A Guaranteed Income for Every American

Re:A Guaranteed Income for Every American by mac01021 on Saturday June 04, 2016 @05:25PM (#11838135)

I agree. (see my edit). I would love to be even more wrong - to the point where the proposal outlined in the article is clearly viable. So, if anyone has solid numbers demonstrating that, please do share.

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Re:A Guaranteed Income for Every American by LNMNMMMC on Saturday June 04, 2016 @06:28PM (#11838456)

You missed the part about people under 21, that should cut off another ~25% from your estimate. Medicare + Medicaid + Social Security is well over 2 billion, so I think it's pretty close.

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Re:A Guaranteed Income for Every American by mac01021 on Saturday June 04, 2016 @07:55PM (#11838860)

I tried to get rid of people under 21 by reducing the population from 320M to 300M, but I guess I should look and see what the actual numbers are.

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Re:A Guaranteed Income for Every American by ericd on Saturday June 04, 2016 @08:30PM (#11839001)

"People under 21 years of age made up over a quarter of the U.S. population (27.1%)" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_State...)

So the population over 21 is about 230M.

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Re:A Guaranteed Income for Every American by mac01021 on Saturday June 04, 2016 @08:43PM (#11839047)

Hmm... That's a higher fraction than I expected. It could be much lower 20 years from now.

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Re:A Guaranteed Income for Every American by ericd on Saturday June 04, 2016 @10:45PM (#11839383)

Yeah, very well could be if the birth rate drops or life expectancy keeps rising.

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