In the US the average taxpayer makes $40K, and currently pays $6K in taxes, for a net of $34K.

If we add a $1K/month UBI, then under a balanced plan that taxpayer would make $52K and pay $18K in taxes for a net of $34K. That's a tax rate of 35% and is obviously feasible since there are lots of people & places with much higher rates.

Similar calculations show that a UBI of $3K per month is not feasible.

$1K/month won't cover rent in most of the US but it might be possible to live on it if you live in shared housing and eat nothing but rice & beans.

And if all the UBI is coming from the tax someone pays in, just lower taxes. It would have the same impact without all the extra overhead.

Only the average taxpayer gets taxed that amount. It roughly means a 16% tax increase. Somebody making $1M a year would pay $160K extra and get $12K in UBI.

The only people who wouldn’t be worse off are people with no income to start with. I assume they’d get some base level $1k UBI.

I think Andrew Yang had the right idea, in the limited amount I heard. Tax the cooperations that are using AI or automation to reduce the need for workers. Their costs are going down, while their profits stay high, so capture that and give it to the people who were displaced. Bleeding the middle class, and people in general, doesn’t make sense.