I really want the basic income wonks to be right. I really want that to be a good solution. The first problem you rarely see addressed is "where's the money come from?" 90,000,000 = working-age Americans $15,060.00 = American federal poverty level, 2017 $1,355,400,000,000.00 = poverty level basic income for working-age Americans $824,000,000,000.00 = 2017 federal defense budget $3,210,000,000,000.00 = all federal taxes collected in 2017 So. Assume we're doing everything exactly the same, except we're gonna add basic income of "poverty level" for all Americans. We're talking a 50% tax increase (and remember, we're running a $400 billion budget deficit). And yeah - clearly it isn't that simple. But also clearly, "poverty level for every working-age American" isn't what most people have in mind for "basic income." it's not a problem so obviously intractable that it should be dismissed out-of-hand, but it's a long way from simple. The next problem is that economies are based on scarcity, and UBI is based on abundance. That's not to say it won't work, but it would also upend a bunch of shit. There have been promising experiments but economics experiments in general have a bit of a checkered history when they're extrapolated out to the economy. Dunno. It seems like it would solve a lot of problems but I haven't seen too many in-the-weeds analyses on UBI.Maybe basic incomes? Seems a natural progression of social support.
