Forward Global Summit 2025 | Michael Tubbs, Mayors Guaranteed Income

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Michael Tubbs

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Mayors Guaranteed Income

play_circle_outline Overcoming mindset blockers, embracing simplicity and iteration.

play_circle_outline Mastering Intuition: Key to Success in Decision-Making and Action for Younger Generation in California Politics

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Michael Tubbs, Mayors Guaranteed Income

Michael Tubbs

Founder Mayors Guaranteed Income

Join us at the Forward Global Summit 2025 for an engaging discussion featuring Michael Tubbs, a prominent voice in the universal basic income movement. Tubbs, a Stanford graduate and the founder of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, shares insights from his pioneering work in launching the first guaranteed income program in the United States during their tenure as mayor of Stockton, California.

In this video, theCUBE Research analysts conduct an in-depth interview with Tubbs, uncovering their expertise in social innovation and economic policies. Tubbs d... Read more

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Michael Tubbs, Mayors Guaranteed Income

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>> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE. We are here in LA for Forward Global Summit 2025. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. Michael Tubbs is here. He is the founder of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, Stanford grad. Worked with Emerson Collective, we just bonded over that, Lorraine and Brad over there, great, and a lot of other accomplices. Thanks for coming on theCUBE, you were just on the stage here.

Michael Tubbs

>> Thanks for having me.

>> We had a good laugh there, and shared connections. But you were just on stage on a great panel, I saw Susan McCormick up there, very big innovator. A lot of innovation going on, a lot of change is happening. Give us an update on what you're doing, set the context, what are you up to?

Michael Tubbs

>> Yeah. I used to be the mayor of Stockton, California, and while I was mayor, we did the first guaranteed income program in the country. Since then, we've scaled it to 60 cities and counties who are playing with this idea of universal basic income, of guaranteed income, of what happens if we gave everyone a floor to stand on? Will people be better off? Will they work more? Will they be healthier? Et cetera. What we've seen consistently in 15 states now is that, actually, the answer is yes. That when people have a little bit, they can take that and do more, and do a lot more so than they can when they have nothing. We spoke about that on the panel and also talked about what California should be, a state that works, prove that these ideas of inclusion actually work to govern, and also just talk about the need to make change, that we can't just expect things to happen if we don't make them happen, and that if we really want to make things better and different, the time is really now because people seem to be wanting something different.

>> One of the themes, Michael, the show that I'm thinking out of this, my first time here, is it's very entrepreneurial, love that vibe, but let's get the philanthropy crowd. We also got people who want to make change. Very innovative mindset, but I heard some presentations on stage about, hey, this community has to embrace the entrepreneurial because entrepreneurs fail a lot to succeed. And some communities, failure's viewed as, "Whoa, persona non grata." Obviously Silicon Valley, they embraced the notion of failure because they know that's what it takes to be innovative. As you looked at your journey, "Okay, it's better off, it works." What were some of the things? And of course, we believe as theCUBE, we have a huge community. Elliott Donnelley believes in trust networks. What were some of the blockers, and what did you do to overcome them to make this happen? Because the concept of making an assumption like, "Hey, let's do basic income. Let's see how people do when they have something, feet to stand on." Okay, what happened? So it's success. What were some of the things that happened that made you successful and what blockers did you overcome? Because some people say, "Well, we tried that already," all the things come out, right?

Michael Tubbs

>> We'll start with the blockers, because I think those have been incredibly instructive. The main blocker was just mindset, that people couldn't fathom that a problem that's so seemingly intractable that everyone talks about could be solved or more solvable with something so simple. It's like, "Wait, what about this? What about that?" So it's like getting people to embrace simplicity. And then I think it was also particularly sitting from a seat in government, getting people to embrace iteration. That when we tried it, it ended up working, but when we said we're going to do it, there's a chance it might not work, and understand that that's okay because the status quo wasn't working. So we can try to-

>> Yeah, there's no downside. It's already not working.

Michael Tubbs

>> What's the harm here? So that, and then I think even afterward, it's still convincing people that, "No, this is true. It's been replicated. This is a good thing." I guess short answer to say getting over people's cognitive biases and mindsets. I think a lot of people, we seem to believe that we know more than we know and getting people to be more curious that maybe we're wrong. Maybe some of our assumptions are off, maybe there's a better way to do this is always a block.

>> And it's always take that first step because action and back to the entrepreneurial mindset, you can iterate.

Michael Tubbs

>> Yeah.

>> You can dust yourself off, get back up, get back, and then keep it simple.

Michael Tubbs

>> Yeah.

>> What's the expression? Keep it simple, stupid kind of thing. What were the things that worked for you? Again, we've been talking about trust networks, community. I mentioned Emerson Collective because we have shared interview, Lorraine and Brad over there, and the variety of other partners. Were there key moments where you tapped the network? Was there examples where if you had to stand in line and wait for something to happen, or the routes to success are often serendipity involved, what was some of the things that you shared-

Michael Tubbs

>> Well, even the way this guaranteed income program started, it happened because I had happened to be invited to a conference, some tech conference about the future of America or something with all tech people and then me as a mayor, the only government official there. And through that, I met the person who ended up being the funder of the guaranteed income program, or for many of the stuff that we did in Stockton around reducing crime, around education for people. A lot of the capital were folks like Lorraine or Evan Spiegel and then other tech entrepreneurs. I think one of the things I learned from many educated Silicon Valley is that you don't have to be a entrepreneur in the traditional sense to have an entrepreneurial mindset, and in the world that's moving so quickly, you have to be able to be nimble. You have to be able to learn while doing, you have to be able to do things without having the full answer. So absolutely, I think my network of people I've known since I was young have been very helpful and making crazy things like guaranteed income, or even simple things like learning how to be a dad possible, so very thankful.

>> My friend Andy Kessler, he writes The Wall Street Journal now. He ran a hedge fund, was first Morgan Stanley analysts, I think tech covered tech when Intel was a startup.

Michael Tubbs

>> Oh, wow.

>> He's a legend. He always had a phrase. Just showing up to conferences, whether you're doing the hallway track I call it, where you just, I don't need to go to the session or pay, you just do the hallway. Lobby con, they call it. Makes a difference because you want to just meet people, right? That's the key to success is showing up.

Michael Tubbs

>> That is.

>> Talk about that dynamic because that sounds like that conference, you are like, "Oh, another conference. Okay, what am I going to talk about?" Then next thing you know, magic happens.

Michael Tubbs

>> Yeah, because it was San Francisco to Stockton, so it was a two-hour drive there, two-hour drive back so it's half a day. So my team's a little bit annoyed like, "What's this about? It's not about the-"

>> What's the ROI?

Michael Tubbs

>> Yeah. And it's not about the nuts and bolts of governing, it's a tech for America, future of tech conference. They're like, "Who's going to be there? You're going to be the only elected official there. Are they getting more value than you're getting from being there?" But I just had, I was like, "No, it's important you guys, for me to be in those rooms though," because I literally said, an unlikely conversation might happen. I might meet somebody who 10 years from now found some startup or something, has affinity towards Stockton. Yeah, I went and happened to be connected with an old friend I had lost contact with, Natalie Foster, who was looking for a city to pilot guaranteed income with, and I happened to be there and we talked.

>> Hey, pick me, no other mayor here.

Michael Tubbs

>> No other mayor's here, and then we're off to the races.

>> Elliott Donnelley, just podcasting earlier before you came on about intuition.

Michael Tubbs

>> Yeah.

>> Talk about intuition, because we were riffing on the fact that intuition is a huge part. You could be a great thinker, bait inventor, but intuition, all the best thing come out of people's intuition. Talk about the role of intuition and what your intuition, how that helped you.

Michael Tubbs

>> Yeah, I think intuition has been such a powerful tool in terms of learning where to go, who to talk to. From 2010, Valerie Jarrett was coming to Stanford to speak. I just had a strong feeling that I was supposed to meet her. I don't know why, I got to meet her. And everyone had a feeling, I was like, "No, no, I have to be there." I was told no the first time, "There's no tickets." I said, "I promise you I'm supposed to be there, so when there's another ticket let me know." The day before I get the call like, "Wow, we actually have another ticket for you." I get in there, and then we're meeting with her, and then everyone was talking about themselves. And then my intuition told me, actually, that's Barack Obama's mentor, so there's nothing you can say that's going to be impressive to her as a 19-year-old, so why don't you just talk about everyone else? So I did that and all her attention focused on me because she's like, because everyone else talking about themselves and you're talking about other people, who are you? From there, I got my internship in the White House. From there, I started my path in local government, but it all happened because I had this strong feeling that I had to meet Valerie Jarrett, and then when I met her, I had a strong feeling that I wasn't supposed to talk about myself. And I think time after time, my wife, most of the big things in my life have happened because my intuition has been, do this. But I think it's one of the things, having intuition, but I think the other thing is having the courage to act on it.

>> And recognizing it too.

Michael Tubbs

>> Being like, "Okay, this feels different. Okay, I should do this."

>> Yeah, it's like going with your gut. All right, cool. Great story. We can talk for an hour. I'd love to follow up.

Michael Tubbs

>> Please.

>> Great story. What are the things you're working on now? Give us an update because you got some cool things. Love the presentation. I think the Forward Global, at least from my perspective, cracked the code on this. I hate to use the word interdisciplinary, that's a Stanford word, they think on that. But this idea of bringing people together is a huge concept.

Michael Tubbs

>> And for me, it's so funny, because it seems so obvious. Like duh, I don't know everything, you don't know everything. You don't know everything. We know everything about what we know, let's put it along together. But typically what I'm working on, I'm running for Lieutenant Governor in 2026 of California now so that's ramping up in a very interesting time. I run an organization called End Poverty in California that's focused on wealth building opportunities, whether it's childhood savings accounts or baby bonds for folks to build wealth in California, and helping with the Altadena recovery here in LA and thinking through how do we help people bank their land? How do you help people retain the wealth that the fire could put them in jeopardy of losing?

>> That's great stuff. I got to ask you, I was in a session yesterday to have the Pew Research is great research, but like, "Oh yeah, people feel about this about politics." And I asked the question, "What's the age demographics?" Because there is a generational shift happening right now. If you're under the age of 30, let's say 35, may say 30 is good mark, but not that. But they're looking at the world differently. What does the zeitgeist tell you? Because you're going to be Lieutenant Governor soon, on my prediction. A little bit of sumptive there, but I think we need leadership. What's the vibe? Because I think the data quality on these surveys, I'm not saying negative about Pew, they're great data. They're great by the way. But I'm like, "I want to know specifically the generational gap between older I grew up on the web, I can surf the web like a champion, but I can't play console video games. I can play keyboards, but I'm not a console guy or I have a Discord server, but there's all these Gen Z shortcuts."

Michael Tubbs

>> Yeah, you're better than me, I don't have that yet.

>> What does the younger generation tell you? And as Lieutenant Governor, what would you, how would align with that?

Michael Tubbs

>> The younger generation is telling me and all of us that business as usual is just not going to work, that it's not enough to say the right things or to tweet the right things. You have to actually deliver. Government has to work, there has to be outcomes over ideology is what I say. I think they're very outcome-focused and driven. In the absence of that, they may be attracted to ideologies that may seem different than what's been normative, acceptable, but I think it's because they're desperate for.

>> They want results.

Michael Tubbs

>> Yeah. A country that works where they can afford to buy a house where they don't have to go to college and go back and live with their parents, or where they can go to college and have a job afterwards and not be in debt and not be in so much debt, or live in a planet that's not burning, right? So I think it's just a real impatience with hierarchy, with norms, with the way things are, and I think no fealty to anything but outcome. So it's like, "I'm not this, I'm not that. Who's going to do something? And that's why I'll support." I think I-

>> Not that I'm going to be an advisor, but if I was an advisor, I'd say you run on the simplicity platform.

Michael Tubbs

>> Seriously. That's what they tell people all the time. The most radical thing now is say we want California to work. We want to make it easy to build housing. We want to make it easy to get educated. We want it easy to have a job, want you to keep as much money in your pocket as possible. I think-

>> Yeah, sign me up. Like what?

Michael Tubbs

>> It's so funny because I first got to politics 13, 14 years ago, messaging was so much more difficult and complicated. You were trying to get the right message.

>> Win them over with your talking points.

Michael Tubbs

>> Yeah, but now-

>> What does this even mean?...

Michael Tubbs

>> people don't care. People, in fact, you start talking like that, they're going to turn off. You got to speak the language of simplicity. I want government to work for you. I want government to deliver services. I want, if we take tax dollars, you know how it's being used.

>> Michael, you're an inspiration. Thanks for coming on theCUBE.

Michael Tubbs

>> Thanks for having me.

>> Looking forward to seeing you, Lieutenant Governor's office.

Michael Tubbs

>> Yes, sir.

>> Congratulations on taking something as obvious and making it simple, congratulations.

Michael Tubbs

>> Thank you.

>> All right. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. We are here in LA for the Forward Global Summit where change is happening, innovation in the system of money, collective good, multiple stakeholders here, people from different backgrounds, different entrepreneurs are here. We got politicians, innovators are all innovating around confidence, community, new systems being built. Hey, it's the same game, different rules, different systems. We'll keep all the data coming to you. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching.