Comingle Crowdfund Success and Other Basic Income News

For anyone who missed my previous blog post, or doesn't follow me anywhere on social media (maybe because you care too much about your mental health), I've been in crowdfunding mode for the past month helping with the Indiegogo campaign for Comingle which is an app being developed with the goal of creating a small basic income floor right now through every member pledging the same percentage of their income into a pool each week that will be divided equally.

The goal was to crowdfund an all-or-nothing $75,000 in one month, and I'm proud to say that the goal was reached with a week left in the campaign. As I write this, with 32 hours to go, it's at 104% of its goal thanks to over 600 backers, potentially including you, dear reader, and if so, thank you for chipping in!

For anyone reading this who hasn't donated, we're still hoping to gain more backers before the timer runs out. Everyone who donates at least $1 can see their name immortalized on Comingle's Wall of Founding Members that will live on Comingle.us, so if that appeals to you, there's still time to make that happen.

As part of promoting Comingle, I've been hosting Spaces on the app formerly known as Twitter (X) with the co-founders of Comingle and various special guests. If you'd like to listen to any of them, I've embedded them below. The episodes explore the details of Comingle and basic income in general.

Space 1: We talked about Comingle and universal basic income.

Space 2: We had Andrew Yang as a guest and talked about Comingle and UBI. Andrew donated $5,000 during the Space!

Space 3: We had Sabrina Aviles as a guest. We talked about her film Raising the Floor about the guaranteed income program in Chelsea.

Space 4: We had Mark Donovan as a guest and talked about the Denver Basic Income Project focused on reducing homelessness.

Space 5: We had Leslie Kausch as a guest to talk about the impacts of unconditional basic income on mental health.

I'm going to continue hosting these Spaces each week going forward, where each week I'll go over some recent basic income news and discuss UBI from a different perspective with a guest focused on that perspective.

There's also been some preliminary results published recently from two different pilots that I want to make sure and highlight here as well.

Denver released the results of its first six months of $1,000 a month and $500 a month (+ $6500 up front). The key finding in my opinion is that no one in the $1,000 a month group reported still sleeping outside after six months.

Atlanta also released the results of its first six months of $850 a month.

Although both of the above reports are preliminary results, they both follow the typical pattern of basic income showing positive effects across a wide range of measures, including the one most people seem so concerned about - employment.

Stay tuned for even more reports showing similar results over and over again. How much evidence will ever be enough for lawmakers? I don't know, which is why I feel so strongly about seeing Comingle launched and operational as soon as possible.

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