Most major UBI proposals are less than existing welfare. The funniest part to me is how many include sales taxes to help pay for it. (Most US focused UBI proposals are merely negative income taxes because there's few other methods it could work.)
This is one of those stories Mandark always insisted I'm making up but I had a well-published political science professor not understand me when I tried to explain that sales taxes reduce welfare benefits by returning the money to the state. (The context was measuring relative benefits between states when one state had a 40% sales tax and another had a 5% one. I felt the slight difference between them disappeared when factoring in the massive sales tax anyone in the first state would pay that those in the second would not.) He's also not the only one I've run into who seem to think the wealthy pay sales taxes more when sales taxes only hit the middle and lower classes. (As an additional problem, the wealthy can also afford to import.)
This is one of those stories Mandark always insisted I'm making up but I had a well-published political science professor not understand me when I tried to explain that sales taxes reduce welfare benefits by returning the money to the state. (The context was measuring relative benefits between states when one state had a 40% sales tax and another had a 5% one. I felt the slight difference between them disappeared when factoring in the massive sales tax anyone in the first state would pay that those in the second would not.) He's also not the only one I've run into who seem to think the wealthy pay sales taxes more when sales taxes only hit the middle and lower classes. (As an additional problem, the wealthy can also afford to import.)
Spoiler: (click to show)