To be sustainable, UBI has to be sub-poverty levels. Anything more than about $1500 is not monetarily feasible.
Not very many people are going to be happy living on $1500/month. Most people will keep working.
Not very many people are going to be happy living on $1500/month. Most people will keep working.
https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2025/msu-study-finds-number-of... (“We found that the percentage of nonparents who don’t want any children rose from 14% in 2002 to 29% in 2023,” said Jennifer Watling Neal, professor in MSU’s psychology department and co-author of the study. “During the same period, the percent of nonparents who plan to have children in the future fell from 79% to 59%.”)
https://www.axios.com/2024/07/25/adults-no-children-why-pew-... ("64% of young women say they just don't want children, compared to 50% of men.")
A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/06/28/a-record-...
The childfree are ungovernable - https://beneaththepavement.substack.com/p/the-childfree-are-...
(us specific, ymmv)
Then it's a simple exercise: how much can you increase taxes to pay for UBI? You can't increase taxes above 100%, so UBI has to be less than the average per-person income, and we still need to fund defence and other essentials, so it has to be significantly less.