IMO the universal part is the hard part and changes it drastically. Compared to a small limited trial of giving people money, where does it all come from when it's actually universal? And what are the effects on the overall economy when it's universal?
> recurring cash relief to low-income residents for 2 years
> Finland launched a program to give €560 ($616) a month to 2,000 unemployed citizens
> doled out monthly unconditional sums of $500 to 125 low-income participants for two years
My contention with UBI is that if you give cash to everybody, it ends up being largely a wealth transfer to the rent seekers in society who can just raise their prices because more cash is now chasing the same amount of supply.
Economically speaking, your ability to compete for the extra disposable income is the same as anyone else's, but that money originated in the taxed rent from the Land you control, and any elasticity in demand for your Land caused by the increase in cash running around is priced in - if more people need what you have, your taxes increase along with it.
What remains for you to profit from is what service or value you add above and beyond the market value of the underlying Land.
One form of UBI is essentially a negative income tax rate for people making below a certain line.
As more and more jobs get automated away, we will either become a society of wage slaves with a small upper class controlling trillions (wait a minute...) or we will distribute the benefits of an automated society to all people.
A lot of it is pretty hand-wavy and I'm not sure how legit it is. I'm posting it because they claim it won't cause taxes to increase for the majority of people. Instead, it comes from mainly corporate taxes and other sources.
Of course, it seems likely that this just passes on the cost to ordinary people in the form of increased costs for goods and services. As for inflationary effects, I'm not qualified to say.
Inflation.
> The amount of each payment is based upon a five-year average of the Permanent Fund's performance and varies widely depending on the stock market and many other factors.
> The lowest individual dividend payout was $331.29 in 1984 and the highest was $3,284 in 2022.
That's not what people are generally talking about with "basic income" - it's not anywhere near enough to meet basic needs, and it's not reliable due to the fluctuations.
It still isn't universal, merely suggestive.
So how far can we push it before something implodes?
Laws, price controls, 100% tax rates on profits over certain levels, government ownership of the means of production.
Devil's in the details for what exactly any of those things "should" be.