Jack Dorsey Donates $15 Million to Mayors Testing Basic Income
The billionaire head of Twitter and Square voiced his desire for the federal government to take note of the results of basic income trials.
Billionaire Jack Dorsey, founder and CEO of Twitter and Square, donated $15 million to the mayors of cities trialling the idea of a guaranteed basic income for Americans.
The money is going to Mayors For A Guaranteed Income, a coalition of 29 mayors across the US looking to launch or expand guaranteed income pilots in their cities, including Atlanta, Los Angeles, New Orleans and Philadelphia. Dorsey’s donation guarantees $500,000 for each mayor in the coalition to divide among residents according to the qualifications set by individual cities. Payment amounts and pilot tests of each programme will vary.
The mayors of Columbia and Pittsburgh are also members of the coalition and are implementing guaranteed income initiatives that will issue $500 monthly checks to hundreds of residents facing financial hardship over a 24-month test period.
Dorsey revealed the donation in a tweet thanking the coalition for implementing their programmes. “I hope they inform federal policy in the future,” he added.
Mayors For A Guaranteed Income was founded in June by Michael Tubbs, mayor of Stockton, California. “We are a nation in crisis, and the last one of this scale yielded dramatic social reform; this is our New Deal moment,” Tubbs said in a statement on Tuesday.
Dorsey previously donated $3 million to the coalition a month after its founding, citing the success of $1,200 stimulus payments in steering the US away from an economic depression.
Also on Tuesday, Dorsey’s Square announced its intentions to make its operations carbon neutral by 2030, in addition to launching a $10 million Bitcoin Clean Energy Investment Initiative aimed at supporting companies that drive the adoption and efficiency of renewables in the bitcoin ecosystem.
