[hueving]

>transferring money from investment class to consumption class.

That's not nearly enough to cover it. The top 1% has 38% of the wealth. In 2009 total wealth of US was 55 trillion[1]. That leaves us 20.9T to spread around 315 remaining millions. That's about $66,300 per person from our anti-rich crusade. Not a bad bounty, but that's a one-time prize. How do you intend to fund UBI for anything longer than a trivial amount of time (<5 years) with such a small sum?

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States#/m...

[aninhumer]

That's wealth, not income.

Capital owners will have increased costs due to taxation, but they'll also have increased demand for their goods and services.

[ebalit]

I'm not sure these calculations on the back of an envelope are the correct way to understand the problem, but let's try.

US population: 322 millions US national income: 15.78 trillions $

To give a 10000$ UBI to every person in the US, you need to tax 20.41% of the national income.

[int_19h]

"Redistribution" doesn't mean you take rich people's money in a one-off scheme. It means that you tax them higher. One particular opportunity there is capital gains tax, which has been much lower than sweat-of-the-brow income for a long time now. Equalize the rates (or better yet, jack capital gains up even higher - there's no reason to encourage economic rent over labor), and you've got a very nice monetary stream to direct elsewhere.

[kctess5]

I'm not convinced your math is accurate. I'm definitely not an expert, but I also don't think the money would just disappear into the void - presumably it would continue to cycle through the economy.