Solidarity among people is the essential idea behind the alternative resource distribution model here described: the Unconditional Basic Income of All for All, or ‘UBI-AA’.

UBI-AA is a revenue redistribution process: based on solidarity, unconditional, automatic and sustained by common people. It is a redistribution process because it promotes income transfer among people. It is based on solidarity because it yields transfers from those who have more to those who have less, bonding everyone into a mutual support network in the present and for the future. It is unconditional because it does not require any conditions, that is, it does not demand anyone to accept job offers or professional training, require incapacity proof or means-test, or generally make anyone do anything for it. It is automatic because it works in a completely predictable and pre-established way, being therefore impervious to sectorial or contextual interests. It benefits and is sustained by common people, because the money being redistributed comes from them exclusively. UBI-AA does not involve Money transfers from people to the State – through taxes – or from the State to the people – through subsidies or other social benefits as Social Security. It only involves transfers from common people to common people, in a process belonging to them and only benefiting them.

In order to function, this unconditional solidarity just needs a group of people who wants to built and maintain it. It does not matter if it is a small group or the entire population of a country, or if the people in it know each other, or even if these are geographically close or far from each other: the UBI-AA applies to any case.

This group formed, or the “UBI-AA community”, then it is created – over the format more appropriate given the community size and specific characteristics – a “common fund”, and the UBI-AA can immediately be set in motion.

At its core, the process is simple. It works in monthly cycles, each one containing two steps:

1) As it is acquired, each member of the community discounts to the common Fund a proportion of their income, at a single and universal rate;

2) At the end of each month, the Fund’s accumulated total is equally and unconditionally distributed among all members of the same community.

This simple process, which demands the same effort from all participants while offering them the same benefit, treats everyone equally. It turns those who, at each moment in time, have above-average incomes into net payers to the common Fund, and those who have below-average incomes into net receivers. Thus, the process operates a joint distribution among participants of part of their individual incomes. In addition to reducing inequalities, this solidarity among peers creates an unconditional guarantee of income for all, that is, an Unconditional Basic Income.

It follows from the UBI-AA process that the loss of available income by some will be the gain of others. Importantly, for the scheme to be accepted by the former and really useful to the latter, the losses involved should be moderate and the gains significant. To achieve its intended effects, the implementation of the UBI-AA should be accompanied by the release of its participants from the burden of personal income tax (in Portugal, “IRS”). Such tax relief will compensate them for the contributory effort required by the UBI-AA process. However, for those above a certain level of income, such compensation may turn out to be only partial. Once the personal income tax is abolished, the moderation of losses for citizens with above-average incomes and, simultaneously, the material significance of gains to those with under-average incomes, will be possible if the rate of contributions to the common Fund is set at an optimal level (in continental Portugal, for instance, as in all fiscal jurisdictions with equivalent tax policies, this rate’s optimum level will approximate 50%), balancing the two outcomes.

Aditionally, in order for UBI-AA to produce its full output, as a garantee, not only of survival means, but also of unconditional freedom, each one of its participants should always consider situations of income as ‘winners’ or ‘losers’ as circumstantial and dynamic in time. Hence, UBI-AA must be framed by a set of rules – written onto public domain law, or in any other simpler fashion, internally agreed among corresponding communities, according to their sizes and properties – that assure continuity of the process in time, guaranteeing for its participants not only material safety in the present, but also, and mainly, into the future, hence real freedom for all endeavors, life changes and its different economic circumstances.

UBI-AA differs from most current traditional redistributive processes because it is unconditional. It also differs from most unconditional alternative processes since it is a construct of common citizens, instead of a government, a central bank or any other ‘power’ policy. We see it as a humane alternative to organizing the economy on its distributive side. Operating through the income distribution process described above, it will favor the rehabilitation of values such as solidarity and voluntary cooperation among people, and the creation of an unconditional guarantee of income for all will be a corollary.

We cherish the hope that this may contribute to the flourishing of a new and less materialistic culture. Who knows, if making everybody’s access to essential material resources as simple as breathing, will not end up instilling in people the same attitude towards those resources – money and the things it buys – as the one we have towards the air we breathe: no matter how valuable it may be to us, we do not quarrel with each other for it; we only use it in the quantities we need; accumulating it does not even occur to us.

Such a cultural shift would certainly be a great human civilizational progress and a much-needed step towards a reconciliation between us and our environment.

Translated to English by André Coelho.