Y Combinator, a start-up incubator in Mountain View, California is launching a pilot program in Oakland that will give 100 residents six months to one year worth of income – for free.
The company’s research director, Elizabeth Rhodes, says that they plan on giving participants $1,000 to $2,000 per month as a part of this experiment.
“We think everyone should have enough money to meet their basic needs — no matter what, especially if there are enough resources to make it possible,” reads the company blog. “We don’t yet know how it should look or how to pay for it, but basic income seems a promising way to do this.”
The theory behind this experiment was inspired by the Alaska Permanent Fund, which gives residents of at least one year, hundreds to thousands of dollars with no strings attached. In 2014 the state government gave each resident $1,884, paying out a total of $1.1. billion dollars.
As for Y Combinator’s Pilot Program, requirements to receive the money won’t be as simple.
“We’ll be stratifying by certain characteristics to make sure we have different income levels and ethnicities, but figuring out how we collect that sample is one of the things we’re going to be working on in the pilot,” Rhodes told Motherboard.
The program is still in development, but will be launching in the coming months.
