Marin County ‘Universal’ Basic Income Program Restricts Participants By Race

Only in California would it be okay for a Universal Basic Income program to restrict participants on the basis of race and sex. That’s just the case as supervisors in Marin County, California plan to contribute funds to this universal basic income program in conjunction with the Marin Community Foundation.

The foundation will spend millions in order to provide $1,000 to 125 low-income women each month for the duration of two years. This program is restricted to “non-White women,” according to the Marin Independent Journal. Some of the restrictions of this fund also include that the women must also have a child who is under 18 years old. The county has approved the use of $400,000 to be contributed to the initiative at this time.

Thomas Peters, the foundation’s chief executive, said in an email to the journal, “This first cohort will focus on low-income moms of color … We’re starting with those moms with the greatest aggregate of challenges: low income, young children and facing the daily travails and insults of overt and covert racial discrimination.”

Fox News requested comment on the initiative and wondered whether the foundation thought it discriminated against certain people. The outlet reports, “Peters said that ‘this initial program’ is directed at women of color who carry a ‘double-weighted burden in their path to self-sufficiency and that the reason to target women of color specifically was ‘not for any reason of exclusion, but because we are laser-focused on an area of greatest need.’”

Peters said in the statement, “Our pilot program is the next phase in a research study we conducted last year focused on low-income Moms who are struggling to care for their families and better their educational and economic standing. No surprise but still quite dismaying, we found that the women who are grappling with the most serious difficulties of all are Moms of color, who face not only financial challenges but the daily imposition of overt and covert discrimination … A double-weighted burden in their path to self-sufficiency. So yes, this initial pilot program is directed to them, not for any reasons of exclusion but because we are laser-focused on an area of greatest need. Proudly so.”

Many supporters of the program have compared it to reparations that are owed to black people in Marin City.