The inflation argument is one I don't know enough to be able to square myself. Don't fully understand how whatever the UBI is eventually reduces to being below the bare minimum of basic.

But, putting that part aside, the idea is that it's just the barest of basics. So if you have a decent salary now, the UBI that is 1/5th or less than that is not gonna help you pay your rent/mortgage that has gone from 30% of your salary to 150% of your UBI. People could likely realign their life though over time which would be massively impactful. Perhaps some would prefer having their basic needs met + working a very part amount of time for some spending money + engaging in a different core life pursuit. But, with that part taking time the market could presumably correct.

That's just for high earners though who can't currently just drop out / transition overnight due to present obligations. The folks who are closer to where a UBI would be putting them anyway it gets way more difficult. A negative income tax might work there, so that keeping the job is still more regardless of what that currently salary is. That flat UBI tends to have some problems in that regard. Then again, those same folks might be over night doubling their take home cash or being able to have no change in cash for a complete reduction in work and the temptation to just go to zero hours would be high (assuming they aren't in financial pain already where the current amount is still not enough). A flat UBI would probably need to be slowly rolled out. Basically get folks used to being more well off so that the flat UBI only can be appropriately viewed as less ideal than their (new) current situation.

Why would it need price-fixing? We basically provided a UBI of 5k as part of the pandemic and it seems to have worked relatively well.

If a position is critical enough it should probably be a higher paid position.

Inflation and the national debt are way up. It might feel nice to have an extra $5K today but we increased the burden on our descendants and have nothing of lasting value to show for it. Shame on us.

No one is going to raise wages for a particular position just because it was arbitrarily classified as "critical".

The benefit of a market economy is that if people really do consider something critical, they will pay more for it.

The increase profit margins will attract competitive companies or existing companies will be forced to pay workers more for overtime to satisfy the demand.

The negative of this is that the poor or unemployed have very few dollars with which to vote. A UBI solves this by giving them at least some small percentage of the vote.