ITSA Newsletter: October 2025

The Latest and Biggest Universal Basic Income News:

‣ South Korea Launches Huge 2-Year Rural UBI Pilot For Around 220,000 People

‣ The Guaranteed Income Pilot Program Act Has Been Reintroduced in Congress

‣ The Citizens of Hamburg, Germany Voted Against a Basic Income Pilot

‣ Results Published From 2-Year $1,000/mo Pilot in Baltimore For Young Parents

‣ Gen X May Be the First to Need Universal Basic Income After Late-Career Job Loss

UBI Article of the Month

Writing for TIME, one of our own donors, Scott Ellis, wrote an article this month titled, “I’m a Millionaire. No One Needs More than $30 Million.” He argues we should define “enough” as $30 million in wealth, and tax wealth above that at 50% to convert idle fortunes into broad-based security via universal basic income.

Scott believes that above $30 million, wealth ceases to be consumption and becomes anti-competitive power, amplified by buy-borrow-die tax avoidance. Only about 225,000 Americans even clear $30M (~0.07%), while a third can’t cover a $500 emergency—evidence of a market starved of broad purchasing power. His proposed fix is a 50% annual tax only on wealth above $30M, paired with UBI. It’s IQ-raising bandwidth restoration and risk-taking fuel: cash stability improves cognition and participation; extreme concentration suppresses both. With AI threatening mass job displacement, channeling idle balance-sheet gains into a permanent income floor is the cleanest way to keep capitalism pro-innovation and pro-freedom rather than winner-take-most. Give it a read!

ITSA News Update:

Last month I shared with you all that I’d seen the first episode (of a projected 16-ep structure) of the Bootstraps docuseries that had been submitted to Sundance. Well, I’ve now seen the first two episodes, which have not only been submitted to Sundance, but also to SXSW too. Here’s hoping that next month I’ll be able to share with you that at least one of these esteemed film festivals accepted it. I can’t wait for you all to see these episodes for yourselves after a full decade of passion work poured into them.

Our plan is for 100+ screening events across the country next year and to accomplish that ambitious goal, we’re going to need your help. Please consider a one-time or monthly donation to help us hit our fundraising goal of $688k for the impact campaign.

South Korea launches huge 2-year rural UBI pilot for around 220,000 people [link]

• Seven counties in South Korea have been selected as the locations for a huge 2-year experiment that will provide basic income to all residents starting in 2026

• The amount provided will be 150,000 won a month, which is equivalent in purchasing power to about $180/mo in the US

• What will be distributed is not cash, but “local love gift certificates”, which are basically vouchers that only buy local goods and services

The Guaranteed Income Pilot Program Act Has Been Reintroduced in Congress [link]

• If passed into law, H.R. 119 would provide cash equivalent to the fair market rent of a 2-bdr home in whichever ZIP code they live to 10,000 Americans for 3 years

• Recipients would need to be between the ages of 18 and 65 and the cost of the pilot is estimated to be $495 million

• The bill’s sponsor is New Jersey’s Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman. Co-sponsors are: LaMonica McIver (NJ-10), Rashida Tlaib (MI-12), Danny K. Davis (IL-07), Eleanor Holmes Norton (DC), Jan Schakowsky (IL-09), Sara Jacobs (CA-51), Henry “Hank” Johnson (GA-04), Kevin Mullin (CA-15), and Ritchie Torres (NY-15)

The Citizens of Hamburg, Germany Voted Against a Basic Income Pilot [link]

• Hamburg, Germany voted on a referendum for a basic income pilot, to which 62.6% voted NO and 37.4% voted YES. Turnout was 43.7% of voters.

• If passed, the experiment would have provided 1,346 euros per month to 2,000 city residents for 3 years.

Results Published From 2-Year $1,000/mo Pilot in Baltimore For Young Parents [link]

• A guaranteed income pilot in Baltimore, MD provided $1,000 a month for 2 years to 130 young parents between the ages of 18 and 24

• Participants were more likely to report doing either paid or unpaid work than control group participants, and a higher percentage of participants had income from employment compared to the control group

• Participants reported lower rates of stress than the control group and were also 15 percentage points more likely to say they felt they mattered more to people around them

Gen X May Be the First to Need Universal Basic Income After Late-Career Job Loss [link]

• A new book summarizes interviews with 62 baby boomers who lost their white-collar jobs during the 2008 Financial Crisis and Great Recession and considers them in the context of potential job disruption by AI

• Those with pensions had soft landings and those without experienced “hard falls” due to being too young to retire but too old to start over

• Key quote: “A larger proportion of Gen X are susceptible to hard falls than their predecessors. This demands a structural solution and a universal basic income might be the answer.”

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Scott Santens

Founder & CEO, ITSA Foundation