[chiph]

This is what I point out whenever BI is brought up as a possibility in the US. With 1/4 the population of India, higher GDP, and allowing for all the existing entitlement programs being retired, we can't afford it either. The math just doesn't work out.

Edit: Some grossly simplified numbers.

Assumptions: BI matches poverty level. Everyone gets BI (parents receive their children's payments until they reach majority). Family size is 3 (average household size is really 2.54 persons in the US)

US Population: 312 million, which is 104 million families (households). The Census dept. says poverty level for a family of 3 is $20,000, so that's what BI must match. This gives us annual BI payments of $2.08 trillion.

Savings from shuttered entitlement programs: Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, ACA subsidies: $938 billion. EITC & CTC: $362 billion. Total savings is $1.3 trillion annually.

But what about Social Security (OASI/DI) with $888 billion in payments? Since that's a pay-it-forward program we can't end it suddenly (it'd be political suicide, in any case). It'd have to be tapered off in some fashion. The trust fund (Al Gore's "Lock Box") doesn't exist as a big pile of money to be tapped, as that has been turned into US-issued Treasury Bonds.

So there's a shortfall of about $810 billion each year. Could we tap into the money sent to the Pentagon? Yes, but that's "only" $610 billion and we'd have a military that isn't being paid and with increasingly obsolete equipment. Not a good situation.

[Sone7]

What are you basing that on? I don't buy the idea that America can't afford basic food and shelter for every man woman and child for even a second.

Have you ever thought about how much poverty is negatively affecting the potential future of the US? I suspect the cost to society of children growing up in an environment with constant hunger is much, much larger than the cost of feeding that kid.

[chiph]

See my edit, with some super-simplified numbers.

[JackdawX]

What you've just calculated there is the cost of giving everyone, including middle class and rich people, a $20k tax break. Obviously this wouldn't work, as the amount of tax in and out of the system needs to be the same. The easiest method or distribution to understand is negative income tax:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM

Would it work in real life? Dunno. Lets see what the outcome of the various tests are. The key question isn't the maths actually, but whether people will choose to work enough to support the system.

[hackalaugh]

Kind of thought large scale BI would come as a result of widespread automation of the labor force. This has some good points about potential sources for funding BI, as well as examples of places that have implemented some form of BI (including Alaska), and it's effects on local populations, poverty and personal productivity.

https://futurism.com/images/universal-basic-income-answer-au...

[Jweb_Guru]

Raise taxes on the wealthy (yes, including Silicon Valley programmers). It's really that simple. People just don't want it to be.

[gumby]

> Raise taxes on the wealthy. It's really that simple.

I'm a big fan of aggressively progressive tax systems but it isn't as simple as you think.

California has a very progressive tax system, with most people paying some but most of the money coming from a small number of taxpayers. Sounds great, and basically most people like it. The problem is that when the economy tanks, California takes a huge hit in income since wealthy taxpayers' capital gains drop precipitously.

Yes, there's a simple-to-describe fix: build a surplus in good times and borrow in downtimes. But this is very hard to implement.

[exclusiv]

Silicon valley programmers aren't wealthy. They have good salaries though.

[dllthomas]

As a proponent of this kind of program, I totally agree that $20k is much higher than we could presently afford. The numbers look substantially more practical at 1/2 or 1/3 that, despite replacing less.

[chiph]

That's actually per family/household. So per-person it'd be a third of that, based on my assumptions.

Something that I haven't heard mentioned is whether BI payments are subject to income tax (like Social Security payments are). The numbers are low enough that the taxman won't take much. Going by the current IRS brackets, and assuming they had no other income (worst-case scenario), the per-person yearly payments of $6,666 would mean a 10% cut, leaving $6,000, or $500 a month. Which is a little more than what people spend at the supermarket.

[dllthomas]

> That's actually per family/household. So per-person it'd be a third of that, based on my assumptions.

Ah, I'll have to take a closer look at your numbers then.

[woofyman]

>Savings from shuttered entitlement programs: Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, ACA subsidies: $938 billion

You're proposing eliminating the health care of 120 million people? What we really need is universal, single payer health care.

[tzs]

> What we really need is universal, single payer health care.

Why does it need to be single payer? Multi-payer systems can achieve universal or near universal coverage at good costs. See, for example, Germany or Japan.