Ah, that’s actually really great. I always wondered how UBI would work on a large scale when already wealthy people are in the mix. I mean, they don’t exactly need it.
They’d basically pay it back in taxes. But the tax bill looks super unattractive for UBI for any reasonable amount ($15k is federal poverty line, which is ~$4.5T assuming 300M people).
NIT could probably replace Social Security without changing taxes at all. There are ~37M people in poverty, which is $550B, and Social Security spends $950B every year. If it replaces other welfare programs or if we lift the income cap, we could increase benefits, and states could chip in their own as well. We could also phase it in, so people under some age only get NIT, while people over some age only get SS. If it works as intended, we should decrease beneficiaries over time as people break the cycle of poverty and start businesses and whatnot.
I think it’s totally feasible.