A weird nit pick, the GP commenter was just using an easy-to-conceptualize number. Let's use real numbers: In 2018, the household income quintiles were as foll

A weird nit pick, the GP commenter was just using an easy-to-conceptualize number. Let's use real numbers: In 2018, the household income quintiles were as follows[1]: Lowest quintile mean: $13,775 Second quintile mean: $37,923 Third quintile mean: $63,572 Fourth quintile mean: $101,570 Highest quintile mean: $233,895 There were about 159M employed persons in the US in the most recent high[2], about 50% of the US population. We want our UBI to cover everybody. To make this simple, because quintiles comprise an equally populated group of people, let's imagine that instead of there being ~32M people per quintile, that our nation has 10 people, where 5 people don't work, and each of the remaining 5 falls into one of the quintiles. If we wanted to define a UBI of $18,000 per person, we need to somehow come up with $18,000 * 10 == $180,000 to distribute to everyone equally. If we fund this progressively, each individual would have to pay: Unemployed #1: 0 Unemployed #2: 0 Unemployed #3: 0 Unemployed #4: 0 Unemployed #5: 0 Lowest: $8,000 Second: $12,000 Third: $18,000 Fourth: $33,000 Highest: $103,000 Total revenue: $180,000 Then consider that everyone here is receiving back 18,000 under the UBI. The highest quintile earner’s net take-home is, thus 233,895-103,000+18,000 == $148,895, which effectively renders their net tax rate approx 36%. If you run this breakdown across all quintiles: Lowest: $13,775 - $8,000 + $18,000 == $23,775 (effective tax -73%) Second: $37,923 - $12,000 + $18,000 == $43,923 (effective tax -16%) Third: $63,572 - $18,000 + $18,000 == $63,572 (effective tax 0%) Fourth: $101,570 - $33,000 + $18,000 == $86,570 (effective tax 15%) Highest: $233,895 - $103,000 + $18,000 == $148,895 (effective tax 36%) You'll notice that the median worker pays nothing, net-net. They pay about $1,500/month, and get back $1,500/mo. The bottom 2 will get back more than they pay. The top 2 pay a tax rate that’s comparable to today’s. The 5 unemployed persons all get $18,000, and because the lowest quintile still ends up with more than that after their taxes, there isn’t a disincentive to work. We can play with different levels of progressivity and generosity, but the idea is the same. We can scale up from single-person quintiles to million-person quintiles, but the percentages don't change. [1] https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/household-income-quintiles https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/household-income-... [2] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employed-persons https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employed-persons