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Generally, UBI schemes advocate some sort of drop-off in payout as people earn money outside of the program (but structured in such a way as to ensure no sticking points of greater than 100% effective marginal tax).

So in net you're not actually giving that $1k/month out to everyone, only the people who don't otherwise make anything. Then someone who makes $1k/month from other sources might pay $500/month in tax, thus reducing their effective, net UBI payment. (note, I made up these numbers completely off the top of my head)

Someone who makes much more than that would also pay much more taxes.

So in the end, UBI needs to be accompanied with some sort of tax reform, and isn't just about sending out checks to everyone (including Warren Buffet) on top of the existing system.

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> So in net you're not actually giving that $1k/month out to everyone, only the people who don't otherwise make anything

Wrong! Wrong wrong! That is BI, not UBI!

This is not just a technicality. The difference between these two is fundamental and massive. A BI scheme (where working means a deterioration of your passive check) ACTIVELY DISCOURAGES WORKING and should absolutely be fought against at every turn, as it paves a bad path for UBI adoption.

UBI - Universal basic income - argues for everyone receiving a baseline to cover fundamentals - shelter, food, clothing - and encouraging them to work to gain things beyond those fundamentals.

UBI should be reworked - for instance, subsidizing housing or food or using 'colored coins' or crypto tokens (or some other technology) to ensure the use on those resources is assured and economically sustainable - but BI is not a workable idea as it actually likely to result in the failure mode that people are quick to assume - a lazy populace - would be the end result of basic income efforts.

Or it's universal in that everyone gets $12k every year but it's taxed back as you earn more. Say, once you start making 75k we tax back $1000 of UBI. Then at $95k you tax back $2k. At $115k wetax back $3k.

Obviously a sliding scale along the way.

That means a person won't start getting the UBI "taken away" until they make 140% of the median household income.

Should mostly reduce the affect UBI has on working.

That's still BI.

There's a foundational difference between a world wherein everyone is considered equal for the basic human resources and those who earn more are effectively told that because they do they're an outgroup to that basic net.

Giving the Bill Gates $12k each is a drop in the bucket and absolutely shouldn't be trimmed away in the name of optimization. Those who believe in UBI as I do maintain a hard-line on this.

> Generally, UBI schemes advocate some sort of drop-off in payout as people earn money outside of the program

That's the first time I've heard of this. Everything I've seen, everybody gets the same check.

Problem with tracking based on income, you're right back to the same welfare system we already have. You'll need a bureaucracy to track income and eligibility, deal with fraud, etc.

Yes, everybody gets the same payments.

But some combination of 2 other things also happens, the tax regime changes (to fund the checks) or money is printed.

There's no avoiding it.

> There's no avoiding it.

I haven't seen the math. I imagine it depends highly on the amount you want to pay out, savings due to cutting away current programs, etc., but it's certainly a wonderful opportunity to redo our tax structure, which is unnecessarily complex.

If you don't have a bureaucracy that tracks income and fraud, you also don't have a tax system to pay for your UBI...

Income isn't the only thing that can be taxed.

Sales taxes, value-added taxes, property taxes, excise taxes, tariffs...

> So in the end, UBI needs to be accompanied with some sort of tax reform, and isn't just about sending out checks to everyone (including Warren Buffet) on top of the existing system.

Yes - and the tax reform, fundamentally, has to address the imbalance (colloquial 'income inequality') between the sectors that make money from money (tech, finance, law) and leech it away from people 'trapped' working within sectors that use money as their actual lifeblood (spending it on resources as much as they take in from their sales of goods or services).

Tire companies (or whatever) don't exactly create "cash hoards" quite like Apple - who have $250B just in their offshore fund (i.e. doing nothing for American citizens). The entire basis of this country is apparently this idea that jobs and taxes serve to make access to resources accessible to all; but taxes are written in the orders-of-magnitude wealthier realms that're all but blinded to what even a day in a poor slum looks like.