[stegosaurus]

The whole discussion is ridiculous to me. All of the money filters back up to the capitalists anyway. Is that not mind-bendingly obvious?

If you are a recipient of the basic income, you spend it all. Every last dollar. You don't build net worth and take it out of the economy. (If more than a small hardcore crowd even can, it's been set too high).

In a country like the UK, that gets taxed at 50%+ (providing the tax authorities are actually doing their job and have not been deliberately underfunded). So half of it almost immediately goes back into the Government coffers.

I don't understand why people spend so much time doing arcane analyses whilst seemingly missing how the economy works at a very basic level.

Government spending can be a net drain in two broadly defined ways, as far as I can see. There may be others that I am missing.

1. Giving money to the rich directly who then hoard it. 2. Inefficient allocation of human talent or natural resources (e.g. if the government paid me 200k pa to chew pens, and I gave up my real job).

Spending on the poor really cannot cost money unless you have issues with collecting taxes.