — something loosely defined but may include eviction history, poverty status, and applicants’ ability to pay bills on time.
Deadbeats only need apply.
UpTogether, which runs a nationwide private UBI program, is the vendor chosen to oversee the program which is estimated to begin either in late May or early June should the council approve it. Oaks said the $1,000 figure was arrived at as roughly half of the average monthly rent in the City of Austin.
UpTogether is run by FII-NATIONAL, and both of which are run by Jesus Gerena, whose own biography describes UpTogether as “an antiracist change organization.” So the radical leftwing social justice warrior Austin City Council wants to take taxpayer money and have radical social justice warrior Brion Oaks oversee radical social justice warrior-run UpTogether run the program.
Why, it’s almost like a pattern.
What do you want to bet that there will be no external oversight to the program, and that privacy rules will prevent us from ever learning which “families” will be chosen to receive such taxpayer-funded largess?
Even by the standards of welfare statism, this is an egregious misuse of taxpayer money to fund radical leftwing pilot programs.
The City Council will reportedly be voting on this idiocy on Thursday. Austin taxpayers who oppose it should show up and say so.
Tags: Austin, Austin City Council, Brad Johnson, Brion Oaks, Democrats, Social Justice Warriors, Steve Adler, Texas, Universal Basic Income, UpTogether, welfare, Welfare State
Well, if the city has the funds to shovel money into nonsense like this, then I obviously need never vote ‘yes’ on another bond proposal, for any reason, ever.
And yes, Lawrence, I believe you are absolutely correct that this absurd program is little more than just a way for this city council to direct taxpayer dollars to their friends/supporters/fellow travelers.
Government services ought to come out of the pockets of the people demanding them. You want to pay someone not to work? Fine; you do it. Your money. Your effort. Not some abstract “taxpayer” who you typically describe as a deep-pocketed impersonal corporation.
Because, in the real world? That corporation is just going to pass on the costs to the customer, who will inevitably wind up being that minority of lower-class people who actually work and pay taxes. It’s easy to pick their pockets through the remove of government and impersonal price increases–Less so than if you went to their door with a gun.
And, in the end, it’s all about creating clients that will vote for them. Which, historically, is how all democracies and quasi-democracies die. Sociopaths get into power who are willing to bend the rules to pay off their short-sighted supporters, and the whole thing eventually falls apart.
And in the end, those Leftie mayors will shake their heads sadly and say “It’s sad. We tried Capitalism, you know? We tried. Really hard. Just didn’t work out.”
We’ll all be shivering, reading by candlelight in the dark and eating bugs.