[atemerev]

Some numbers:

Current US population: 324 million people, 250 million adults.

Poverty line income: $22,000 for the family of four (it is hard to estimate individual poverty line income, but it's more than $22,000 / 4. Let's say $12,000, which is $1000 / month).

Total cost of universal basic income of $1,000/month for the US: $3 trillion per year.

Total US income tax revenue: $1.8 trillion for personal income tax, $0.4 trillion for corporate income tax.

[dllthomas]

You are making the case that it's currently impractical. That is very different from "as inevitable as [the] CAP theorem".

For instance, if the cost of "basic life necessities" was somehow $5/yr, but incomes (and tax revenues) similar to today (... presumably people are spending an awful lot on luxury goods?), it could certainly be all three of those things.

It may be the case that that is somehow impossible, but that's a case that you need to make in some way other than listing off what the current numbers happen to be.

[atemerev]

Yes, the luxuries like rent, education and healthcare. And yes, "somehow" is a word that appears very often in every discussion about UBI.

[dllthomas]

I don't believe you're engaging in good faith, so I'm done here.

[atemerev]

Why I wouldn't be engaging in good faith? I really believe that UBI is impossible.

[dllthomas]

I expect that you believe that UBI is impossible. I am not interested in continuing to engage with you because you are not interested in engaging intellectually and analyzing why you might be wrong or helping others analyze why they might be wrong, but are focused exclusively on scoring rhetorical points. That's sometimes a fun game to play, but it's not productive and it's not why I come to HN.

[learc83]

Every serious UBI proposal includes an progressive income tax increase.

Everyone gets the UBI, but the more money you make, the more you're paying in additional taxes to support the UBI. At some threshold you're paying as much in additional taxes as your making in UBI payments. Past another threshold and you're paying more in additional taxes than you're taking in.

Effectively you only need to provide the full UBI for people making very little per month.

[chc]

This appears to lead to the conclusion "UBI is impossible" only if we include the premises "It's impossible to reduce COL" and "It's impossible to increase tax revenues."

[atemerev]

Increasing tax revenues to 100% (assuming everybody will continue working like that) won't be enough. USSR learned it the hard way.