There was a teacher that I had in school many years ago that talked at great length the logic behind why something like a universal basic income would never work. It involved him knowing at least three people that had won state lotteries.

Now, a state lottery windfall is markedly different than someone getting a universal basic income but it is effectively money that is given to someone for very little work.

Anyway, these lottery winners ere all somewhere in between two to ten million dollars and he said that all of them, every last one within a year or so would find a job that they would go to at least three times a week. Their reasoning is that they still felt they needed something to do.

They said that if felt like they were shrinking personally by having all that money and nothing to do during the day other than spend it. One guy got a job at a campground during the summer and one worked as a desk clerk at a hotel twice a week. They did it, as my teacher said, because it did their bodies good.

Via Daily Wire:

America’s first ever city-led “guaranteed basic income” program, which is offering $500 a month for 18 months to randomly selected residents of Stockton, CA, is experiencing an unexpected snag: people aren’t signing up in the numbers they expected.

As reported by CBS Sacramento a few weeks ago, the experimental program, the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED), intends to test the effectiveness of the radical concept of a guaranteed basic income. It will be the first basic income program implemented by a U.S. city.

The plan was to send out about 1,200 letters to households making $46,000 or less which ask them to sign up for the chance to be one of the 100 households selected to receive $500 per month for a year and a half.

“The letter 1,200 people will be receiving over the next few days does not mean people will automatically receive money but it brings them closer to potentially being selected,” CBS13 reported in early December. A team of independent researchers would then select 100 of the respondents to received the income supplement, which amounts to a total of $9,000 per household over the next 18 months.

The goal of the SEED program is to study how that extra income every month impacts the recipients’ health and stress levels and to see if it improves their sense of economic security, CBS13 noted. Those who received the letter have been given a December 23rd deadline to fill out the online consent form.