Comment by int_19h
We are already doing it with various forms of welfare, except that it comes with a very large bureaucratic overhead because of the myriad of rules as to who can claim what. UBI with properly calibrated tax brackets is no different.
That's the core misunderstanding found in every discussion of UBI. Welfare doesn't create something out of nothing, it redistributes wealth by taking it from those who created it.
UBI is fundamentally different to welfare at a conceptual level. It posits that everyone receives money unconditionally. This is technically possible if you don't care what that money buys - just inflate the currency - but that's merely an accounting trick and doesn't achieve anything by itself (it makes things worse). If you replace the word money with wealth, which is what people mean, it isn't possible at all. It's the economics equivalent of a perpetual motion machine.
The lower overhead argument also doesn't work. You can't eliminate most of the overhead of welfare distribution by using UBI. Any UBI scheme would still need at minimum:
1. A strong ID verification scheme to verify that each person only receives UBI once.
2. Bureaucratic systems for ensuring people's births and deaths are always found and tracked correctly, and cannot be forged.
3. Management of name/address changes, immigration, emigration etc to ensure the above.
And so on. Look at the stuff DOGE has been doing to the existing US social security system and notice that none of the problems identified are at the level of means testing going wrong. They're all the absolute basics, like "do dead people keep receiving money". UBI doesn't fix that. You would still have a massive bureaucracy.