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bogus comments on Stupid questions thread, October 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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The actual research into welfare-maximizing tax systems argues for a UBI plus roughly U-shaped marginal tax rates, i.e. relatively high phaseout rates on the UBI itself, then low but mildly progressive rates for folks making more than the breakeven point. The point, I think, is that this strongly incents folks to become net contributors, since at that point they will be paying lower marginal rates. Your point about whether the UBI should be taxed is interesting. Of course at any given time it's a wash, but you might be right that taxing the UBI itself (say, depending on tax revenue as a fraction of GNP) is a good institutional choice.
You could just adjust the UBI payout to achieve precisely the same result? Or is there another variable being maximized there relating to, say, household size? (Or is it just psychological?)
The point of taxing the UBI itself (even before earned income enters the picture) is precisely to adjust the amount in a predetermined way - in this case, it's supposed to be proportional to the fraction of GNP that's not affected by government taxation, so that, as you put it, "everybody is equally affected by taxation and government spending". One issue with this is that it may make the UBI too volatile, which is bad as you want it to be as small as possible on average (because redistribution is very costly, even with the best system you can think of).