3 ms·

Then you're not talking about a UBI, you're talking about a negative income tax[0], which IMO is a lot saner than a UBI. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nega

• dragonwriter 9y ago
  A UBI alongside a progressive income tax is identical to a negative income tax, assuming that the negative income tax is truly progressive (that is, the marginal tax rate is monotonically increasing over the entire income range; I only add this caveat because I've seen NIT proposals where the marginal rate was higher in the range where the total rate was negative, then dropped down, and was progressive beyond that point.) That is, with any such NIT, you can add a fixed amount to the tax laibility so that the amount is never negative, and add a UBI of equal amount, and get exactly the same net results, and with a UBI you can subtract the UBI amount from everyone's tax liability, delete the separate UBI, and have an NIT with the exact same net financial effect. They are basically interchangeable. Administratively, they are different, in that the UBI payments are effectively an advance against the potentially negative income tax that those above the point with 0% marginal tax have to pay some or all of back at tax time. But that's the only difference.