3 ms·

An annual bonus just for being an American.

• ImSkeptical 9y ago
  I think it would be an annual bonus for some Americans, and an annual tax increase for others. As someone who, I suspect, would be in the second group, I feel like we do enough of this kind of thing already.
  • CaptSpify 9y ago
    And as someone who, I suspect, would be in the second group as well, I feel like we do the tax increase part way too much, but we don't do the annual bonus part nearly enough.
    • chrisco255 9y ago
      That's because any policy which gives free money unilaterally to 320 million people is going to be incredibly expensive. 14,000 * 320 million = 4,480,000,000,000...$4.5 trillion. Just...no. This is more than the Federal government takes in every year currently ($3.27 trillion).
• r00fus 9y ago
  s/bonus/dividend/ Alaska does this [1]. The only problem with the idea is that some things aren't considered GDP while they grow the pie - open source and volunteering being good examples. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund
  • rtpg 9y ago
    "voting with the wallet" This is why research grants and outright government spending is a good tool in the toolbox. People are still paying for it through taxes, but because of the indirect nature we can judge the problem a bit more on its merits ("of course we want cancer research to happen and be funded")