[ryandrake]

> We don't have money even for retirement funding

We only don't have it because we refuse to collect it. There is enough wealth in the world to end hunger, poverty and allow people to age to death in dignity, but we lack the political will to achieve any of these things.

[t-3]

In countries without sovereign currencies it's more complicated, but in the US money wouldn't even need to be collected (technically it would need to be collected/added as debt, but that's entirely due to the Constitution and not some kind of natural law). The only real considerations needed to spend are whether or not adding more debt is politically viable and whether or not percepetions of and expectations for inflation are manageable. A UBI would be way too big to be able to avoid triggering inflation expectations and opportunism. Ending hunger would be much more manageable as the costs are very low relative to the impact and so it could be more easily hidden from financial doom-speakers.

[lotsofpulp]

Nominal wealth is useless if supply of products and services is in decline. The population histogram of pretty much all developed societies has passed the curve where the supply of labor is decreasing so that “wealth” will be competing to buy less and less labor.

US federal government alone spends trillions of dollars on wealth transfers from workers to non workers via Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, along with a few other program. And even that doesn’t guarantee you will be able to see a doctor in a timely manner.

[atemerev]

Hunger is easy. It is housing, medicine and education that are unsolvable.

And no, even if you skin all the rich and put all their money to UBI, it will only last a year or two (you can take Excel and calculate). The bulk of income and taxes comes from the middle class.