UBI Works

Overview

UBI Works is a Toronto-based Canadian nonprofit that campaigns for basic income, launched publicly in August 2019 with the stated aim of telling "the economic and human stories behind basic income" and, in its current self-description, of making basic income "an election-winning issue."[1][2] It was founded by technology entrepreneur Floyd Marinescu (CEO of C4Media), who — per his UBI Works bio — had earlier organized, with Tehama CEO Paul Vallée, an October 2018 letter of 120 Canadian CEOs endorsing basic income; the organization now claims over 180 CEO and business-leader signatories.[3][2] These membership and endorsement figures are the organization's own self-descriptions and have not been independently audited for this page.

UBI Works is an advocacy organization, and its economic claims (e.g., that a national guaranteed income could grow Canada's economy by $80 billion/year and create 600,000 jobs) are its own campaign framings of commissioned and third-party research, not independently adjudicated findings; per this wiki's source-quality hierarchy they should be read the same way as Common Wealth Canada's advocacy-stage estimates.[2]

Relevance to Georgist Economics

Although UBI Works is a basic-income organization rather than a Georgist one, it distinguishes guaranteed basic income (poverty alleviation) from "UBI dividends to share common wealth" — the citizen's dividend framing — and it is the direct organizational predecessor of Canada's most active land-rent research group:[2]

• Commissioned common-assets research. In 2021 UBI Works issued a request for research proposals, "Calculating the Value of Common Assets and Associated Economic Rents in Canada," to quantify the value of Canada's common assets and their rents.[4] The eventual product of that agenda, Natural Common Wealth and Economic Rent in Canada (2023), was published by Common Wealth Canada — an organization created by the same team, and the January 2023 working paper still directed feedback to a ubiworks.ca address.[5]
• "Canada Land Value Time Series (1990–2022)". The Natural Common Wealth paper's land-rent method rests on the average 8.32%/year growth in Canadian land values since 1990; its footnote 62 sources that calculation to a "UBI Works Analysis … Canada Land Value Time Series (1990-2022)," a spreadsheet analysis of Statistics Canada's National Balance Sheet land data.[5]
• Team continuity. UBI Works' team page lists Ben Earle (General Manager), Liam Wilkinson (Public Relations), Ken Yang (Media & Content), and Floyd Marinescu (Founder) — the same four people bylined as authors of the Natural Common Wealth paper.[3][5] Common Wealth Canada describes itself as founded by the UBI Works team to make the shared-wealth "pre-distribution" case separately from poverty-focused basic-income arguments.[6]

See Also

• Common Wealth Canada — the successor research organization
• Floyd Marinescu
• Natural Common Wealth and Economic Rent in Canada
• Citizen's Dividend

Sources

1. CNW/Newswire press release, "UBI Works Announces New Initiative to Highlight Economic Case for Universal Basic Income in Canada," August 29, 2019. newswire.ca — used for the launch date and founding purpose.
2. UBI Works — official site. ubiworks.ca — used for the mission statement, the GBI-vs-UBI-dividend framing, the 180+ CEO letter claim, and the organization's economic-impact campaign claims (all self-descriptions; fetched directly this session).
3. UBI Works, "Our Story" (team page) and Floyd Marinescu bio. ubiworks.ca/our-story · ubiworks.ca/team/floyd-marinescu — used for founder attribution, the 2018 CEO-letter account, and team roles (fetched directly this session).
4. University of Guelph Research Alerts, "Universal Basic Income (UBI) Works — Request for Proposals, 2021: Calculating the Value of Common Assets and Associated Economic Rents in Canada." uoguelph.ca — used as independent corroboration that UBI Works sponsored the common-assets research program.
5. Common Wealth Canada, Natural Common Wealth and Economic Rent in Canada (Jan 2023 v.3). PDF — used for the [email protected] feedback address, the four-author byline, and fn 62's "UBI Works Analysis … Canada Land Value Time Series (1990-2022)" (spreadsheet linked from the PDF: docs.google.com); all verified verbatim against the PDF.
6. Common Wealth Canada, "Basic Income alleviates poverty. Common Wealth proposes a better way to share and preserve Earth's riches." commonwealth.ca/basicincome — used for the successor organization's account of the split in messaging.