I agree with that too, but the thing with the reverse income tax regime is that it would use existing infrastructure and get rid of an entire bloated department in the government, or prevent the creation of a UBI office on top of that. I only say a reverse income tax would be a better thing because obviously it would be nearly politically impossible to dismantle a system that gives payments out to the poor in the current state of US politics.
Basically, the reverse income tax idea is a sly idea to start pulling jenga blocks out of the welfare state by getting rid of the need for a completely independent government organ entirely for that purpose. Also, we already give income tax credits; we would also be simplifying the numbers keeping by just making the reverse income tax a credit.
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Also, we see from this graph, that even under a progressive income tax regime, a negative income tax regime could be set up to ensure that people don't feel as though their benefits are being lost as they transition from tax takers to tax payers. The current problem with the US's welfare program is that it has a gap between paying and taking, leaving the people on welfare to feel like they are losing quality of life by attempting to leave the welfare's benefits. (A phenomena termed the "welfare trap" or "welfare gap")
This of course also means we can get rid of old age payments like social security, and other income guaranteeing policies and bring them under a single policy that can be more easily politically dealt with. In the long run, it would just be a better idea imo.
