Here's the Latest and Biggest UBI-Related News:
‣ Prison Policy Initiative: Guaranteed Income for Formerly Incarcerated People Reduces Recidivism and Pays for Itself
‣ USC Study Finds $750 Monthly Payments Improved Lives of Homeless People
‣ OpenAI Releases Policy Blueprint Calling for a Public Wealth Fund and 4-Day Workweek to Share AI Gains
‣ Despite Proven Results, Austin City Council Cuts $1.3M Grant That Funded Its Guaranteed Income Program
‣ WashU Study Finds Guaranteed Income Boosted Artists' Finances, Productivity, and Mental Health
‣ South Korea Identified as the World's Best Opportunity for a UBI Funded by Land Value Tax
‣ New Documentary "Unconditional" Premieres Telling the Stories of Denver Basic Income Project Participants
UBI Article of the Month Highlight
This essay by The Tyee's culture editor Dorothy Woodend revisits the 2017 documentary Free Lunch Society by Austrian filmmaker Christian Tod and argues the case for universal basic income has only sharpened in the years since the film was made. Political instability, deepening inequality, climate breakdown, a global pandemic, and the rise of AI have all turned what Tod saw as thunderheads on the horizon into a storm now well overhead. The answer has been waving its hands wildly to get our attention for half a century, and we keep ignoring it.
Woodend walks through Mincome — the basic income experiment in Dauphin, Manitoba from 1974 to 1978 — and the same lessons Dauphin has been teaching the world ever since. People used the money to try new things, get their kids' cavities filled, and start small businesses, and as Woodend puts it, "live in a way that was governed less by fear and more by hope." The Conservative government that took over killed the program, but the people who lived through it remember.
The piece also picks up where last month's featured article left off, citing Will Glovinsky's essay on Thomas Spence and the closing of the English commons — proof that the case for UBI didn't begin with AI and won't end with it. Woodend's diagnosis of what stands in the way is short and unsparing: outdated fears, and absent political will.
ITSA Foundation Project News Update:
This month we launched the AI Pledge for Humanity — the project I have spent the last year building toward.
The Pledge is a public commitment by founders, executives, and investors building wealth through AI to support policies ensuring AI's gains are broadly shared. It is not a donation. It is a position — that the productivity AI is unlocking belongs, in part, to humanity as a whole, and that the people benefiting most from the technology will back the policies that make that real.
Thirteen years of UBI advocacy has taught me one thing: the missing constituency has always been the people with the most leverage. Workers want UBI. Recipients want UBI. Most economists who study it support it. The Pledge is built to start filling the gap on the other side of the table, and to make visible the people in tech and finance who already agree.
If you build a company in AI, invest in it, or hold equity in one, sign the Pledge. If you know someone who does — a former colleague, a friend, a founder you follow — send them the link.
Read the Pledge and the current list of signatories at aipledgeforhumanity.org.
Project Comingle is now up to 29 beta pilot members actively creating a real basic income floor for each other via automated mutual aid — up from 20 at the start of last month. Thank you to everyone who emailed in response to the March newsletter to join the wait list.
Prison Policy Initiative: Guaranteed Income for Formerly Incarcerated People Reduces Recidivism and Pays for Itself [link]
Community Spring's Just Income program in Alachua County, Florida provides $800 per month for one year, with no strings attached, to people released from prison or jail or starting probation in the previous year
The accompanying randomized study showed reduced recidivism, improved probation compliance, higher rates of full-time employment, and better mental health
For every 100 participants, 12 fewer were reincarcerated; given Florida spends over $41,000 annually to incarcerate one person, the program produced a net taxpayer gain conservatively estimated at over $13,000 per participant
USC Study Finds $750 Monthly Payments Improved Lives of Homeless People [link]
In one of the first randomized studies of basic income for homeless people in the US, 103 homeless Californians received $750 per month for a year, run by USC's Homelessness Policy Research Institute in partnership with Miracle Messages
Nearly half of recipients were no longer homeless after the year, but a similar share of the control group also found housing — a result that says less about the cash than it does about the housing market itself, since $750 a month is roughly half a typical one-bedroom rent in the US
What the housing metric doesn't capture is that the cash was transformative for recipients regardless of whether they ended up housed — 95% of the money went to basic needs like food, transportation, and health care, and one participant used the money to keep his car running, which served as both his transportation to work and the place where he slept at night
OpenAI Releases Policy Blueprint Calling for a Public Wealth Fund and Four-Day Workweek to Share AI Gains [link]
The 13-page paper, "Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age: Ideas to Keep People First," argues that the transition to superintelligence demands a new social contract on the scale of the Industrial Age, the Progressive Era, and the New Deal
Notably, the document never uses the term "universal basic income" — but it describes UBI-shaped mechanisms throughout: a Public Wealth Fund to distribute AI-driven economic gains directly to citizens, a four-day workweek that passes efficiency gains back to workers, and expanded support for "human-centered jobs like caregiving" that the labor market currently leaves unpaid
The paper also calls for higher taxes on top earners and corporations seeing sustained profit growth from AI, formal worker input on AI deployment, and treating AI access itself as a universal right comparable to electricity or internet
Despite Proven Results, Austin City Council Cuts $1.3M Grant That Funded Its Guaranteed Income Program [link]
UpTogether's pilot gave $1,000 per month for 12 months to 148 Travis County families, with 97% of recipients using the funds for essentials like housing, food, transportation, and caregiving, and 74% remaining employed throughout
Homelessness among recipients fell from 29% at baseline to 8%, most recipients behind on rent caught up, and UpTogether estimates the program saved the city about $2.5M by preventing eviction and shelter costs for 85 households alone
Council Member Vanessa Fuentes, the program's biggest champion, told the Chronicle: "Losing this program means losing a lifeline for Austin families, and potentially losing ground in addressing Austin's urgent affordability crisis."
WashU Study Finds Guaranteed Income Boosted Artists' Finances, Productivity, and Mental Health [link]
Brown School researchers analyzed Creatives Rebuild New York, which gave 2,400 New York artists $1,000 per month for 18 months starting in 2022, with applicants selected by an "equitable distribution" method rather than artistic merit
The program reduced financial stress and debt, increased time artists could dedicate to their work, improved motivation and productivity, and improved mental health, with no reduction in other sources of income
Lead author Stephen Roll noted the relevance to the AI moment: as companies lean on AI for graphic design, advertising, and other arts-adjacent jobs that have historically supported working artists, "it will be even more important to support artists financially in order to cultivate successive generations of human artists in this country and around the world."
South Korea Identified as the World's Best Opportunity for a UBI Funded by Land Value Tax [link]
South Korea's land-value-to-GDP ratio exceeds 500% — the highest in the OECD and more than twice the US ratio of about 200% — providing a uniquely large untapped base for funding a UBI through a Land Value Tax, with all parcels already publicly valued by a central agency
President Lee Jae-myung is a long-time advocate of both UBI and LVT, ran on a Land Basic Income platform in his 2017 primary, and currently holds a 69% approval rating — the highest of his term
One Korean analysis estimated that a 1.1% effective LVT could fund an annual UBI of 3.6 million won ($2,600) per household, lower house prices, raise net income for 85% of households, and reduce every measure of income inequality
New Documentary "Unconditional" Premieres Telling the Stories of Denver Basic Income Project Participants [link]
The Denver Basic Income Project delivered $10.8 million to over 800 people experiencing homelessness from 2022 through 2024, in the first and largest guaranteed income pilot focused on that population, paired with a randomized control trial through the University of Denver
Two years after payments ended, the 155 participants the project remains in contact with continue to be housed at significantly higher rates, alongside more full-time employment, fewer shelter nights, fewer ER visits, and fewer jail stays
The documentary, produced by project manager Gwen Battis, premiered April 23rd at Denver's Sie FilmCenter, with a virtual screening planned for May and a hosting structure for community screenings to follow in late spring/early summer
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Scott Santens
Founder & CEO, ITSA Foundation
