A city in southern California plans to give universal basic income to transgender and nonbinary residents beginning sometime over the next year.
On March 24, the Palm Springs City Council approved the proposal. Transgender and nonbinary residents of Palm Springs would be eligible to recieve up to $900 a month with no strings attached, Fox News reported. The program will start with $200,000 to fund initial research and planning.
Reportedly, the program is only for qualifying individuals who meet a poverty threshold.
“Twenty transgender and nonbinary Palm Springs residents will receive the free money funded by the taxpayers for 18 months, with advocacy-based health center DAP Health and LGBT advocacy group Queer Works managing the program,” Fox News added.
Palm Springs Mayor Lisa Middleton, a Democrat who is transgender, told Fox that transgender Americans “suffer extremely high rates of under unemployment” and face enormous challenges living "full and authentic lives.”
"Those challenges have increased substantially in the past few years as transgender children and their families have been targeted by extremist legislators and governors,” Middleton claimed, adding that the new program is a “county, state, and federal responsibility.”
Seattle-based conservative radio host Jason Rantz told Tucker Carlson this week that the program does not deal with poverty effectively.
“Guaranteed income presents as a good idea, it’s not actually a good one. And all the data seems to point out that it doesn’t quite get us to the point of defeating poverty in a way that is efficient with the use of funding. It’s too expensive,” Rantz said.
Palm Springs hopes to use taxpayer funds for guaranteed income exclusively for transgender residents. That's... wrong. But it's part of a much bigger scheme. I explained on Tucker Carlson Tonight. pic.twitter.com/gfIq0xmNx4
— Jason Rantz on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) April 5, 2022