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Comment by gcorneu | Hacker News Reader

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the concept of universal basic income based on the idea that everyone who is a citizen, regardless of earnings/wealth/background, gets a set amount of money? Rather than the scaling mechanism based on earnings as stated in this article.

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You are correct. The article is flatly wrong when it suggests that people would lose the UBI as they start making money elsewhere. It is not global unemployment insurance.

Yes, the article is flatly wrong. It's conflating this situation:

    +100k earnings
    +0 UBI
    ------
    +100k

with this mathematically equivalent situation:

    +100k earnings
    +20k UBI
    -20k taxes
    ------
    +100k

There are certainly UBI proposals in which at some point UBI does scale back. I don't see a good reason why it scaling back would disqualify it from being a UBI, and I certainly see little likeness to unemployment insurance.

I guess the justification for not scaling it back would be that it makes it more palatable for the people paying for it. If someone received $10,000 in UBI and payed $10,000 in tax it would be neutral but their attitude to other recipients might be different.

If every citizen gets a check for $30,000 every year, where does the money come from?

If you make more than the basic income, at some point you have to go from getting a check to writing a check.

There are several suggested implementations of UBI, one of which is based on negative income tax. In that case, the amount of money you get from the government is based on how much money you make.

"Scaling mechanism" is based on progressive and/or implicit taxation for financing basic income, not on the amount to be received.

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