[slavik81]

If there are conditions, it's not universal. The distinguishing feature of universal basic income in comparison to traditional welfare was that it doesn't have the disincentives to work caused by means testing. If you add means testing back in, you've defeated the purpose.

[ScottBurson]

No. As I said previously [0], means testing is not the problem per se. The problem is a particular simplistic way of doing means testing, which is what mathematicians call a step function: below a certain income value you get 100% of the subsidy, and above it -- even very slightly above it -- you get zero. So there's a point where increasing your earned income very slightly results in a massive decrease in your total income.

It's very easy to describe and administer such a subsidy, but it has a terrible bug, which is obvious and everyone has known about it for decades, but somehow we haven't mustered the will to fix it.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13202659

[slavik81]

You are advocating partial basic income, not universal basic income.

Your argument has a place, but it's tangential to my point.