[krschultz]

That's actually one of the arguments for the universal basic income. If everyone gets the basic income, as you make more money, it doesn't decrease your benefits.

Means testing (i.e. reducing benefits as you make more money) is what creates the really high effective marginal tax rate that you describe. The opposite of means testing is giving it to everyone.

[efriese]

No I get that, but are you really advocating giving everyone the amount that the lowest tier get today? It's like $35k per year total.

[unprepare]

No one is claiming we should hand out an amount that is larger than the average salary in the country.

The current welfare system does incentivize staying poor and having more children, because those increase your benefits, and moving out of that level of income directly correlates to a decrease in benefits.

With basic income, there would be no punishment for climbing out of poverty, your yearly income at no point declines because you were paid more money. This incentivizes people to earn as much as possible, because there is no downside to earning another dollar.

The kids thing is the trickier issue. I've seen people promote the idea that people under 18 should also get a monthly stipend that is a percentage of the adult rate. I think that this will still incentivize people to have more children, since they can capture the extra income from it.

I have heard others say that children should not receive a basic income, and that the income should not be increased ro changed for parents over non-parents. This makes it so that every person over 18 receives the same amount and does not incentivize having more children. The problem here is that childcare costs can be high, so it seems to disincentivize people from having children at all.

I'm not sure which is the preferred outcome, or if there are other possible solutions, but its an interesting question to think about for sure.