[gizmo]

40,000 * 300 million = 12 trillion. US GDP is 17 trillion. The UBI wouldn't pay for the army, police, healthcare, infrastructure and so on. So the remaining 5 trillion can pay for that as well as for local government. So we're talking about a scenario where every citizen has the same income, regardless of contribution to society. It's an interesting idea, and if we can all work together as a society under these circumstances that would be great. In other words: a 40k UBI implies full communism. Pretty radical.

[trbvm2]

In my opinion, UBI is basically communism as a positive side-effect of kick ass capitalism. I tend to think of it in the Star Trek variety. Not so much radical as a natural result of being really good at personal productivity.

It's not a bad thing to say, "we have gotten so good at being productive that we've made work essentially optional".