Crowdfunding for the Unconditional Basic Income experiment in Rheinau/ZH

A majority of residents in Rheinau have agreed to an experiment with an “unconditional basic income”, which will last a year and is intended to be the subject of a documentary film to be directed by the writer-director Rebecca Panian. The team around the director which is behind the pilot study prefers not to be dependent on either the taxpayer or private sponsors. Thus everyone is invited to support the project financially [1].

Over six million francs need to be collected by 4 December 2018! Why so much? The sum is based on the total needed for a basic income for a year for the 770 participants. The payments would be made at the beginning of each month, as would be the case in real life. The organizing team works on a volunteer basis and is not included in the budget. If any money is left over at the end of the experiment, a poll will be conducted among the contributors to decide democratically how the remaining amount should be used.

The parameters of the pilot study are as follows *:

• Adults of 25 and over will receive a UBI of Fr. 2,500. If their monthly income is above this amount, they will not receive the UBI. If their income is lower, they will be able to keep the difference between their income and the UBI but have to return the balance to the commune.
• Young people between 23 and 25 will be treated in the same way but with a UBI of Fr. 1,875.
• Young people between 18 and 23 will receive a UBI of Fr. 1,250 a month on condition that they are in vocational training or studying. Any student grant will be deducted from the UBI. If they are neither in vocational training nor higher education they will receive only the children’s allowance of Fr. 200.
• Children will receive a UBI of Fr. 650 even if their parents have an income of over Fr. 2,500 per month, but the amount of the children’s allowance will be deducted from this total.

* More information is available on the website of the experiment [2] (DE)

Note that a UBI as we understand it, unlike that which is defined by the parameters of the pilot study, is unconditional (cf. the “U” in “UBI”) and carries no requirements in return. Its amount is similar to that in the study, including a children’s income which is 25% of an adult’s. Its implementation is supposed to avoid a clawback of the first part of any other income, so as to eliminate a possible threshhold effect.

Crowdfunding page [1] (wemakeit.com)

Donations to the «Dorf testet Zukunft» project may be deducted from taxable income.