You wouldn't need to have minimum income that large to make a big difference. The international poverty line is $1.25/day. A minimum income of $500/yr would mak

You wouldn't need to have minimum income that large to make a big difference. The international poverty line is $1.25/day. A minimum income of $500/yr would make a big difference to absolute poverty. More importantly, it would be affordable ($3.5 trillion or 4% of world GDP) while your proposal would be huge burden. It would have little effect on the relative poverty in developed nations. But there are a surprising numbers of people in the US ((1.65 million households) in extreme poverty (defined as $2/day) that would be helped by a low minimum income.