[mcguire]

I dunno; I'm ok with that myself.

The actual best argument against UBI is that if you used the total of US government Social Security, Other, and Nondefense spending (At least portions of them seem to be UBI-replacable) on it, divided by the population of the United States (326,000,000), you end up with about $7,000 per person, per year. If you take the entire budget (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/...) of $4,000,000,000, you end up with $12,000 per each, per annum.

$1000/month?

[Zarel]

$1000/month is enough to live off in many parts of the United States. I lived off it pretty comfortably a few years ago when I was in college – although I had four roommates, we all had our own rooms.

Obviously, it's not affordable everywhere, but I think incentivizing people to live outside of expensive areas is a good thing (adjusting for cost of living would mostly just funnel the extra money towards landlords, i.e. rent-seekers).

[aaron_m04]

Your denominator is too large. Children would not be receiving UBI, presumably.

Also the numerator could be increased via a wealth tax on the top 0.1% or so.

[dllthomas]

Bear in mind that an income can go much further when you can invest significant effort in seeing that it goes further.

And certainly, as Zarel says in a neighboring comment, it wouldn't be affordable everywhere to live on just the BI. It doesn't need to be.