South Africans must understand the scale of the economic crisis. Getting 11.7 million people to work is the equivalent of a war effort. There is no single policy that will get the country to achieve full employment. There is a need for multiple policies to address the multiple dimensions of the crisis. The policy tools to confront the crisis must be very large and have an impact throughout the economy. We need a Marshall Plan for the economy that is similar to the one that rebuilt Europe after World War 2. Universal Basic Income (UBI) must be part of such a plan for the South African economy. During 2022, the Social Policy Initiative (SPI) published a working paper: “A Basic Income Grant for a Better South Africa: The Evolution of Social Assistance in South Africa after 1994.” This strategic position paper is an update to that document, which considers new information, including the National Treasury’s latest macroeconomic forecasts and Stats SA’s 2023 national poverty lines. This Social Policy Initiative (SPI) strategic position paper provides an updated analysis of the economics of implementing Universal Income (UBI) in South Africa. This paper modelled 12 scenarios for implementing UBI. The SPI preferred option is that UBI be paid to adults (18 – 59) and children who received a child support grant (CSG) of R505 per month during 2023-2024. The assumption is that there will be a 70% uptake for adults since not all people who are eligible to get basic income will elect to receive it. There will also be a clawback from 70% of 7.1 million people who are above the income tax threshold. A core principle of this proposal is that UBI must be pegged to objective measures of poverty and not random numbers.