3 ms·
"As noted elsewhere in this thread, the US has 300M residents; naively the cost of this program would be $3T!" So you raise taxes. For the people who don't nee
by matthewowen 11y ago
"As noted elsewhere in this thread, the US has 300M residents; naively the cost of this program would be $3T!"
So you raise taxes. For the people who don't need the extra $10k... well, that's OK, because their taxes will go up by some amount. Possibly more than $10k, possibly less. It depends on how much they earn.
You do still have the problem of determining what the progressive tax looks like, but this is a simpler problem than administering a large number of social welfare programs, all with their own eligibility criteria.
- notahacker 11y agoNaively, a $3T program would increase the US budget by around 50% even if you eliminated all existing social security and unemployment benefits. I can't see determining a politically acceptable and GDP-neutral progressive tax that finds an average of 50% extra per person as a simple problem, and that's even before you start dealing with the backlash from equally unhappy people whose existing welfare or social security program entitlements add up to more than $10k per annum...