Universal Basic Income

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Then let's imagine everyone is content with living on UBI alone. UBI is financed from taxes. But to give UBI to everyone you need to tax everyone UBI+maintanience cost.

Considering these scientific findings concerning UBI and incentive to work:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/22 ... ell-being/

- which basically says that UBI INCREASE people's incentive to work, rather than decreasing it as have the main argument been against UBI, would you favor introduction of UBI in your own country providing UBI will be constructed like this?

* Any citizen with permanent residence in your country, above the age of 18 - are entitled to UBI.
* The UBI system consists of Basic, Basic+ and Basic-Pension.
* UBI Basic will be 3/4 of the average minimum wage. It will be taxed according to the lowest income tax.
* UBI Basic will reduced with a maximum of 30 % for every additional income. Ways to reduce this percentage is to work for additional income. The more hours you work, the less your UBI Basic reduction will be.
* When you reach the average middle-income, UBI Basic is 0 - but after taxes have been paid, you're still getting more money with UBI at 0, than with the highest UBI - UBI-Pension.

Levels of UBI:

* UBI Basic is given to any citizen above the age of 18 with permanent residence in your country. It is at 3/4 the average minimum wage at max. Even when it is 0 (when you get nothing paid from UBI), you're still entitled to the UBI and it will automatically increase once your total income is below the average middle-income.

* UBI Basic+ is additional UBI which makes the max UBI equal the minimum wage or just above it. It is given to anyone who - for temporary illness (physical or mental) have a reduced work capacity. It will be given when a state-approved doctor approves of it. They should also re-assess whether one is still eligible for the Basic+. Recipients of Basic+ are allowed to work what they can. It will be individual assessments whether one is still eligible for UBI Basic+. Failing to report any embetterment of their condition, is considered social fraud and is dealt with according to the law.

* UBI-Pension is additional UBI which makes the max UBI equal to just below or equal to the average middle-income.
It is given to those who have documented chronical illness/disability (physical or mental) in such a way that they cannot work full time (thus never be able to get another income instead of UBI altogether). They are still able to work whatever they are capable of.

UBI-Pension is a one-time assessment only. No re-assessments are neccessary, though if a recipient is miracously cured, they get back to UBI Basic.

After the age of 60, UBI Pension can never be reduced to either Basic+ or Basic.
After the age of 70, everyone get UBI Pension - no matter what.

* Common to both UBI Pension and UBI Basic+ is that these are additional UBI's on top of the Basic. The Basic version is still subject to change, if you get additional income. You cannot get both Basic+ and Pension simultanously though.

Basic, Basic+ and Pension all increase according to the average development on wages, inflation etc.

Then let's imagine the moon collides with the Earth.
It's a unlikely as everyone would be content with living on UBI alone.

I've provided a link to the New Scientist article concerning the incentive to work. It turns out that UBI increase employment, instead of decreasing it.

From your post:

People on UBI worked on average 78 days a year compared to people on unemployment benefits who worked on average 72 days a year.
Now, the question: how many days a year works an average person receiving neither ubi nor unemployment benefits? In full employment, there are about 260 working days a year.

The control group were unemployment benefits recipients, not the society as a whole.
The study says, ubi recipients work slightly more than the regular unemployed people but less than 1/3 of how much fully employed people work.

This could have several causes, the main one could be that people who would generally accept UBI only/less-to-no-work rather than be fully employed, could be due to illness. People on unemployment benefits are typically recipients of such benefits because they are too sick to work, but not ill enough to get disability benefits or similar.

Also, I'm not sure if they only handed out UBI to those who already got unemployment benefits or whether people who were fully employed could also get the UBI. Either way, illness and disabilities - especially autism-related issues - could well explain these differences.

This system defeats the original concept of UBI being universal - it's just another social security system, with unconditional unemployment benefits, instead of conditional.
UBI-plus and UBI-pension for the chronically ill need the same systematic evaluations as existing sick/disability benefits, they are just different names for very similar procedures.
The bureaucracy of the process won't be reduced, unless consolidation of the benefits in a given country would be needed anyway. Smoother transitions from living on social benefits to living on one's own income may indeed be less stressful for the involved citizens.

if we taxed wall st. transactions, there'd be plenty of money for this and other people-benefiting programs. but the wealthy just take and take and take some more, and refuse to ever give back a penny despite being the overwhelming recipients of societal largesse. our selfishness is killing us in slow motion in a form of "tragedy of the commons."

And what is the elasticity of UBI? If it is a supply and demand situation.

First, you are talking about "econs," theoretical people in only one discipline of economics. The econ, just like the rational agent, has pretty much been disproven. The are intrinsic values to work. In fact, there is a great deal of work done through a society that is unpaid. Naturally, industries that need to survive by having a disavantaged class that needs to work out of necessity would be worried about UBI because they would not have a workforce they can exploit. And since many of those industries are moving to more automation, UBI is going to be needed sooner than later.

As far as moving to take advantage of welfare and public services, the only group that seems to do that are upper middle class. In the US, poor people don't actually move to neighboring States to take advantage of better public welfare. That is really a stereotype with no foundation in reality. Taxes don't drive migration. California is a classic example as on of the most taxed States that has not seen any significant migration.

UBI would be a public good. Generally, public goods are financed by taxes. Also, you know that there is more than just personal income tax that supports public programs. Certainly, as far as administrative cost, UBI is far more efficient than say unemployment, health, and disability payments as you have a far simpler mechanism.

My point is, in whatever system, physical or financial, you can't sustainably get more out of it than someone puts into it.
Money is just a medium, availability and distribution of goods are the real questions and my opinion is, providing goods - education, healthcare, public transport, etc. - universally, not just "for the poor", so there is more pressure for quality - should take precedence over handing ready money.

The system described in the OP is not the original UBI, it's rather a consolidation and partial simplification of social, unemployment and disability benefits.

don't know how you guys are doing with work and paying taxes, but let's say everything is terrible.

^^^you can say that again, Alan and btw, welcome to WP

As more and more jobs become automated or shipped overseas, UBI may be necessary to keep society afloat.

You can't keep eliminating jobs and suppressing wages in an economy that depends on an individual's ability to consume...

My own opinion is: before universal basic income, I'd prefer first things like universal healthcare, education, public transport, maybe even universal basic housing and food. Otherwise, it's easy to suck the UBI out of the disadvantaged groups and keep them disadvantaged.

My concern is that unless the Universal Basic Income is kept basic, there will be more money than goods to buy.