Income should not be thought of as something that there is a limited amount of that society must distribute between people. That's because both money and exchan

Income should not be thought of as something that there is a limited amount of that society must distribute between people. That's because both money and exchange of money are never limiting factors in an economy: we can just print more money or force people to exchange money with laws. But if we print more money, there will be inflation and the money will be worth less goods; and if we force people to exchange money, they will receive little or nothing in exchange. Thus, the limiting factor is production: we can have as much money as we want and make it change hands as much as we want, but we are limited in the amount of resources and work-hours. Those are what there is a limited amount of that society must distribute. Even if 20.2% of the income in the nation is received by 1% of people, much less than 20.2% of the production of goods and services is allocated to them. Inequality in allocation of goods and services is what we ought to care about, not inequality of income. The reason the 1% of people with highest income have so much passive income is that they invest a large part of their assets. When you invest money, you're not exchanging it for goods or services; rather, you're committing this capital in the hope of financial gain. If you invested wisely, you'll get more financial gain which you can use, hopefully as wisely, as further capital for other investments. So all of this passive income moving around has more to do with keeping the economy efficient than it has to do with living standards. If we actually captured "the 30% of [current] national income that flows passively to capital" and handed it out to everyone in equal chunks, and (somehow) there was no more passive income after this, the economy would be in big trouble: without passive income, there are no banks, no loans, and there's no funding for public corporations. But the intent of universal basic income is to give people a basic living standard; even though the basic income is a passive income, it is not the same kind of income as the passive income that comes from capital. The capital that the passive income comes from isn't exchanged for goods or services, so if you just capture it and give it to people, you're not going to be able to use it for goods or services (which is what we need to give people a basic living standard) without removing goods or services elsewhere. It's unlikely that the national income would remain the same if we did this, think about what would happen if we printed money and gave it to people as income. There would still be passive income from capital, but goods and services would be distributed in a more equal manner.