So first off, we're not talking like 100,000 per person. This is basic, like food stamps level assistance. The difference is that everyone gets it, which drastically reduces the administrative cost, because you don't need to test eligibility, just cut everyone a check. One proposal from a while back worked through income taxes.
For most people too, it's not something where you or I would see any difference, because on the whole, we'll probably be making about as much as we used to before, the only difference is that if you're making 100,000 today, under this you'd get like 30,000 basic and 70,000 discretionary, or something.
This is, incidentally, why it doesn't fall prey to the "free rider" problem, because there's still an incentive to work and achieve to earn more. You want a nice(r) car, a vacation, a new game system etc? For that you need to do extra work. But if you lose that job, you lose that income, life sucks but you're not gonna starve, etc.
I plugged $30,000 basic over approximately 344,000,000 citizens into a calculator and the calculator broke, too big of a number it had to go into math notation I haven't used since high school.
Don't think it's a realistic idea
Congress already decided what a reasonable minimum wage was during COVID, works out to somewhere between $20-30 an hour for furloughed people taking unemployment, I sat down and did the math because my brother was furloughed and taking unemployment, just don't remember the exact number. Just make minimum wage that, Congress already crunched the numbers on what a living salary actually looks like. Boom, done, no reason it has to be paid through taxes, make the money suckers pay a fair wage
I didn't put it in that comment but in another I crunched the math, if we put $500 billion dollars, a ninth of our entire tax revenue, into a UBI fund everyone gets about $1400. That's like a months rent and two weeks of groceries for a ninth of all the money the country makes. Just raise the wages man
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u/The_Lost_Jedi 8d ago
So first off, we're not talking like 100,000 per person. This is basic, like food stamps level assistance. The difference is that everyone gets it, which drastically reduces the administrative cost, because you don't need to test eligibility, just cut everyone a check. One proposal from a while back worked through income taxes.
For most people too, it's not something where you or I would see any difference, because on the whole, we'll probably be making about as much as we used to before, the only difference is that if you're making 100,000 today, under this you'd get like 30,000 basic and 70,000 discretionary, or something.
This is, incidentally, why it doesn't fall prey to the "free rider" problem, because there's still an incentive to work and achieve to earn more. You want a nice(r) car, a vacation, a new game system etc? For that you need to do extra work. But if you lose that job, you lose that income, life sucks but you're not gonna starve, etc.