Introducing: The UBIcalculator!

Don’t Listen to the Pundits. Calculate Your Own UBI.

Hi there, fellow American.

I have a present for you. I made it all by myself.

Well, actually, I guess a lot of credit goes to the incredible team of software developers, economists, and supporters who I can never thank enough.

Its called UBIcalculator, and it has taken over a year to construct.

This is what UBIcalculator looks like.

UBIcalculator is a very simple yet powerful tool for understanding and communicating how various American basic income plans would likely pan out for…

1. Your bottom line: will your household gain or lose money at the end of the day?
2. The American public’s bottom line: How many people would be lifted above the poverty line, what percentage of Americans would gain income versus paying in, how it would be funded, and how much, if any, deficit spending would be utilized and why?

How to Use UBIcalculator

1. Enter your household income, family dynamic, and, if applicable, Social Security and government assistance (welfare and disability) income into the calculator.
2. Peruse the plan list to compare the headline numbers (how it affects your income, number of Americans who gain income, and deficit spending utilized). Sort by any of these factors to see which plan ranks highest in each category.
3. Click on any individual plan to learn more details about its effects, how it’s funded, and why the plan creator designed their basic income this way.
4. Play with the income scroll bar or change your household inputs at any time to see the numbers react in real time. Have fun!
5. If you want to display a widget of any specific plan on your website, there’s an embed code down at the bottom of each one that will let people use the calculator on your site!
6. Go as surface level or deep as you want. Are you just looking for the highest personal return for you and your family? That’s totally fine.
7. Now you have a great idea how UBI could impact you and America, and you have a handy tool you can share to avoid getting into those drawn out economics debates. You can just share the knowledge with a link and a smile ;)

What’s Next for UBIcalculator?

This is Version 1.0. It’s very powerful, but I want it to do so much more. Version 2.0 goals:

1. Include more UBI funding mechanism options (wealth tax, land value tax, corporate tax, etc.)
2. Launch Policy-Maker Mode: a platform allowing anyone to create and submit a UBI plan of their own (limited by specific “Do No Harm” principles that wouldn’t allow for anything draconian, irresponsible, or beyond the defensible scope of the calculator’s analysis to be proposed)
3. Create a database of plans with improved searching/sorting/upvoting mechanisms to allow the best and most popular plans and ideas to rise to the top.

Things to Keep in Mind

1. All calculations are, of course, estimates.
2. We strove to do all of the calculations as conservatively as possible, so the results you’re seeing are theoretically worst-case scenarios.
3. In order to retain maximum credibility, no plans get special treatment in any way.

Why I Made UBIcalculator

1. TRANSPARENCY: To cut through the BS. I’m sick of seeing pundits, politicians, and other people with various agendas both pro- or anti-UBI telling people what to believe. I want the American public to be able to know what’s real and possible directly from the mathematical source, with no spin or propaganda.
2. VIRALITY: I believe in the grassroots. For that, the public needs to be informed and empowered to act, so I made UBIcalculator as simple to use and shareable as possible.
3. UNITY: To help the UBI movement coalesce around the best plans and opportunities, to hold everybody (yes, even Andrew Yang) accountable and push them to improve their plans where possible, and to create an avenue for other candidates and political figures to quickly study and propose their own versions of UBI if they so choose.

I hope you enjoy!

www.UBIcalculator.com

Want to read more? Here’s a handy list of links to all my Medium pieces on basic income.