> First of all, your income numbers are household incomes, not an individual number. A significant number of your 'unemployed' are actually children, carers/homemakers, who belong to those households. Other unemployed are e.g. retirees who often times do not have a zero income.

That doesn't really change much, it just halves the payment amount from 18,000 to 9,000. As I closed out, we can play with different levels of progressivity and generosity, but the idea is the same — my math was just the starting point. You can increase the amounts that the top 2 quintiles pay, you can increase the amount that the middle quintile pays (which is how most EU states fund their programs). This also doesn't even touch payroll tax revenues, which comprise about 35% of Federal revenues.

Also, "Unemployed #1-5" includes children, the disabled, and seniors. In that 10-person nation, 2 were probably children, 2 were probably retired seniors, and 1 was probably prime-working-age disabled. They are accounted for in the above math.

> You're indicating an effective tax rate based on the idea that the tax only pays for the UBI. Don't you have to tax more than that to, e.g., run the rest of government?

That was never the implication? Per this specific tax distribution, at worst you would increase the tax on the top quintile by 37%. And that's at worst, because there are definitely parts of the existing government that can be replaced by the UBI.

> Social Security costs about $1tn per year. Medicare costs about $600bn per year, which is about the same amount as Medicaid. Means-tested cash and cash-like programs (EITC, food stamps, SNAP, school lunches) are perhaps another $300bn.

Yes, none of this changes the above math, which we built up from first principles. Again, starting from those numbers, you can play with varying levels of progressivity and varying levels of generosity.

> Canceling those programs would fund most of your UBI but would be represent an amazing transfer away from the poorest/oldest, which I suppose was not really your intent.

EITC, food stamps, SNAP, and school lunches are indeed important for the poorest among us, but the implicit argument is that a lump sum non-means-tested amount per-person is superior to all of those.

Medicare and Social Security on the other hand are already a form of transfer to the richest. Individuals above the age of 55 account for 75% of wealth in America. Put simply, old people are rich. For two-thirds of seniors, Social Security has detached from the program’s original mission — to eradicate senior poverty — and is now the world’s most expensive upgrade from Carnival to Royal Caribbean[1].

Yes, there exists old people that are poor, but targeting social programs strictly on the basis of age is an extremely inefficient method of distributing welfare, especially since most old people are rich.

> Funding any portion of UBI through a VAT is also regressive: less well-off households spend a significantly larger proportion of their incomes.

I don't disagree with you here, but it's just another proposal for how to fund a UBI, per OP's request. What I showed you is that it is definitely within the realm of possibility to fund a UBI off of progressive income/capital gains tax alone.

[1] https://www.profgalloway.com/iowat-the-fuk