UBI is cannot be truly universal: you have to pay for it, which is sort of what I mean by saying it is means-tested isn't too far from the truth. Those who pay

UBI is cannot be truly universal: you have to pay for it, which is sort of what I mean by saying it is means-tested isn't too far from the truth. Those who pay "into" UBI more than what they receive from it are "failing" the means-test here; those who get more UBI than they pay into it in taxes are "passing" the means test. (Now, obviously, taxes are kind of a grab-bag: it is hard to see, directly, how much of your tax dollars go to any one particular appropriation. But the point stands, and I think an easy approximation would be taxes paid * (UBI paid out / total appropriations) or so.) UBI is essentially equivalent to having a negative tax bracket, and that bracket would only apply to some people. Necessarily to compensate for that bracket, some or all of the upper brackets must go up, in order to fund the lower bracket. I.e., if the government writes everybody a $10k check, but due to doing that I now owe $15k more in tax obligations each year … I've not in any material way received UBI, even if there's a $10k check in my account. Like, if you just wrote everyone a $10k check per year the resulting national debt alone would be absurd…? How would that work?