Right, but that's the double edged sword isn't it? If you pay them to do nothing, they have nothing to do. If my income is going to subsidize that, then they'd better literally do nothing as if doing nothing is their full-time job. Like: Don't start a podcast, don't get into politics, don't whine about people who choose to work and earn more than the UBI. Don't have children and don't usurp credit. Just take your check for doing nothing, play your video games and watch your movies, thank you.
I don't think it would be fair fo make living on a UBI as comfortable as the lowest minimum wage job people are actually working at. Not fair to the people who work at whatever they can find.
The premise of an actual UBI is that it's universal, i.e. unconditional. If the UBI is $12,000/year then everybody gets $12,000 a year. If you don't have a job then you get $12,000. If you have a job that pays $10,000/year then you get $12,000 plus that $10,000. If you have a job that pays $100,000/year then you get $12,000 plus that $100,000.
Of course, you also pay taxes out of whatever you make, so the person who makes $100,000 might be paying $30,000 in taxes and then they're effectively paying $18,000 rather than receiving $12,000. But that's fine and is actually want you want, because it produces a progressive rate curve even when everyone is paying the same marginal tax rate. Right now we put irrationally high marginal rates on lower and middle income people in the form of benefits phase outs. With a UBI they get the benefits as cash and experience the phase outs as paying taxes at the same (rather than a higher) marginal rate as higher income people.
You don't want people doing nothing. You want them to have the incentive to take productive employment when it's available. Taking away the money you give them because they take a job is exactly what you don't want, which is crazy.
I mean, but, if everyone gets $12k, then doesn't $12k mean nothing? If I'm buying a car or a house, and the guy I'm bidding against is getting a $12k check, and so did I, then he ups his offer and I match it so doesn't the price just jump by the same $12k? After a year or two, won't the cost of living just go up so that the UBI no longer covers basic necessities? And isn't that just inflation... instead of printing money, injecting it into a different part of the cycle?
I know it's considered "regressive" but if we're going to pay for that I think it shouldn't come out of income tax, it should be sales tax. Specifically zero tax on basic necessities and an escalating sales tax on anything optional or luxury. A gluttony consumption tax, if you will. Want to spend your $12k on Nikes? You're only gonna get $3k of shoes for it. Make $300k a year and live on rice and beans? Keep your money. Want to buy a boat? 20% of that goes to pay for the UBI.
[edit] on the other hand, what I just wrote is probably also a prescription for destroying the world's most successful and productive economies, and the companies that fuel them. But taking a UBI out of income tax is a great way to make more people not want to work. And if Nikes get way too expensive, who knows how that could distort the economy. Maybe it would be better if the government just made some basic rules about minimum wages and work hours and let people fight it out for a buck like they do now. idk.
> If I'm buying a car or a house, and the guy I'm bidding against is getting a $12k check, and so did I, then he ups his offer and I match it so doesn't the price just jump by the same $12k?
Only if something is preventing the market from responding to higher demand by building more cars or housing units rather than raising the unit price. And if that's happening then you're screwed independent of this, because anything that causes ordinary people to have more money would do the same thing. If energy costs went down then people would have the money they didn't spend on electricity and that would cause housing costs to increase.
This is why restrictive zoning rules are very bad.
> I know it's considered "regressive" but if we're going to pay for that I think it shouldn't come out of income tax, it should be sales tax.
Sales tax is considered regressive for two reasons. One, it's a flat rate, but that's the thing we want in this case because we're using it as the de facto phase out for the UBI. Two, rich people don't spend as much of their income. But that one has always been a giant fraud because it's really income tax that allows the rich to defer taxes (via unrealized capital gains), and when they do that they don't even pay taxes on the money they spend, since they can borrow against the assets and spend on credit.
So using a consumption tax actually works perfectly well in this case and is even more progressive than the status quo where the rich can avoid taxes entirely.