Bear in mind that I do not suggest replacing disability with UBI, because it accounts for needs above and beyond the baseline human experience around which our society was designed. So, if each month you had $1K UBI + say $500 for disability (and you wouldn’t lose it for taking part time work where you could) + UHC, does that become an agreeable setup in your estimation?

Also, I’m not tied to $1K a month. I think it would be better if higher, at least eventually, more like $1500. I use $1000 in my proposal largely for its symbolic nature, being roughly the federally-defined poverty line. It’s like drawing a line in the sand and saying we don’t allow “poverty" as we define it. I should think we could tie UBI to the poverty line and then adjust the poverty line as needed. I would suggest tying the poverty line something like 30% of mean personal income (which right now would be closer to $15K/year I think), so that as the economy grows more abundant, everyone is pulled up accordingly.

As for locally-adjusted rates of UBI, I prefer a uniform national level for a few reasons:

1. It would be far easier to implement. Once you introduce local adjustments, you introduce bureaucracy and reporting and the possibility of people being missed. It’d have to be tied to an address, after all. What if people split time between two states? What if they wish to be more nomadic fir a period of time and don’t have a permanent home at all? A major beauty in UBI is its simplicity and elegance, and that would be removed.
2. Localities could add to the national minimum if they wished, much as we do with minimum wage, and pay for it with local taxes.
3. Even if they didn’t, I think it would be preferable. There are knock on benefits to having it equal. If your UBI stretches further in certain areas, that’s more incentive and support for talent and opportunity to stop fleeing to and overcrowding the big cities. More money stays and more businesses start up in small towns and rents gradually drop in cities and rise in towns to a healthier equilibrium. We build toward a nation of healthy, medium-sized cities well-distributed rather than one of mostly poor landscapes peppered with a very few mega-cities in super high demand. If cities pay higher UBIs, we lose that incentive, because they would now have similar quality of life and the higher opportunity that comes with being in a big city. I say, set the national level to be at least survivable in big cities (I’ve lived in Manhattan for years on about $1K a month as a starving artist type, and it sucks but it’s doable) and more comfortable in smaller towns and see what unfolds before jumping to any conclusions. I think it’s time middle America gets a little leg up in this way and big cities feel the pressure ease up to drive so much of the economy.