I think what he meant was "we already have enough tax-funded government income for it, but it is squandered elsewhere".

This is simply not true. Giving every person the oft-quoted $1k/month would cost over $4T/year, which is more than the entire current tax revenue of the United States. So we'd need to more than double tax revenue to continue doing everything we are now plus pay the UBI.

It removes a shit load of misc. other benefits and all the bureaucracy needed to maintain them. That might not cancel out but it's not purely extra costs.

Those other benefits combined don't come remotely close to $4T. I'd be curious to see which benefits you think could be eliminated or cut back and how much that would save.

The logic of it is that you could increase taxes to pay for it and above a certain income level, 100% (or more) of it would be clawed back in taxes.

The required tax rates would still be unbelievably high though. Way higher than any other developed nation (some of whom already have >50% tax rates).

Canada has a tax rate that tops out at 50% (mostly), the US caps out at 37%[1]. I think we'd all be better off if the tax brackets went a lot higher. Rich folks tend to have a lot of inactive money that's just sitting around doing nothing - we can put it to more productive uses.

1. Please note, these numbers are off of raw income tax - both Canada and the US have other employment related taxes that I'm not counting here (like payroll) since their proportional contribution is pretty minimal.

You aren't including state taxes.

I am for the Canadian ones - where I can easily count the provinces. I am indeed too lazy to do the math on how much each of the fifty states leverage in taxes but it looks like they tend to come out well below 50% (except for CA, which is fair). Specifically, CT caps out at 43%, NY is at 45%, CA is at 49% and TX is 37% - since there are 0% state income states I find it reasonable to assume that rich people concerned with income taxes will chose to live in one of those 0% income tax states.

and payroll taxes of 12% on first $140k.

My understanding of UBI was it’s a replacement for many existing social programs.

I don't think we've seen a serious UBI proposal that can actually replace social benefits - but it'd be nice to see it replace the more targeted benefits (like food stamps and housing benefits) there are some social services (like health insurance) that really are more efficient to just have the government directly funding - as evidenced by the crazy rates Americans tend to pay for what is, elsewhere, a rather modest societal expense.

Perhaps instead of “many existing social programs” I should’ve said “some”. I agree food stamps and housing are good candidates to be replaced at least partially by UBI.

Where did you get that? UBI won't help people that get free housing in NYC UBI doesn't work with HCOL areas.

Where did you get the idea that all current social programs would continue unchanged if something as radical as UBI were introduced?

Because you would cut programs all social programs like medicaid, ssi, section 8 and etc. How would these people live going forward?

There are two versions of the proposal. UBI as a replacement for social programs is fantasy. The UBI cheque would have to be insanely fat to replace the welfare/medicare/housing/food all the other forms of assistance that disadvantaged people need. I know a lot of libertarians support it because it is essentially a round about way of cutting social benefits.

And hypothetically speaking, say the government is spending $10k/year on assistance to a disabled individual. If you instead give $10k/year to that individual in cash he would not be able to buy the same level of care for the same price on the private market. He'd get massively short changed. Welfare is far more efficient, financially speaking, than handing out cash to people and letting them fend for themselves.

> If you instead give $10k/year to that individual in cash he would not be able to buy the same level of care for the same price on the private market

How do you know that? Countries with much worse welfare than the US often have much better prices than the US when it comes to healthcare.

Maybe healthcare prices were allowed to grow so much only because insurance pays for most of it anyway. If that changes, healthcare providers would have to charge more realistic amounts, especially for common procedures like dental checkups and medications like insulin.

Many UBI proposals have suggested eliminating or reducing other programs in conjunction with their implementation.

Why would anyone sane want to live in NYC anyway, if UBI was a thing? People move to big cities with expensive housing because that's where the well paying jobs are.

Sane? Like a great-grandmother? Would be she insane to live in NYC where is her whole family?

It would be insane for her family to not take her into their home and take care of her, which unfortunately the US doesn’t do as much as other cultures.

So right now she is independent, but under UBI she has to beg her family? Is that what you call a success of UBI?

That's just income redistribution from the most vulnerable, right wing would love this.

She is not really independent right now. There is no way a grandma can live comfortably in one of the biggest cities in the world without massive subsidies in the form of rent control, for example.

The combined disposable income of an entire family should be enough to afford housing for one great grandmother. UBI probably won't help or hurt her at all.

Yeah, taxes.