It's Time to Walk the Walk for Universal Basic Income (UBI)

This post is not meant to change anyone's mind about the need for Universal Basic Income. If you don't support it, I'm not here today to convince you otherwise. This post is meant for all those who already know they, and everybody else, absolutely need UBI and who talk about it with others. That's great, we need that, and thank you, but this post is about doing more than talking the talk.

The day that UBI is passed into law, most people will very likely pay more in taxes in some way, be it higher income tax rates, or higher consumption tax rates, or some other tax of some kind like a wealth tax or land value tax. It's not theoretically necessary to tax more for UBI, but realistically speaking, it's likely in order to help manage inflationary potential and inequality. On the flip side, the UBI itself will function as a reverse tax, such that most people will actually end up with an overall decrease in total taxes paid. Understanding both sides of this equation is key to understanding how UBI works and even how much it actually costs, but it’s also an invitation to just start doing it here and now.

Here’s what I mean: let’s say you support starting with a $500/mo universal basic income. A plan exists for that. It could be done with a 9% universal surtax on income (or 7% with reforms like halving the military budget). If your current income is $75,000, you’d pay $6,750 more to get $6,000 in UBI, in which case you’d pay $750 more in taxes. That’s $62.50 a month. If you start donating that now every month in support of UBI, and stop when your UBI starts, you can experience no tax hike at all. That’s what I’m doing, but for a different UBI plan.

We talk about this regularly on The Basic Income Show, but for those who don’t know, my non-profit, the Income To Support All Foundation, is supporting the development of a platform that will create a basic income floor for all members, based on an automated 7% fee on bank deposits. The platform is called Comingle and the target for the basic income floor will be around $50 a week.

The success of Comingle will depend entirely on people choosing to become net donors, just as GoFundMe depends entirely on people choosing to be donors. The Comingle mechanism will distribute income based on income. If the average income of the Comingle community is $40,000 then 7% of that is $53.85 a week. Someone with $40,000 income would essentially pay nothing and get nothing because what they pay and get would cancel each other out. Those with slightly higher incomes would donate a tiny amount to the community and those with slightly smaller incomes would receive a tiny amount. Someone without any income would receive the full $53.85 a week, and someone with an income of $150,000 would donate $201.92 - $53.85 = $148 a week.

I personally am very excited about Comingle existing as an option for automated giving via UBI. As a supporter of UBI, I am more than happy to donate towards UBI on a monthly basis in the here and now, in support of UBI, just as I would happily pay more taxes as a result of UBI. I am no hypocrite. If I support higher taxes for UBI in the future, I support reducing my disposable income in the future to achieve UBI. And if I support that in the future, I support it now.

This is why since early 2025 I’ve been donating 4% of my monthly income to ITSA Foundation in support of getting Comingle up and running, and also why I intend to be an active member of Comingle as a net donor to the community when it’s up and running, where 4% of my income will then go towards creating the basic income floor for the entire community universally.

I encourage everyone reading this who is a supporter of UBI, who has an income higher than $3,000 a month, to join me as a monthly donor in the here and now. Donate monthly to help make UBI a reality, in a way that aligns with what your net tax increase could likely be due to a UBI. And when Comingle is open to everyone to join, please join me in being a net donor. Help make that UBI work.

It won’t work without you. We can build a basic income floor right now, without any need to wait on the government to get around to doing it. It will only require enough people like you deciding to donate a small percentage of your income toward UBI. And then, when UBI exists for real, you can choose to stop doing that, knowing that the government is now doing it for you. Or you can keep doing it, knowing that you’re still helping give people a little extra boost.

Either way, help make UBI happen by doing more than talking about it. If you support UBI, then set aside some of your income to help make it happen. The UBI movement needs resources. It’s not going to just happen. It needs enough of you who want it to happen, to actually put money into it. Because believe me when I say, the billionaires who oppose UBI are most definitely putting money into stopping it from happening. Don’t let them win this fight.

Our problems today are diverse, large, and growing larger. Extreme inequality is driving a cost of living crisis that tariffs are now only adding to. The impacts of AI are arriving, reducing hiring and eating entry-level jobs. The climate crisis is creating climate disasters that are destroying entire communities. All of this is only further inflaming authoritarianism, not just here in the US but around the world. An unconditional universal basic income would significantly help with all of this. It just can't wait any longer. We need a universal floor underneath us that we can depend upon. We need to start constructing that floor. Immediately.

Donating to ITSA Foundation is how to start building that floor and walking the walk for UBI. We are supporting ambitious UBI projects like Comingle, and the Bootstraps docuseries, and UBIdata, and events all across the country next year. You have other options too, no matter where you live, all over the world, there's an organization near you putting resources into helping to make UBI happen. How you choose to financially support the UBI movement is up to you, but please, if you support UBI, walk the walk.

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Special thanks to my monthly supporters on Patreon: Gisele Huff, dorothy krahn, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Bob Weishaar, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Tricia Garrett, Katie Moussouris, A.W.R., Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, John Steinberger, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Joanna Zarach, Mgmguy, Albert Wenger, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Steve Roth, Miki Phagan, Walter Schaerer, Elizabeth Corker, Albert Daniel Brockman, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Arjun Banker, Tommy Caruso, @Justin_Dart, Felix Ling, S, Jocelyn Hockings, Mark Donovan, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, Juro Antal, centuryfalcon64, Deanna McHugh, Stephen Castro-Starkey, and all my other patrons for their support.