[Thorrez]

>but no kind of income

I'm not saying it's a livable income. I don't think there's anything in in the definition of "income" that says a person needs to be able to live off it. It just means money that comes in. Anyway, the prefix mini should indicate that it's smaller than normal UBI.

>The payments are just a way to soften the blow of the tax, but the reality is that it would disproportionately impact those lower on the income scale, especially in climates that require significant A/C

Why? Wouldn't the poor person use less A/C than the rich person? The the poor person would overall profit from it.

>That means you pay more tax as a fraction of income the lower your income.

Sure, but paying the money back a fixed amount per person leads to an even more extreme fraction of income of money gained by the poor people. You've got a regressive tax (carbon tax), then a much more regressive tax (fixed dollar amount per person). Except the second one is a negative tax, so overall the 2 taxes together are progressive.

[skosch]

Yeah, sorry. I should be clear: I didn't in any way mean to imply that a carbon dividend would come close to being a UBI, just that it works the same way: a fixed chunk of money for everyone, every month/quarter/year. A nano-UBI, really. We'll still need a real UBI.

I also don't want to imply that the bill in question is primarily concerned with wealth redistribution or UBI. Its main objective is to allow the free market to find the most cost-effective solutions to emissions reductions.

We've had such a carbon fee and dividend program in Canada for 1.5 years now and yes, by and large poor people benefit more than rich people for the reasons outlined by Thorrez.