Basic income: the world's simplest plan to end poverty, explained

[jeff47]

14. Keep in mind taxes can recover the funds.

Give everyone $20k (or whatever the floor is). Set up the tax structure to recover that $20k for people who make more than whatever your threshold you'd like. Recover it all by $30k income, or recover most by $30k and gradually get back the rest by $75k.

It effectively becomes an interest-free loan to people above your minimum threshold. Kinda like the interest-free loan most people give the IRS via withholding on their paycheck ("Woo hoo! I'm getting back $1000 from my tax refund" means you loaned the government $1000 at 0% interest)

This allows for the scaling scenario you describe, as well as keeping it universal so that it is not as demonized. In other words, you make it like Social Security instead of welfare.

Automation means we're going to need something like this sooner rather than later. We can't run an economy entirely by selling services to each other.