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California Gov. Gavin Newsom holds a press conference at the Google office in San Francisco on\u00a0Aug. 7, 2025 to announce new AI partnerships.<\/p>\n
Anna Connors\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump and Gov. Gavin Newsom are in broad agreement on at least one thing: how to help Americans survive being financially crushed by the AI revolution.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They want Americans to own a piece of the action.<\/p>\n
But for now, it\u2019s all talk. Neither has expressed a clear plan for how to make that happen, a sign of how woefully unprepared the nation is to deal with an incoming financial tsunami, even in the AI capital of the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u201cLawmakers don\u2019t act until the bear is in their face,\u201d Teri Ollie, vice president of states strategy at Economic Security Project, a think tank that has studied direct payments to low-income Americans as part of a social safety net. \u201cThere\u2019s a real fear of killing the goose that laid the golden egg. It\u2019s dangerous to an elected official. They feel that the economy is like a bubble. If you touch it, it will burst.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The bear is rapidly approaching, especially in San Francisco, the epicenter of the AI takeover. The AI gold rush has already started to reshape the city as AI employees spend their riches. From January through June, more than 140<\/a> San Francisco homes sold at least $1 million above their asking price, compared with just eight homes in the first six months of 2025. San Francisco\u2019s rental market has the lowest<\/a> vacancy rate, just 2.2%, of any major U.S. city.\u00a0<\/p>\n Until recently, many politicians and entrepreneurs had pitched a \u201cuniversal basic income\u201d\u00a0\u2014 a concept in which Americans receive a no-strings-attached stipend, say $500 a month\u00a0\u2014 as a way to insulate people from poverty. Now the thinking has shifted, and voices as diverse as Newsom, Trump, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Vivek Ramaswamy and even OpenAI\u2019s Sam Altman are uniting around the idea of \u201cuniversal basic capital\u201d\u00a0\u2014 a concept that would give Americans an equity share of the revenue being generated by AI companies. But their plans are largely unformed.\u00a0<\/p>\n First lady Melania Trump walks alongside Figure 03, a humanoid robot developed by Sunnyvale-based Figure AI, during the Fostering the Future Together global summit at the White House on March 25, 2026.<\/p>\n Jacquelyn Martin\/Associated Press<\/p>\n And while UBI was simple to understand and proven effective<\/a> though numerous pilot programs, UBC is comparatively untested and complicated. There are over 100 major sovereign wealth funds in 67 countries and six U.S. states, but the challenge will be in crafting a policy that is as easy to explain and effective as universal basic income. If a 2028 presidential contender is able to create a plan\u00a0\u2014 and explain it simply and coherently\u00a0\u2014 it could become a key difference-maker.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cThe 2028 campaign will be the the first-ever \u2018AI election,\u2019\u201d\u00a0wrote<\/a> Nathan Gardels, co-founder and senior adviser to the Berggruen Institute, a think tank that has long had the ear<\/a> of top California leaders of both parties. \u201cIt will be defined by how candidates propose to cope with the upheaval wrought by the widespread integration of artificial intelligence into society.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The early days of the presidential race will occur in the wake of two San Francisco AI companies, OpenAI and Anthropic, making two of the biggest stock market debuts ever\u00a0\u2014 potentially topping $1 trillion each. OpenAI is now considering offering its IPO in early 2027, just as the candidates enter the field.\u00a0<\/p>\n Each candidate will have to answer the question posed to me by former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs, an early proponent of universal basic income: Who will benefit from all of that newly generated AI wealth? Tubbs implemented<\/a> a universal basic income pilot program in Stockton. That led to similar pilots<\/a> around the country, which garnered largely glowing reviews<\/a> as studies showed recipients used the money responsibly to survive.<\/p>\n But even Tubbs conceded that the upcoming AI economic upheaval requires something more. Now, Tubbs told me, offering Americans a universal basic income \u201cin this moment is the beginning. It\u2019s not the end. It has to be married to this idea of ownership. Like how do you make sure that all of us have some ownership in the wealth that\u2019s going to be generated, so it\u2019s not just a couple people seeing their standard of living raised, but all of our standard living raises?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Tubbs is not alone in his belief that a stipend is not enough to blunt the impact of the AI revolution. There has been a shift among elected leaders, many of whom now prefer a pre-distribution model (giving Americans an equity share of AI wealth before tech companies can swallow it) versus a redistribution model like universal basic income, where Americans must wait until tech companies make their money, then receive a sliver of that as a stipend.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The challenge is that the details being proposed about universal basic capital remain scant, at least in the case of Newsom and Trump. There are no bills in the Legislature addressing the issue. Sanders has the lone bill in Congress.<\/p>\n But that hasn\u2019t stopped Newsom from talking about it, perhaps foreshadowing an issue he wants to own in 2028. He is fond of noting that the industry\u2019s mecca is rooted in his home state (33 of the top 50 private AI companies are in California).<\/p>\n In May, Newsom said at the liberal Center for American Progress\u2019 IDEAS conference that \u201cYou don\u2019t need charity, we need ownership. It\u2019s a universal basic capital, by the way. \u2026 Got to have an ownership state. You cannot save democracy unless we democratize the economy. Period.\u201d<\/p>\n He signed an executive order<\/a> in May that directed California to study giving California equity shares in AI companies.\u00a0 But a study is far from putting money in the pockets of vulnerable Californians. The order demanded that state agencies present a roadmap by August for how to move forward on the concept.<\/p>\n Newsom has continued to mention the idea, without fully fleshing it out. He name-checked it in June<\/a> while proposing a new federal tax on people making more than $100 million. In July, Newsom told reporters that \u201cWe\u2019re looking at this notion of equity \u2026 and (how to) broaden access particularly as it\u00a0 relates to the abundance that we anticipate will take shape in the AI space.\u201d Newsom noted that \u201ca lot of people are now talking about this\u201d including \u201cfar-left Bernie Sanders is now talking about this and even Donald Trump has talked about this. And I think it\u2019s a very healthy conversation, a very healthy debate.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Yet with the exception of Sanders, universal basic capital has largely been just a conversation.<\/p>\n Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ro Khanna headline an event at Stanford titled \u201cWho Controls the Future of AI: The Oligarchs or the People\u201d on Feb. 20, 2026.<\/p>\n Santiago Mejia\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n Sanders\u2019 legislation is based on research by UC Davis School of Law professor Sarah Polcz and George Washington University law professor Jeremy Bearer-Friend. It proposes giving Americans a piece of the AI action through a sovereign wealth fund. It would be funded through a one-time 50% tax on the companies\u2019 stock. Supporters compare it to a similar fund in Alaska, which has given the state\u2019s residents an annual dividend check averaging around $1,600 for the last four decades.\u00a0<\/p>\n Polcz said the idea of giving Americans an equity share of booming tech companies upfront is better than waiting to claw it back from them in the form of taxes.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve seen just how effectively and how cleverly tech companies are able to really minimize their corporate tax liability,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The fund would be overseen by an independent commission of seven members. One challenge with Sanders\u2019 plan, however: If the government is a partner in an AI company, would it be tempted to set aside regulations to make it easier for the company to make money for its shareholders, the American people? And if the AI bubble bursts, would the government be on the hook for bailing out the company?\u00a0<\/p>\n Polcz said no to both, pointing out that the legislation forbids bailouts.\u00a0<\/p>\n So far, the idea hasn\u2019t caught on in Washington. Sanders\u2019 bill has zero<\/a> co-sponsors. But as was the case in the 2020 presidential election\u00a0\u2014 whether it was single-payer health care or green technology subsidies\u00a0\u2014 when Sanders gets behind an issue, he can pull the rest of the Democratic field to the left. As president, Joe Biden incorporated s<\/a>ome of Sanders\u2019 ideas into his environmental legislation.\u00a0<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s efforts have been more vague. In May, he suggested Americans should become \u201ca partner\u201d in AI companies in response to reports that the government could take a stake in OpenAI. That echoed what OpenAI proposed in its \u201cIndustrial Policy<\/a> for the Intelligence Age: Ideas to Keep People First,\u201d an outline for how to address the potential impacts of its technology. The document urged the creation of a \u201cPublic Wealth Fund that provides every citizen\u2014including those not invested in financial markets\u2014with a stake in AI-driven economic growth.\u201d<\/p>\n But there were few specifics.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere are concepts where pieces could be given to the American public, where the American public essentially becomes a partner,\u201d Trump said when asked about OpenAI\u2019s ideas.\u00a0<\/p>\n Both Trump and the company punted on how to seed the fund. The policy memo says only that \u201cpolicymakers and AI companies should work together to determine how to best seed the Fund, which could invest in diversified, long-term assets that capture growth in both AI companies and the broader set of firms adopting and deploying AI.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Trump isn\u2019t averse to the idea of a wealth fund. Earlier this year, the federal government launched Trump Accounts, in which children born between 2025 and 2028 can receive a one-time $1,000 deposit from the Treasury Department to seed an investment account. The idea is to help children\u00a0\u2014 particularly ones whose families are not invested in the stock market\u00a0\u2014 share in the market\u2019s bounty and create a nest egg that could be used for higher education, buying a home or other approved uses without a penalty.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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