AI Governance Researcher at Convergence Analysis.
Re: "UBI in the context of automation", that's a great point and I can definitely see what you're getting at! The answer is that this is part 1 of a 2-part series - Part 1 is how to implement UBI realistically and Part 2 is how to pay for it. Paying for it is an equally or even more interesting problem.
Re: penalizing productivity, it's pretty unclear from the research whether NIT actually reduces employment (the main side effect of penalizing productivity). Of course theoretically it should, but the data isn't really conclusive in either direction. Bunch of links above.
A modified EITC wouldn't have pressure to dismantle the current welfare system because it's a LOT cheaper than 40% of the US budget. Adding a pure UBI on top of the existing welfare systems would make redistribution like 70-80% of the US budget, which is a pretty dicey political stance.
Personally, I really don't get the "easy to maintain" argument for UBI, esp. given my analysis above. You'd rather have a program that costs $4 trillion with zero maintenance costs, than a similarly impactful program that costs $~650 billion with maintenance costs? It's kind of a reductive argument that only makes sense when you don't look at the actual numbers behind implementing a policy idea.
Totally agree on the UBI being equivalent to a negative income tax in many ways! My main argument here is that UBI is a non-realistic policy when you actually practically implementing it, whereas NIT is the same general outcome but significantly more realistic. If you use the phrase UBI as the "high-level vision" and actually mean "implement it as a NIT" in terms of policy, I can get behind that.
Re: the simplicity idea, repeating what I left in a comment above:
Personally, I really don't get the "easy to maintain" argument for UBI, esp. given my analysis above. You'd rather have a program that costs $4 trillion with zero maintenance costs, than a similarly impactful program that costs $~650 billion with maintenance costs? It's kind of a reductive argument that only makes sense when you don't look at the actual numbers behind implementing a policy idea.