That's called unemployment benefits. Universal Basic Income is universal, like the name says. If it's not universal, then it's not universal basic income.

That’s exactly how it works. That’s why it’s called “universal” basic income. Let’s say we set the UBI to $10k per year, just to make a number up. I know that’s not a living wage, I just want an easy number. If someone has $0 income for the year (because they had to stay at home and take care of their parents), they get $10k. If someone made $500k as a banker, they also get $10k. Now, the banker is going to be paying about $250k in taxes while the carer would pay $0, but they’d both get the same amount of money.

Alaska and some countries do this out of an oil fund. The idea there is that the oil in the ground belongs to the people, who must be compensated for its extraction. I think the Alaska fund is around $3k or something like that. UBI would be the same but funded via taxes on individuals and companies.

If it’s less than you can live on, you’d still need to work and it would supplement your income or pay for a vacation or something. If it’s enough to live on, you could do what you like (including making more money by taking on a job, or go off and paint, or just go fishing or whatever.

Actually that is how one way of rolling it out works.

EVERYONE gets it, which makes administrating the whole deal very easy. No application process, no means testing, nothing. You give it to everyone and tax higher to cover it.