“We’re here for our stipend, Mayor! Double it, and we’ll cut back on rapes, too!”

Headline, LA Times: “Stockton’s young mayor has bold turnaround plan: Basic income and stipends for potential shooters.”

If that makes sense to you, please move to California, and stay away from me.

Stockton’s young mayor’s plan is just as backwards, ethically corrosive and dumb as it sounds. The headline is correct. Michael Tubbs, wants to give at least $500 a month to a select group of residents in a pilot program to test the impact of “guaranteed basic income,”  a socialistic fantasy that has failed everywhere it has been tried. We know the impact of guaranteeing people money they don’t have to work for.

But wait, there’s more! Led by their young, brash, clueless mayor, Stockton is about to award stipends of up to $1,000 a month to residents deemed most likely to shoot somebody—I’m not joking!— in a program called Advance Peace,or, in its long version, Let’s Allow Thugs And Violent Creeps To Extort The Government Into Paying Them To Not Hurt Anybody, While Penalizing The Citizens Who Don’t Pose A Threat.

I agree: Advance Peace is catchier. Continue reading →