7 ms·

A challenge to anyone who thinks we should have a UBI: do the math. Show how it can work given the current population and output of the United States. It's not

by harryh 11y ago

A challenge to anyone who thinks we should have a UBI: do the math. Show how it can work given the current population and output of the United States. It's not easy.

zajd 11y ago
Tax the rich
- harryh 11y ago
  Three words is not doing the math. Show your work!
  - afterburner 11y ago
    Hey man, do your own homework.
    - drcode 11y ago
      He already did, he couldn't find any way to make the numbers work and is challenging you to find a solution.
      - afterburner 11y ago
        There was no such analysis in what I responded to, nor anywhere else by him when I typed it. (Not sure there is even now.) Am I supposed to read his mind?
    - harryh 11y ago
      OK: ~225M Americans 20+ years of age * $12,000 = ~2.7T. As a point of reference that's around 15-16% of GDP. It's also about 90% of current US gov't income or 80% of US gov't expenditures. In other words it's really fucking expensive! I'm not saying the math is impossible but the conspicuous absence of details from most people saying it's a good idea is pretty telling.
      - SeoxyS 11y ago
        Over 50% of government expenditure is on social security, medicare, medicaid, welfare, and other social services. A large percentage of that is inefficient and wasted. If you implemented UBI, you could get rid of all of that. Sure, the cost may be 80% of the current spend; but you could eliminate over 50% of it. What's left is a 30% increase in federal taxes. Right now, I pay close to 50% in taxes living in SF in one of the top tax brackets. I imagine state taxes would go down as a result of UBI too. I despise the fact that 90+% of my taxes go to things I don't believe it. That said,I'd be glad to pay the 50-60% taxes if I knew it went to a basic income. And if I knew that it insured that if I ever lost everything, I'd have enough to survive with some dignity.
        harryh 11y ago
        > Over 50% of government expenditure is on social security, medicare, medicaid, welfare, and other social services. This is wrong (unless your definition of social services is broad enough to include things like schools and I doubt you want to dismantle the public education system). > A large percentage of that is inefficient and wasted. This is also wrong. Social Security is a direct cash transfer and Medicare and Medicaid are among the most efficient insurance programs in the world. > I imagine state taxes would go down as a result of UBI too. Sometimes I like to imagine a world of dragons and unicorns. But then I wake up and resume living in the real world. Do the math.
- AustinG08 11y ago
  good luck.
- jerf 11y ago
  Sure, that obviously works as long as we model the economy as a static entity that never changes in response to stimuli, in which we model "dollars" as being able to buy an infinite amount of goods and services at the pre-change levels. But that's not how the economy works. The rich can provide "dollars", but we can't raid them for man-hours of child-care, or care for the elderly, nor can they provide professional health care. They've got the same 168 hours a week the rest of us do. This doesn't say that "BI can't work"... it does say you can't model the economy statically, use the prices and valuations of today, and assume that rewiring the fundamental economic fabric of society will result in no changes. You can't do that at this scale.
- IanDrake 11y ago
  Here's how that works... 99% of people agree with you on that, but 75% of those people have no idea they're considered rich. That how all populist ideas work. Take from the few to give to the many. Then, come to find out, there are too few to take from and too many to give to. So, in the end it becomes take from the many and give to the few.
drcode 11y ago
Beyond the problems with the math, people need to take into account the perverse incentives that are created... Let's say you give people enough UBI to pay for all their groceries, guess what: The price of groceries will suddenly shoot up, because grocery stores start having a hard time finding employees willing to do the menial labor required to keep a grocery store running.
- forgetsusername 11y ago
  >because grocery stores start having a hard time finding employees willing to do the menial labor required to keep a grocery store running. You are over-estimating the value of the income. People won't be "livin' large" on the basic income. The intention is to keep people out of abject poverty. I'd even argue it would be easier to find people willing to work part-time at places like grocery stores to supplement their income.
  - jerf 11y ago
    "People won't be "livin' large" on the basic income." Not at first. I'll tell you one of my big fears about UBI, though: The first vote that comes in Congress about whether to raise it. What happens then? Obviously, you are an asshole of the highest order if you so much as fail to support raising it, let alone arguing that it perhaps needs to be reduced for some reason. It becomes a "race to the top" to compete as to who can promise the biggest increases. If you don't agree, well, let me get this straight, today's politicians are reckless and stupid for not implementing UBI and having all these separate wasteful programs, but the instant they pass it, they suddenly become responsible caretakers of the common good? Also: Suppose we become unable to support the UBI for some reason and have to reduce it. How many cities burn as a result? Or do we just not reduce it until society keels? It makes socio-economic failure states go from "bad" to "catastrophic to the body politic". (As for observations that the same is true of many social programs today... yes, I fear that too. The only thing that prevents cities from burning when we must inevitably cut SS benefits is that the affected will be too elderly to go out there and burn things. But it's still less of a problem, because the separation of concerns makes it hard for systematic calls to raise benefits to really get going, except maybe SS. Unifying them into one easy phrase changes that.) I want to see this work at a smaller scale before I would even remotely support recklessly experimenting with the largest economy in the world with such a fundamental change. Yes, I am familiar with the much too small semi-studies that have been done, most of which have bad caveats and ran for nowhere near long enough to matter. Let's at least see a county or something run this for 5 or 10 years, and through at least one reduction.
ipsin 11y ago
The per capita GDP of the U.S. is around $50,000. The median household income is also around $50,000. The mean household income is around $70,000. There's enough on one side of the distribution to fill in the other, if we decided as a society that that was the plan.
- harryh 11y ago
  Less handwaving, more specifics.
Eyas 11y ago
The challenge with doing the math is the mount of unpredictable aspects of a UBI. We are not good at predicting human behaviors. What happens for those who are struggling to survive when they have enough money for a decent living? Will they spend it in a way that revitalizes the economy? Will they use the time they spent struggling to survive in doing other things that make the pie bigger for everyone? What happens for those who were already earning a (barely) decent living? How will their spending habits change? Maybe some of them will choose to contribute to society in non-traditional ways. Would that be good? Will any of them stop contributing to society? We don't know if its a zero-sum change. Its unclear if the pie will get bigger, smaller, or stay the same; if the rich will get richer, poorer, or around the same; if the money we would get from taxation will sustain a UBI in the steady state. The studies on minimum wage increase is the closest we have, but that is unrelated enough that it misses many of the complexities (and advantages) that a UBI could have.
- harryh 11y ago
  Sure, predictions are hard. Especially about the future. But as a first order approximation why not just assume that we remain in a steady state? See how far that gets you.
  - Eyas 11y ago
    Not arguing against a calculation. Just the fact that any result should be seen as a first step in a longer series of questions.
scarmig 11y ago
Economic proof of concept: Right now in the United States, 95%+ of people get their basic necessities covered, one way or another. The additional goods produced and services utilized will only require a "relatively" small reallocation of capital resources to their production. The way I conceptualize UBI is partially an accounting trick, since a large portion of the revenues and outlays would be just changing money that people currently spend directly on goods and services to money that first gets taxed and then goes straight back to people who then spend it on the same goods and services. It's partially changing the incidence of social costs--hospitals that once had to eat the costs of the required treatment of poor people would then not be punished, and instead (depending on how the funding taxes are structured) the holders of income/wealth in society would eat those costs. Some of it is renaming existing programs and more efficiently administrating them (instead of food stamps with complicated bureaucracies, people just get a check). And for the few people actually starving or freezing to death because of lack of funds in the USA, yes, that's genuinely a new cost we'd have to bear, but that's a rarity and I don't feel too bad about new taxes if it's genuinely saving lives. There are second order incentive effects in both directions that are certainly worthy of consideration, but a naive consideration of the facts on the ground suggests it's not at all impossible or even requiring any real magic, given the political will.
- harryh 11y ago
  Fewer words, more math.
  - scarmig 11y ago
    Number of people in the USA: 3 * 10^8 GDP of USA: 1.5 * 10^13 Basic level of sustenance for a person in USA: 10^4 Number of people we can economically sustain: 1.5 * 10^9 3 * 10^8 < 1.5 * 10^9 QED, math proves the UBI is perfect!
    - harryh 11y ago
      LOL. You made me chuckle a bit at least. Thanks for that.
    - 11y ago
bradleyjg 11y ago
I've done the math and you can get it to work. You need to make implementation choices that will make some people very unhappy though. First, you start with non-institutionalized adult citizens that brings you down to a payee base of ~210M (this part will be unpopular as parents will want to get more than other adults). Next you set the basic income at the poverty level for a single person, $11,700. That gives you a total nominal cost of $2.47T. You do not exempt the basic income from the normal taxation rules. That means you get some of it back in taxes. If you figure 20% that gives you a net cost of $1.97T. You then take a buzz saw to all social spending aimed at US citizens, including all parts of social security (this would be very unpopular among the elderly, near elderly and disabled). With all parts of social security adding to more than $800B/year It's fairly easy to find a $1T in savings there. That brings the total to under a trillion dollars. You take a buzz saw to tax expenditures, e.g. exclusion of fringe benefits, preferential rates for capital gains and dividends, mortgage interest deduction, state and local tax deduction, etc. (this is also going to be very unpopular). If you add it up, that's good for another $550B. That leaves you with another $420B in new non-offset spending. I'm certainly not going to to claim that's a small number, but it seems achievable. It's about 2.3% of GDP. Maybe you can get states to kick in (or force them to through reduced grants in aid) given that some of their social programs can also be largely reduced or eliminated.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- harryh 11y ago
  Yes, I might quibble with some of your numbers a bit (for example I don't think you'll get 20% back in taxes) but I'll agree that you're in the ballpark. I think this is a good demonstration of how massive the changes we're talking about are. Particularly: * The hit it will mean to many seniors standard of living due to social security cuts. * The massive tax increases this will be on the middle class (primarily due to changes in tax deductions) * The massive tax increase this will be on the upper middle class to rich (primarily due to changes on taxation of capital gains and dividends. Changes, by the way, that most economists oppose.) * The additional massive tax increase that will come from somewhere to close the 2-3% GDP gap you mention. I can see how some people might be in favor of this plan. I myself am not.
marvin 11y ago
Just as a completely rough order-of-magnitude approximation meant to spark discussion of the viability of a universal basic income in the United States: Wikipedia estimates the total net worth of US households and non-profits at $55 trillion in 2009. Assuming a 1% annual wealth tax on all assets (Norway currently has a 1.1% annual wealth tax, albeit only on fortunes greater than $120,000), we get annual proceeds of $550 billion. Social Security pays out $813 billion in total annual benefits. Kill off Social Security entirely and institute the tax. Divided by USA's 320 million population, we end up with ~$4250 per citizen per year. So with an annual minimum wage of $15,000, on average no more than every third citizen would have to depend entirely on the basic income. Also, tax revenues or net worth would also not have to decrease once the program was started. You can tweak the assumptions, add other possible sources of income to the system, approximate the economic surplus of the people who are now supported by UBI, question the viability of living on minimum wage, estimate the economic surplus of getting rid of means-tested welfare programs etc. Plenty of room for discussion! Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States http://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/what-are-annual-earnings-full-time-minimum-wage-worker http://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/what-are-annual-earnings-full... http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/12/federal-spending-by-the-numbers-2014 http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/12/federal-spe...
- irishcoffee 11y ago
  Looks like the avg. monthly payout of social security in 2015 is 1,332.35. Your proposal would come out to around 350.00 a month. I'm not sure that would go over very well. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0780010.html http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0780010.html
  - marvin 11y ago
    Of course not. I don't think it's politically viable to implement basic income the way I've sketched. Wealth tax of 1% probably wouldn't go over very well either. If the net worth of the nation doubles twice more, though, it's a different question. It's far from impossible that this, or a similar situation which would benefit greatly from an UBI, occurs over the next 50 years. We're on the right order of magnitude, which is as close as I feel confident estimating things without detailed knowledge of the tax system and social programs of the US. I could make a better guess for Norway, but even there it's sketchy because a lot of the non-social support programs that would become cheaper with basic income (e.g. student loans, support for artists) aren't part of the official social security numbers. There's also a lot of "number massaging" you can do to greatly increase the number, not least of which being to pay support only for adults.
ThrustVectoring 11y ago
Roughly 19% of the US population is on disability or social security retirement benefits. 23% are under the age of 18. 38% are employed full-time. Disability/SS is a straight-up income replacement. They go off one program and onto another. People under the age of 18 are much cheaper to support and would get somewhere between "much less" and zero dollars. Full-time employees basically get an accounting trick - on average, taxes go up by roughly the amount they receive in benefits. This makes up a combined ~80% of the population, meaning there's a new benefit for roughly 20% of the population. This is about the same size as the current social security program. Difficulty of going from our current regime to UBI is roughly as difficult as setting up social security in the first place, so it's roughly the size of the New Deal. Difficult, but not impossible - something that you'd expect politicians to accomplish once every generation or three.
- ZeroGravitas 11y ago
  Importantly, current full-time employees get an accounting trick but also a guaranteed minimum income in the case that they lose their job, go freelance, have a baby, move to a new city looking for work, start their own business etc. All of which happens without any paperwork, as they simply pay less tax when their income falls. Reading the original questioners other replies, they assume everyone would get the money on top of current wages, tax-free. I'm not sure why they think that though.

by harryh 11y ago

A challenge to anyone who thinks we should have a UBI: do the math. Show how it can work given the current population and output of the United States. It's not easy.

zajd 11y ago

Tax the rich

harryh 11y ago
Three words is not doing the math. Show your work!
- afterburner 11y ago
  Hey man, do your own homework.
  - drcode 11y ago
    He already did, he couldn't find any way to make the numbers work and is challenging you to find a solution.
    - afterburner 11y ago
      There was no such analysis in what I responded to, nor anywhere else by him when I typed it. (Not sure there is even now.) Am I supposed to read his mind?
  - harryh 11y ago
    OK: ~225M Americans 20+ years of age * $12,000 = ~2.7T. As a point of reference that's around 15-16% of GDP. It's also about 90% of current US gov't income or 80% of US gov't expenditures. In other words it's really fucking expensive! I'm not saying the math is impossible but the conspicuous absence of details from most people saying it's a good idea is pretty telling.
    - SeoxyS 11y ago
      Over 50% of government expenditure is on social security, medicare, medicaid, welfare, and other social services. A large percentage of that is inefficient and wasted. If you implemented UBI, you could get rid of all of that. Sure, the cost may be 80% of the current spend; but you could eliminate over 50% of it. What's left is a 30% increase in federal taxes. Right now, I pay close to 50% in taxes living in SF in one of the top tax brackets. I imagine state taxes would go down as a result of UBI too. I despise the fact that 90+% of my taxes go to things I don't believe it. That said,I'd be glad to pay the 50-60% taxes if I knew it went to a basic income. And if I knew that it insured that if I ever lost everything, I'd have enough to survive with some dignity.
      - harryh 11y ago
        > Over 50% of government expenditure is on social security, medicare, medicaid, welfare, and other social services. This is wrong (unless your definition of social services is broad enough to include things like schools and I doubt you want to dismantle the public education system). > A large percentage of that is inefficient and wasted. This is also wrong. Social Security is a direct cash transfer and Medicare and Medicaid are among the most efficient insurance programs in the world. > I imagine state taxes would go down as a result of UBI too. Sometimes I like to imagine a world of dragons and unicorns. But then I wake up and resume living in the real world. Do the math.
AustinG08 11y ago
good luck.
jerf 11y ago
Sure, that obviously works as long as we model the economy as a static entity that never changes in response to stimuli, in which we model "dollars" as being able to buy an infinite amount of goods and services at the pre-change levels. But that's not how the economy works. The rich can provide "dollars", but we can't raid them for man-hours of child-care, or care for the elderly, nor can they provide professional health care. They've got the same 168 hours a week the rest of us do. This doesn't say that "BI can't work"... it does say you can't model the economy statically, use the prices and valuations of today, and assume that rewiring the fundamental economic fabric of society will result in no changes. You can't do that at this scale.
IanDrake 11y ago
Here's how that works... 99% of people agree with you on that, but 75% of those people have no idea they're considered rich. That how all populist ideas work. Take from the few to give to the many. Then, come to find out, there are too few to take from and too many to give to. So, in the end it becomes take from the many and give to the few.

drcode 11y ago

Beyond the problems with the math, people need to take into account the perverse incentives that are created... Let's say you give people enough UBI to pay for all their groceries, guess what: The price of groceries will suddenly shoot up, because grocery stores start having a hard time finding employees willing to do the menial labor required to keep a grocery store running.

forgetsusername 11y ago
>because grocery stores start having a hard time finding employees willing to do the menial labor required to keep a grocery store running. You are over-estimating the value of the income. People won't be "livin' large" on the basic income. The intention is to keep people out of abject poverty. I'd even argue it would be easier to find people willing to work part-time at places like grocery stores to supplement their income.
- jerf 11y ago
  "People won't be "livin' large" on the basic income." Not at first. I'll tell you one of my big fears about UBI, though: The first vote that comes in Congress about whether to raise it. What happens then? Obviously, you are an asshole of the highest order if you so much as fail to support raising it, let alone arguing that it perhaps needs to be reduced for some reason. It becomes a "race to the top" to compete as to who can promise the biggest increases. If you don't agree, well, let me get this straight, today's politicians are reckless and stupid for not implementing UBI and having all these separate wasteful programs, but the instant they pass it, they suddenly become responsible caretakers of the common good? Also: Suppose we become unable to support the UBI for some reason and have to reduce it. How many cities burn as a result? Or do we just not reduce it until society keels? It makes socio-economic failure states go from "bad" to "catastrophic to the body politic". (As for observations that the same is true of many social programs today... yes, I fear that too. The only thing that prevents cities from burning when we must inevitably cut SS benefits is that the affected will be too elderly to go out there and burn things. But it's still less of a problem, because the separation of concerns makes it hard for systematic calls to raise benefits to really get going, except maybe SS. Unifying them into one easy phrase changes that.) I want to see this work at a smaller scale before I would even remotely support recklessly experimenting with the largest economy in the world with such a fundamental change. Yes, I am familiar with the much too small semi-studies that have been done, most of which have bad caveats and ran for nowhere near long enough to matter. Let's at least see a county or something run this for 5 or 10 years, and through at least one reduction.

ipsin 11y ago

The per capita GDP of the U.S. is around $50,000. The median household income is also around $50,000. The mean household income is around $70,000. There's enough on one side of the distribution to fill in the other, if we decided as a society that that was the plan.

harryh 11y ago
Less handwaving, more specifics.

Eyas 11y ago

The challenge with doing the math is the mount of unpredictable aspects of a UBI. We are not good at predicting human behaviors. What happens for those who are struggling to survive when they have enough money for a decent living? Will they spend it in a way that revitalizes the economy? Will they use the time they spent struggling to survive in doing other things that make the pie bigger for everyone? What happens for those who were already earning a (barely) decent living? How will their spending habits change? Maybe some of them will choose to contribute to society in non-traditional ways. Would that be good? Will any of them stop contributing to society? We don't know if its a zero-sum change. Its unclear if the pie will get bigger, smaller, or stay the same; if the rich will get richer, poorer, or around the same; if the money we would get from taxation will sustain a UBI in the steady state. The studies on minimum wage increase is the closest we have, but that is unrelated enough that it misses many of the complexities (and advantages) that a UBI could have.

harryh 11y ago
Sure, predictions are hard. Especially about the future. But as a first order approximation why not just assume that we remain in a steady state? See how far that gets you.
- Eyas 11y ago
  Not arguing against a calculation. Just the fact that any result should be seen as a first step in a longer series of questions.

scarmig 11y ago

Economic proof of concept: Right now in the United States, 95%+ of people get their basic necessities covered, one way or another. The additional goods produced and services utilized will only require a "relatively" small reallocation of capital resources to their production. The way I conceptualize UBI is partially an accounting trick, since a large portion of the revenues and outlays would be just changing money that people currently spend directly on goods and services to money that first gets taxed and then goes straight back to people who then spend it on the same goods and services. It's partially changing the incidence of social costs--hospitals that once had to eat the costs of the required treatment of poor people would then not be punished, and instead (depending on how the funding taxes are structured) the holders of income/wealth in society would eat those costs. Some of it is renaming existing programs and more efficiently administrating them (instead of food stamps with complicated bureaucracies, people just get a check). And for the few people actually starving or freezing to death because of lack of funds in the USA, yes, that's genuinely a new cost we'd have to bear, but that's a rarity and I don't feel too bad about new taxes if it's genuinely saving lives. There are second order incentive effects in both directions that are certainly worthy of consideration, but a naive consideration of the facts on the ground suggests it's not at all impossible or even requiring any real magic, given the political will.

harryh 11y ago
Fewer words, more math.
- scarmig 11y ago
  Number of people in the USA: 3 * 10^8 GDP of USA: 1.5 * 10^13 Basic level of sustenance for a person in USA: 10^4 Number of people we can economically sustain: 1.5 * 10^9 3 * 10^8 < 1.5 * 10^9 QED, math proves the UBI is perfect!
  - harryh 11y ago
    LOL. You made me chuckle a bit at least. Thanks for that.
  - 11y ago

bradleyjg 11y ago

I've done the math and you can get it to work. You need to make implementation choices that will make some people very unhappy though. First, you start with non-institutionalized adult citizens that brings you down to a payee base of ~210M (this part will be unpopular as parents will want to get more than other adults). Next you set the basic income at the poverty level for a single person, $11,700. That gives you a total nominal cost of $2.47T. You do not exempt the basic income from the normal taxation rules. That means you get some of it back in taxes. If you figure 20% that gives you a net cost of $1.97T. You then take a buzz saw to all social spending aimed at US citizens, including all parts of social security (this would be very unpopular among the elderly, near elderly and disabled). With all parts of social security adding to more than $800B/year It's fairly easy to find a $1T in savings there. That brings the total to under a trillion dollars. You take a buzz saw to tax expenditures, e.g. exclusion of fringe benefits, preferential rates for capital gains and dividends, mortgage interest deduction, state and local tax deduction, etc. (this is also going to be very unpopular). If you add it up, that's good for another $550B. That leaves you with another $420B in new non-offset spending. I'm certainly not going to to claim that's a small number, but it seems achievable. It's about 2.3% of GDP. Maybe you can get states to kick in (or force them to through reduced grants in aid) given that some of their social programs can also be largely reduced or eliminated.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
harryh 11y ago
Yes, I might quibble with some of your numbers a bit (for example I don't think you'll get 20% back in taxes) but I'll agree that you're in the ballpark. I think this is a good demonstration of how massive the changes we're talking about are. Particularly: * The hit it will mean to many seniors standard of living due to social security cuts. * The massive tax increases this will be on the middle class (primarily due to changes in tax deductions) * The massive tax increase this will be on the upper middle class to rich (primarily due to changes on taxation of capital gains and dividends. Changes, by the way, that most economists oppose.) * The additional massive tax increase that will come from somewhere to close the 2-3% GDP gap you mention. I can see how some people might be in favor of this plan. I myself am not.

marvin 11y ago

Just as a completely rough order-of-magnitude approximation meant to spark discussion of the viability of a universal basic income in the United States: Wikipedia estimates the total net worth of US households and non-profits at $55 trillion in 2009. Assuming a 1% annual wealth tax on all assets (Norway currently has a 1.1% annual wealth tax, albeit only on fortunes greater than $120,000), we get annual proceeds of $550 billion. Social Security pays out $813 billion in total annual benefits. Kill off Social Security entirely and institute the tax. Divided by USA's 320 million population, we end up with ~$4250 per citizen per year. So with an annual minimum wage of $15,000, on average no more than every third citizen would have to depend entirely on the basic income. Also, tax revenues or net worth would also not have to decrease once the program was started. You can tweak the assumptions, add other possible sources of income to the system, approximate the economic surplus of the people who are now supported by UBI, question the viability of living on minimum wage, estimate the economic surplus of getting rid of means-tested welfare programs etc. Plenty of room for discussion! Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States http://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/what-are-annual-earnings-full-time-minimum-wage-worker http://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/what-are-annual-earnings-full... http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/12/federal-spending-by-the-numbers-2014 http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/12/federal-spe...

irishcoffee 11y ago
Looks like the avg. monthly payout of social security in 2015 is 1,332.35. Your proposal would come out to around 350.00 a month. I'm not sure that would go over very well. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0780010.html http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0780010.html
- marvin 11y ago
  Of course not. I don't think it's politically viable to implement basic income the way I've sketched. Wealth tax of 1% probably wouldn't go over very well either. If the net worth of the nation doubles twice more, though, it's a different question. It's far from impossible that this, or a similar situation which would benefit greatly from an UBI, occurs over the next 50 years. We're on the right order of magnitude, which is as close as I feel confident estimating things without detailed knowledge of the tax system and social programs of the US. I could make a better guess for Norway, but even there it's sketchy because a lot of the non-social support programs that would become cheaper with basic income (e.g. student loans, support for artists) aren't part of the official social security numbers. There's also a lot of "number massaging" you can do to greatly increase the number, not least of which being to pay support only for adults.

ThrustVectoring 11y ago

Roughly 19% of the US population is on disability or social security retirement benefits. 23% are under the age of 18. 38% are employed full-time. Disability/SS is a straight-up income replacement. They go off one program and onto another. People under the age of 18 are much cheaper to support and would get somewhere between "much less" and zero dollars. Full-time employees basically get an accounting trick - on average, taxes go up by roughly the amount they receive in benefits. This makes up a combined ~80% of the population, meaning there's a new benefit for roughly 20% of the population. This is about the same size as the current social security program. Difficulty of going from our current regime to UBI is roughly as difficult as setting up social security in the first place, so it's roughly the size of the New Deal. Difficult, but not impossible - something that you'd expect politicians to accomplish once every generation or three.

ZeroGravitas 11y ago
Importantly, current full-time employees get an accounting trick but also a guaranteed minimum income in the case that they lose their job, go freelance, have a baby, move to a new city looking for work, start their own business etc. All of which happens without any paperwork, as they simply pay less tax when their income falls. Reading the original questioners other replies, they assume everyone would get the money on top of current wages, tax-free. I'm not sure why they think that though.