All of them, even pro-UBI articles with numbers that can be reversed to figure out what they mean in concrete-ish terms, agree its $2 trillion or more. This on

All of them, even pro-UBI articles with numbers that can be reversed to figure out what they mean in concrete-ish terms, agree its $2 trillion or more. This one for instance (~$13k) that argues it will save money: http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-american-1464969586 http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-am... Its pretty clear the entire savings comes from cuts to Medicaid & Medicare & Agricultural subsidies. --- > 3. Propose a low (subsidence-level) basic income, which represents a major cut in benefits to pensioners and the disabled. Since those two groups receive the bulk of current welfare spending, redirecting their benefits is the only means by which a UBI can be feasible. That one one went with a clear option #3. --- As for your solution, it works-ish, but ultimately requires maintaining Medicare & Medicaid which inflates the cost beyond what you propose or admitting you are doing #3 also. So you'd need to actually raise ~$5.8 trillion to make your system work. It can work, you'd just need to basically double the current tax levels.