Here's some back of the envelope numbers... The federal government spends: -878B in Social Security and disability -961B in healthcare -422B in welfare So

Here's some back of the envelope numbers... The federal government spends: -878B in Social Security and disability -961B in healthcare -422B in welfare So that's about 2.26T just in these three categories. For a single year. We've got about 320 million people in the US. So this comes out to about 7,000 a person for these three categories. You want basic income? That's fine, just use it as a replacement for some of these programs. Instead of running a vast bureaucratic network managing these benefits, just hand out a check every quarter. This is hilariously simplified and a slightly more sophisticated system is what's known as a "negative income tax." Here is Milton Friedman (yes, Milton, not Tom) advocating for an NIT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM Want to keep going? When it comes to education, it's about 10k per child for k-12 spending if you include state and local spending. A high school of 2,000 kids should have a budget of 20 million... and with a student/teacher ratio of 20, would be equivalent to $200,000 per teacher. Take 50% of that to run facilities/admin and you've still got a six figure salary.