Event

CASH Conference: Exploring Basic Income in a Changing Economy

10. 30. 2017

Two weeks ago, over five hundred people came to the inaugural CASH Conference in San Francisco. A diverse group of academics, organizers, artists, and practitioners met at the historic Old Mint, a building that once housed a third of our nation’s wealth.

Watching highlights from CASH Conference 2017: exploring basic income in a changing economy.

Featured speakers such as Aisha Nyandoro of Springboard to Opportunity, and Saket Soni of National Guestworker Alliance and the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice shared a range of perspectives on how our economy isn’t working — and in some cases, has never worked — for some Americans.

Tim Hwang of the Ethics and Governance of AI Fund and Andy Stern, former President of the SEIU, spoke about the future of work in our automated future. Jane McGonigal led the audience in an exercise on why it is so hard to imagine our future selves and how that difficulty produces roadblocks in the potential of bold solutions that can transform our lives.

Writer and comedian Baratunde Thurston interviewed Mayor Michael Tubbs of Stockton on life as Mayor, the vision behind the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration and his hopes for the project.

“The CASH conference, held in the heart of San Francisco, left me, for the first time, with the feeling that basic income was something that could become official policy in the near future,”

– Greg Ferenstein, writing about CASH Conference in Forbes

We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, but CASH was a major moment in a new generation of thinking and action on a guaranteed income.

Economic Security Project Co-Chair Dorian Warren led a discussion on why you can’t talk about economic justice without talking about racial justice. He was joined by Saket Soni, Director of the National Guestworker Alliance, and Anne Price, President of Insight Center for Community Economic Development, to unpack the history of the guaranteed income in the civil rights movement, and the renewed interest in the idea.
Journalist Annie Lowry was joined by Joe Huston of Give Directly, and Aisha Nyandoro of Springboard to Opportunity to discuss how data from studies and stories from the field work together to build convincing evidence for a basic income.
Writer and comedian Baratunde Thurston sat down with Michael Tubbs, the twenty seven year old mayor of Stockton, California, to discuss how a basic income could change his city. He talks about growing up in Stockton, what he’s learned in office, and the launch of the Stockton Economic Empowerment Program, the groundbreaking guaranteed income pilot, aimed at understanding and elevating the stories of people receiving unconditional cash.
Felicia Wong of the Roosevelt Institute sat down with three political leaders all working on policies that put cash back into people’s pockets. State Rep. Chris Lee of Hawaii discusses the task force convening in his state to discuss economic security and a basic income. State Senator Bill Weilechowski of Alaska talks about the Permanent Fund Dividend, a universal, unconditional cash program that is under threat in his state. Joe Sanberg talks about the Earned Income Tax Credit in California, and why we should all consider cash programs as a way to provide financial security for everyone.

Highlights include: