[skrowl]

That's a good point, the US population of people 18 years or old is ~252 million, so if you only gave people 18+ a UBI handout, you'd cut your costs to 7.862 Trillion dollars per year.

[coldtea]

Also one could remove the UBI part already covered by pensions -- e.g. the millions of government employees getting X pension money, can get (X - UBI) + UBI (so the same as they already get).

[dragonwriter]

That's not a UBI, then, because it's not unconditional.

Also, I suspect the formula you intend is X + max(UBI - X, 0)—or, more simply max(UBI, X). Consider what your formula does for pension < UBI.

[mcguire]

That's going in the right direction, but keep in mind that the entire federal budget is about $4 trillion. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/...)

A UBI that pays a portion of a living wage might be a very good idea, but it's not going to allow the majority of Americans to lay on their butts all day watching TV and eating cheesy poofs.

[petey283]

Exactly this. And once you get into the 7.862 Trillion range you find that it's much more reasonable.