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That's what the Estate Tax is for. There are ways to circumvent that via things like charitable foundations, however that's a very different debate. The autho

That's what the Estate Tax is for. There are ways to circumvent that via things like charitable foundations, however that's a very different debate. The author is confusing income from dividends (either of the stock or bond variety) and interest income with income simply for existing. He chooses to use Alaska, an oil rich and low population state, as a model for the rest of the country. He states that the government would somehow build up a "big wealth fund" that would deliver "returns" without specifying where those returns would come from or the amount of those returns. A fund of the size required can't easily generate large returns since that amount of money is enough to distort markets. Simple back of the napkin math is that based on the 2013 census, we have 242,470,820 adults living in the US. If we pay each of them $12,000 per year, that's $2,909,649,840,000 in additional mandatory spending every single year. That's more than Medicare and Social security combined, and that has no cost of living adjustments built in. The basic math shows that this idea is simply unrealistic as far as I can tell.

jljljl 10y ago
There's a few assumptions built into your basic math. Does the benefit need to be $12,000/year? Can we phase out Social Security ($888B) Health Care spending ($602B) and other safety net services ($362B) as we phase in basic income? Setting the annual benefit to an average of $7,000 and phasing out other safety net services get's the basic math a lot closer, while theoretically helping more people than the current system. I'm not saying Basic Income is a definite win, but back of the envelope assumptions are usually too simple to dismiss or validate an idea.
- jimmyswimmy 10y ago
  Your proposal gets the math a lot closer, although I thought social security paid more than 7k/yr... so now grandma has to take a haircut on her income and pay for Healthcare out of pocket too. I'm no social security lover but that seems extreme. The allure of UBI is interesting but I've never figured out how the math works out without making sizable reductions in quality of life for significant chunks of the population. The money has to come from somewhere... I think UBI works out to be worse than zero sum economically. Anyway I've always been a firm believer that if you can't come up with a compelling and largely accurate back of the envelope justification for your story, you're not going to get many adherents.

jljljl 10y ago

There's a few assumptions built into your basic math. Does the benefit need to be $12,000/year? Can we phase out Social Security ($888B) Health Care spending ($602B) and other safety net services ($362B) as we phase in basic income? Setting the annual benefit to an average of $7,000 and phasing out other safety net services get's the basic math a lot closer, while theoretically helping more people than the current system. I'm not saying Basic Income is a definite win, but back of the envelope assumptions are usually too simple to dismiss or validate an idea.

jimmyswimmy 10y ago
Your proposal gets the math a lot closer, although I thought social security paid more than 7k/yr... so now grandma has to take a haircut on her income and pay for Healthcare out of pocket too. I'm no social security lover but that seems extreme. The allure of UBI is interesting but I've never figured out how the math works out without making sizable reductions in quality of life for significant chunks of the population. The money has to come from somewhere... I think UBI works out to be worse than zero sum economically. Anyway I've always been a firm believer that if you can't come up with a compelling and largely accurate back of the envelope justification for your story, you're not going to get many adherents.