[sokoloff]

It's also worth noting that $1K per month for all US citizens would represent materially more than 100% of the current federal tax.

US Citizens: Couldn't find a readily available reliable source, so I'll use residents instead. Should be close enough for this math though I'd imagine this would be more likely a citizen program rather than a resident program.

US Residents: ~325 million

Federal Tax Revenue 2016 - ~3.27 trillion

Federal Tax Revenue - ~272 billion / month

Federal Tax Revenue - ~$850 / resident / month

What if we didn't give it to minors?

US residents over 18 - ~247 million

Federal Tax Revenue - ~$1100 / resident-over-18 / month

That's if we spent it all on UBI, no debt service, no federal employees, no military, no infrastructure spending, no social security, no pensions (even for federal employees who earned them and are legally and morally entitled to them), etc.

[pzone]

Well, we're imagining a world where robots have made us vastly richer. (Self-driving cars! 100% automated factories!) Stark increases in inequality will also mean that more of the US' total income is given to the highest earners, i.e. those with the highest tax brackets. So we'd collect quite a lot more in taxes even if we left current rates completely unchanged.

If robots don't end up making society incredibly wealthy and more unequal then there's no point in UBI to begin with. So it doesn't make sense to simply look at current figures.

[sokoloff]

Agreed that current figures don't tell the whole story, but it's at least as unwise to not consider the current figures to get a sense of order-of-magnitude.