9 ms·

$10,000 * US_POPULATION ~= $3.2T ~= The total annual tax revenue of the US federal government. Just something to keep in mind when discussing this topic.

• seibelj 11y ago
  Don't have an opinion on any of this, but how many of the population you calculate are citizens over the age of 18? And what would be saved from the US budget by eliminating various existing programs that would be superfluous by UBI?
  • Permit 11y ago
    Do children not typically receive the universal basic income? If not, is it fair to give a parent of three children the same allowance as I (a single person) receive? I also wonder about whether or not $10,000 is more or less than someone on disability currently receives. Is there a risk here that the more vulnerable members of society will end up receiving less money?
    • stickydink 11y ago
      There's a risk that people decide that pumping out children is an effective way to make money in the short term.
    • grahamburger 11y ago
      I've often wondered this too. I suspect that a family making use of WIC, medicaid / medicare and/or disability is commonly using more than $10k/person/year or gov't assistance, and would lose money going to UBI at that rate. I also wonder what could be done to avoid the UBI version of the two-income trap[0] - seems like UBI would naturally pressure entry level wages downward. http://www.amazon.com/The-Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents/dp/0465090907 http://www.amazon.com/The-Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Paren...
    • Lawtonfogle 11y ago
      Be careful of the incentives you create with these methods. As a side note, will a poor person who is unable to have a child be allowed to adopt and receive an increase in basic income, and will the adoption process by significantly more discriminating in who is allowed to adopt compared to who is allowed to have children?
• blacksmith_tb 11y ago
  Presumably though you just increase income tax to recover some or all of that from people who are employed? So the actual cost should be significantly lower.
  • Jtsummers 11y ago
    That tax revenue isn't just from (personal or corporate) income tax. There are a number of other sources of federal tax revenue which could be increased without a (direct) impact on the same people intended to benefit from a UBI (though it will have an indirect impact).
  • tankenmate 11y ago
    Some argue that if an UBI is introduced then a flat rate tax should be applied to all other income; in the US this would lead to reasonably large income tax increase.
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  • bryanlarsen 11y ago
    Yes, taxes on the average worker would go up by the same amount as they're receiving in basic income. So the effective costs of a basic income program are a very small fraction of $3.2 trillion.
• iskander 11y ago
  Would children and retirees also claim basic income?
  • gpm 11y ago
    Retirees presumably yes, since differentiating 'retired' vs 'unemployed' involves the sort of expensive invasive work that UBI looks to obsolete.
    • jerf 11y ago
      Part of the reason I'm not a UBI proponent is that I have absolutely no confidence in the ability of the real world to "obsolete" that much work. Literally the next bill passed after UBI would be a bill to limit and/or extend it somehow to some favored or disfavored interest. We got to where we are not because of arcane technical procedures, we got to where we are because of the humans in the government. Pass UBI with the same humans in the same government and the same result will occur at speed.
      • undersuit 11y ago
        >Literally the next bill passed after UBI would be a bill to limit and/or extend it somehow to some favored or disfavored interest. It's universal. You can't extend it, it's universal. You could limit it, but then it's obviously not universal. I'm not saying it's impossible, but by definition anything not universal is not Universal Basic Income.
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  • zardo 11y ago
    Children are included in the basic income in Alaska.
• tyingq 11y ago
  Interesting. This chart is a pretty good reference to see what types of existing spending might overlap with that (Social Security?) and what wouldn't. https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/total_spending_pie%2C__2015_enacted.png https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/total_spending_...
  • refurb 11y ago
    You couldn't eliminate social security payments since for a lot of folks, they take home more than $10K. You could lop off the bottom 10%, but a lot of spending would remain.
• virmundi 11y ago
  The advocates for such policy do keep this in mind. They require tax increases on business. If you make money, you have to pay. The idea is to help reallocate wealth because the market has moved beyond certain segments of labor. For example, when McDonald's can automate half its staff, the other half can't provide labor at the minimum price to be worth while. UBI says give these people, those displaced from the labor force since they are no longer needed, tax money directly rather than going through government mediators in a piecemeal fashion like they do today. Of course McDonald's will have a higher tax burden to support these displaced workers. Rather than McDonald's shouldering the burden by itself, the government acts as an insurance company. It takes in taxes and payout what is essentially an existence claim.
  • johndevor 11y ago
    Won't higher taxes here in the US drive more and more business overseas (specifically to China) and further exacerbate the problem of income inequality? We already see corporations keeping massive amounts of capital overseas because of high tax rates. That money should and could be here in the USA.
    • camhenlin 11y ago
      Yes but it won't matter because the newly displaced workers will receive basic income!
    • tangent128 11y ago
      What value exists in bringing that capital back "in" to the USA if it provides no benefit to US citizens in doing so?
      • randyrand 11y ago
        Its almost impossible to bring in wealth and not have it benefit people. People dont keep their trillions of dollars under the mattress. Its invested.
        • 11y ago
• empath75 11y ago
  The top marginal tax rate would have to be dramatically increased to pay for it. Also, you'd have to increase capital gains and estate taxes. Make no mistake, basic minimum income would be a massive redistribution of wealth. I'm in favor of it, but let's not pretend we can pay for it by shuffling around some social safety net spending.
  • alttab 11y ago
    It would completely remove the necessity to be productive. That can't turn out well. What's preventing me from having as many babies as I can knowing that they too will not have to work or find a job to be supported? I know this won't work at scale, because I understand math.
    • jack9 11y ago
      > It would completely remove the necessity to be productive. That can't turn out well. Take a look at mobile games. People do lots of things just to be 1 rung higher on an artificial competitive ladder (reset every month) about endlessly punching a "Battle" button. I think this idea that necessity has ever driven productivity (look around at your job) is a long running joke.
    • emidln 11y ago
      There's no necessity to be productive now. Most (all?) of the minimum wage jobs in the United States aren't productive to society except so far as that they have some minimal amount of money to make violent property crime slightly less attractive.
    • lintiness 11y ago
      you need to emotion this a little more and get back to us.
    • tangent128 11y ago
      Why would you <em>want</em> to have as many babies as you can?
• bunnymancer 11y ago
  Right, which currently excludes any taxes that would've come from the population that do not have any income to spend, and is instead costing taxpayers More through constant healthcare and the insanely pricey food stamps, etc. Just something to keep in mind.
• NolF 11y ago
  Note that there are "only" 209m Americans over the age of 18 [1]. Not that it makes it much more affordable. Without including medical, it looks the government spends about 1.5T already (including SS) [2] 1 http://www.infoplease.com/us/census/data/demographic.html http://www.infoplease.com/us/census/data/demographic.html 2 http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2016USbn_17bs6n_203060#usgs302 http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2016USbn_1...
  • EpicEng 11y ago
    Yet I imagine that a basic income for e.g. a family of four would be quite a bit higher than that for a single 20 year old. Minors have to be factored in somehow.
• Shivetya 11y ago
  What about working age population? Surely it isn't that much. Kind of scary when you reverse the numbers. The number of people working certainly isn't enough to generate the tax income of the country has. Yet this game is what keeps people from open rebellion; embedded taxes. Figure it this way, if individuals had to pay the full tax load out of their paychecks that they actually do most would more than flinch. Regardless, current subsidies to many people are higher than 10k so it would never be set there. People would get all sorts of up kicks for dependents and the like because politicians need to buy votes and punish dissenters. So if we just consider the working population, how much does it cost? Can we then rid ourselves of some government agencies which are devoted to providing aid?
• aero142 11y ago
  Imagine a new tax passed at the same time as basic income where anyone making more than the median income of $51,939 paid an additional $10000 in taxes. Now, lets tack on a dollar for dollar replacement for anyone receiving disability or social security. These kinds of thing make that number start dropping pretty quick and are in the spirit of what basic income would look like. The raw number you gave isn't what anyone is proposing.
• merpnderp 11y ago
  Many people would not receive this money from the government as their taxes would be more than the $10K payment. 160 million Americans work, and likely half would receive little or no money, and only the bottom two quintiles of income earners would earn the full or close to the full amount. So probably only cost around $2T, or about 25% more than Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid combined (although this would only replace Social Security). Very expensive, but doable in a world where our representatives weren't corrupt to the hilt. Not sure what is an equitable solution for children, but giving the full amount per kid seems grossly unfair.
  • NoMoreNicksLeft 11y ago
    > Not sure what is an equitable solution for children, but giving the full amount per kid seems grossly unfair. Why unfair? I sometimes get the impression that the mainstream culture values children at some degree lower than "human".
• kapnobatairza 11y ago
  Does a basic income need to be generated directly through government spending? With all the talk about QE and "helicopter money" over the past 8-9 years, I'm curious why very few have considering the merits of a basic income through inflation. What if the central bank had a mechanism to fund special "basic income" accounts at banks on a yearly basis... These accounts would not be considered deposits but would rather be a special type of 0-interest loan that is not paid back and doesn't not count against each bank's fractional reserve requirements. Each citizen is able to open 1 of these accounts at a bank that meets the qualifications to participate in the program. Is there any merit in a basic income through inflation? If we are going to inflate our money by through QE and throwing it out of a helicopter to banks, why not use the same principle and inflate our money by throwing it our a helicopter into the homes of citizens? special "basic income" accounts
  • imtringued 11y ago
    The effects of Quantitative Easing can be reversed by the central bank because it's merely an asset swap. It's only a temporary measure.
    • dv_dt 11y ago
      It's a temporary measure whose end and efficacy remains unknown. It seems like the QE injection really only affected 'Wall street' with very little of it escaping to cause mainline economic activity.
• spinlock 11y ago
  This is a very good back of the envelope calculation. But, I think you need to take a similar look at the cost of social security, etc...
• kinghajj 11y ago
  Aren't UBI proposals designed so that those who earn more than the yearly stipend from employment don't receive it?
  • bufordsharkley 11y ago
    The key to the UBI is that there is no means test (which introduces bad incentives, etc). UBI with means testing is known as the Guaranteed Minimum Income.
  • earlz 11y ago
    No, UBI is everyone receives X amount of money, no questions asked. The theory is that the tax increases etc balance this out for the middle class so that they effectively earn the same amount of money with the UBI income
• saalweachter 11y ago
  The total personal income in the United States is $14.7T (2014); so a $3.2T spending program amounts to a ~22% flat income tax. Which is interesting when you consider that you'd (presumably) be dissolving Social Security and Welfare in favor of UBI; Social Security is already 12.4%. What's also fun with UBI is that you then get to assign a numeric value to how socialist your country currently is, eg, 22% socialist. (Personally I'd go for something closer to 30% socialist.)