4 ms·

I've yet to meet anyone who thinks UBI is bad for the poor people. However I've heard no one explain how it can be effectively paid for. Everytime there is thi

• mlyle 6y ago
  Initially, something like this: you give $3.5k/yr to everyone. You cut $3.5k of specific, expensive to administer benefits/year from the people (20% of pop) receiving public benefits. You reduce social security payments by ~$3.5k (about 15% of pop). There's also interaction with EITC and likely some elimination of tax credits with low phase-outs. Then, you reap some administrative benefit, because you've eliminated a lot of complexity in administration of these programs. Then, you increase taxation by a bit less than $3500 on average for everyone else, maybe by increasing taxation by some uniform percentage on everything over the poverty line and maybe even sliding down tax brackets a little (it still would be more progressive). You probably can't get rid of everything: e.g. SNAP makes sure people spend at least some money on food for their kids.