[strgcmc]

The existing Social Security program costs nearly $1 trillion dollars per year already (okay $900 billion ish) [1].

Sure, Social Security is not like a perfect, shining example, but it can be fixed/improved, and scaling it up by 10x (which is a gross overestimate, as other commenters have pointed out), is nothing to sneeze at. But at the same time, it's not really as ridiculous as your comments wants to paint it (i.e. "omg this is clearly patently absurd, why even entertain this nonsense?").

You've completely glossed over the fact that people generally don't hoard money, especially not those living on $15/hr. People will spend that money, and it could even grow the economy (by GDP). Your little mind experiment is not nearly rigorous enough nor realistic to justify dismissing UBI out of hand.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_(United_States...