One worry I have with Basic Income discussion is that what most people think the minimum required just to live is very high, which frames the discussion wrong.
Basic Income probably shouldn't cover much beyond rent in cheap, shared accommodation, heat and some electric, and groceries, and healthcare, if that is provided separately.
Basic Income should never be enough to live comfortably on with no drain on savings, at least until we've reached a place where we don't need human labor for very many tasks (if ever). I say this as an avid supporter of a basic income.
> Basic Income should never be enough to live comfortably on with no drain on savings, at least until we've reached a place where we don't need human labor for very many tasks (if ever).
Its seems to me to be self-evidentally economically impossible for universal BI to do this (which, incidentally, means it probably can't replace all existing social benefit programs, because you probably still want to have some programs that people can live on without a drain on savings, though these would need to be time limited and almost certainly have other qualifications) unless we've reached that point of labor-irrelevance.
If you set the level of BI such that it would allow such comfortable living given pre-BI prices, the resulting effect on prices would quickly drive such comfortable living back out of reach for those relying solely on BI.
You can mitigate poverty and economic inequality with BI, because the inflationary effects will be no greater than the income boost given at the low end of the scale, but there is a declining marginal benefit of each additional dollar of BI.
> seems to me to be self-evidentally economically impossible for universal BI to [be enough to live comfortably on with no drain on savings] unless we've reached that point of labor-irrelevance
Why is it economically impossible? It seems quite possible to me.
For example, suppose that 20% of the population _must_ be engineers for society to survive. But the other 80% of the population is irrelevant to production. The 80% could be given a BI of $40k, while the 20% could be given a salary of $200k (or $2M if you like).
(The 20% and 80% figures could just as easily be reversed, if you consider 20% to be "labor-irrelevance" -- although it is not irrelevant if it is necessary to the survival of society to ensure it's done.)
It may be impossible, but that's certainly not self-evident. We tax things other than labor, and that portion is liable to grow as we approach irrelevance of labor - and not irrelevance broadly, but specifically as is necessary to provide that comfortable life.
That said, I'm not hugely stressed about determining precisely how impossible a policy is when I don't support it anyway.
Whatever means works out best, in theory and practice, of course. I don't have a strong opinion on what that looks like, in this case. Conceivably no increase, quite possibly a lesser amount that ramps up over time or a fixed lesser amount, or potentially the full amount but with much of it earmarked for medical and educational expenses.
Basic Income probably shouldn't cover much beyond rent in cheap, shared accommodation, heat and some electric, and groceries, and healthcare, if that is provided separately.