ITSA Newsletter: December 2025

The Latest and Biggest Universal Basic Income News:

‣ Finland Gave Two Groups Identical Payments. One Experienced 33% Better Mental Health.

‣ Major UN Report Suggests Universal Basic Income Combined with Taxing Meat

‣ Alex Bores wants UBI and AI safety — and Big AI is spending $10M to stop him

‣ 118 Million Women in India Are Now Receiving Monthly Unconditional Income

‣ Results from $500/mo GBI Pilot in Rochester, NY Show 26% More Employment

Basic Income Article Highlight

This is a great article out of Canada for Rabble that treats basic income as an active political project there, not a distant dream. It points to real legislative movement (S-206 advancing) and frames traditional welfare as a costly system designed around suspicion, punishment, and scarcity. It also includes how Canada already runs basic income-like programs (CCB, GIS) for groups deemed “deserving,” so the real debate is universality and dignity, not feasibility.

You can read the article here.

ITSA Foundation News Update:

The Income To Support All Foundation is proud to have been selected as an OpenAI Foundation ‘People-First AI Fund’ grant recipient. We were one of 208 nonprofits to have been selected for the grant, for which nearly 3,000 organizations applied. By supporting our organizational capacity, this grant will allow 100% of all other donations received for the foreseeable future to go towards the UBI projects we are supporting.

I’m also excited to share that I’m now the third person with an actual bank account attached to Comingle and am actively helping improve the platform through real-world usage with real money going back and forth each week. It’s not yet ready for public release, but it’s getting there. By February, a handful more people will begin joining the beta phase, and hopefully by March or April, the first 100 people will be able to join and create a small perpetual basic income floor.

As we enter 2026, please consider becoming a monthly donor to support our UBI projects, knowing that this year will be the year our two primary projects (Bootstraps and Comingle) finally launch after years of development.

Thank you to everyone who has donated to ITSA Foundation this year, and for anyone who would like to donate in the name of someone else as a gift, that option is now available.

Finland Gave Two Groups Identical Payments. One Experienced 33% Better Mental Health. [link]

• A new study of Finland’s basic income experiment found that the treatment group ended up with 33% better mental health than the control group.

• Both the treatment group and the control group received the same amount of money. It’s just that one had conditions and means-testing and one didn’t.

• The study also looked at sub-groups like race and gender and found that unconditional income positively impacted every sub-group’s mental health.

Major UN Report Suggests Universal Basic Income Combined with Taxing Meat [link]

• The Global Environment Outlook (GEO) report is produced by 200 researchers for the UN Environment Program.

• The UN GEO report says food and fossil fuel production are causing $5 billion of environmental damage every hour - $45 trillion a year.

• These massive costs must be priced into energy and food to reflect their real price to shift consumers towards greener choices, so Pigovian taxes and UBI are needed.

Alex Bores wants UBI and AI safety—and Big AI is spending $10M to stop him [link]

• NY Assemblyman and NY-12 congressional candidate Alex Bores says AI-driven disruption will require more than job retraining; he backs UBI as part of the policy mix to provide baseline stability for workers and families.

• His pro-UBI/pro-regulation stance has made him a target of “Leading the Future,” a pro-AI super PAC with a reported $100M war chest that’s already running attack ads to sink his candidacy ahead of the June 2026 primary.

• Bores helped design New York’s RAISE Act to stop major AI developers from releasing models that fail safety standards or enable dangerous harms; he argues it can be a roadmap for federal AI rules via a piecemeal approach.

118 Million Women in India Are Now Receiving Monthly Unconditional Income [link]

• Across India, 118 million adult women in 12 states now receive unconditional cash transfers from their state governments, making India the site of one of the world's largest and least-studied social-policy experiments.

• The transfers range from 1,000-2,500 rupees ($12-$30) a month - small sums, worth roughly 5-12% of household income, but regular.

• Tamil Nadu frames its payments as a "rights grant" while West Bengal's scheme recognizes women's unpaid care work and domestic work.

Results from $500/mo GBI Pilot in Rochester, NY Show 26% More Employment [link]

• Rochester’s Guaranteed Basic Income (GBI) pilot gave $500 per month for 12 months to 351 local residents who were compared to a randomized control group.

• GBI recipients were 26% more likely to be employed and there was an increase in the likelihood of part-time work too.

• There was a 15% reduction in recipients’ perceived stress scale relative to the control group, as well as a 13% higher life satisfaction during the GBI pilot. 

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Scott Santens

Founder & CEO, ITSA Foundation