Universal Basic Income is the idea that governments can reform and unify their complex, bureaucratic and frequently exploitation-prone social security nets with the introduction of a single benefit, paid uniformly to all citizens, to help everyone meet their basic needs.

My below thoughts come from my response to Tomaž Štih's decided criticism of this idea (which he calls a Universal Basic Holiday).

One form of a Universal Basic Income is part of the American FairTax reform proposal. FairTax proposes to replace all taxes in the gargantuan U.S. tax code with one simple sales tax (I have explained earlier why this is a good idea). Meanwhile, the progressiveness of the existing income tax would be compensated with a form of UBI. I have until now considered this to make sense.

Tomaž exposes the hypothesis, however, that UBI will remove people's will to work.

UBI will not necessarily influence people who already earn a lot, and whose motivation for work is intrinsic. I can imagine, however, that UBI may actually remove the will to work for people who already don't earn much more than minimal income. Many people value their free time much higher than goods that can be obtained with work, especially if they don't particularly enjoy their work, and their income is low. Lots of people like that might at least partially exit the job market, by working less or not at all because they already receive a Universal Basic Income. The size of the workforce for lower paid jobs will therefore decrease, which is a disturbance that the economy can counter in two ways:

1. by importing foreign workers to work low-wage jobs while not being entitled to UBI (implying unequal treatment of foreign and domestic workers, as well as the friction and conflict arising from immigration as such);

2. by companies competing for workers by increasing low-end wages, which in turn will cause varying increases in the prices of goods and services, which in turn will lower the buying power of UBI. Some goods and services will not be available any longer because the equation of the cost to provide them vs. the revenue they generate will not work out.

In any event, a new equilibrium will arise, but where will the new equilibrium be? This depends entirely on the extent to which people will, in fact, depart the workforce due to UBI. In order to avoid an economic catastrophe after introduction of a UBI, the answer to this question needs to be empirically ascertained beforehand.