[jaggederest]

That assumes that the GDP would not be positively impacted by redistributing the funds to those who will spend it. A revenue-neutral taxation and distribution system should be more or less free of bias and significant negative effects on the economy, and that's what such ... socialist luminaries ... as Friedman proposed in the form of negative income tax brackets.

[epicureanideal]

GDP isn't the best measure though of the actual health of the economy. In the current situation maybe doing what you're suggesting would work, somewhat... but I could imagine situations where it wouldn't.

For example, Elon Musk is rich. If we just redistribute all his money to "people who still spend it" (the poor), we get a bunch of people buying slightly better cars instead of getting significantly better rocket technology. At that point it's less of a clear benefit.

[jaggederest]

Completely agree. I think my back of the envelope calculations were that paying for a reasonable UBI in the US would require a new flat income tax in the 12% range, a wealth tax in the 2% per annum range, or a land value tax in the 8% range. I don't think that any of those would be too huge a disincentive for Mr. Musk - most of his ventures seem to yield either -100% or +30% per annum.

[epicureanideal]

But adding another 12% on upper middle class workers such as myself would create a very large disincentive to work harder.