The problem with that is, without UBI, replicators don't solve the problem. The corporation that invents such a thing would get rich and charge the poorest to use it.
We currently HAVE enough food, shelter, and health care as a society to cover everyone, but the efficiency/productivity gains haven't sufficiently sufficiently benefited everyone. UBI is one proposed option for correcting that situation.
As for the actual cost - just as an exercise for trimming, without going into excessive detail:
* About 80 million of the 330 million in the US are under 18[1]. Let's assume 4 year olds don't need UBI. Maybe there's a childcare credit, maybe not, but for the sake of NOT encouraging parents to have kids just for the paycheck, let's start UBI at 18+ years old
* About half of US households make over $75k right now[2]. 33% make over 100k. I'm handwaving a bit here, but let's say the tax changes to support UBI result in increased taxes, and the "breakeven" point is somewhere around the 75k mark (i.e., above 75k household income - which would be 87k for a 1 person home, or 99k for a 2 person home, with the UBI - there's enough taxed off that the household is paying as much or more in taxes than they get from UBI).
With those two tweaks, you're down to 125 million people or less that are getting more than they put in. And that comes to about 1.25T USD. And... if you look at our spending trends[3], that 7T USD number for 2021 you quoted already includes 1.6T in "income security". So it might actually be possible to hit UBI with the current budget/deficit by rearranging how the money is distributed.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/241488/population-of-the...
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/203183/percentage-distri...
[3] https://datalab.usaspending.gov/americas-finance-guide/spend...
I think this is parallel to “free college.” I don’t think we should give everyone $20k/year to go to college. We should make college free and low cost.
I don’t think it’s fair to funnel UBI to billionaires as the goal is to help people, but make some people really rich with the new transfers.
I don't disagree, it sounds infeasible. But it's such a massive stimulus that I think it's really hard to model the real outcome. I just think it's probably not accurate to try and model it using a single iteration of the current budget.
Ultimately I think we have to collectively decide whether or not our society can support a basic level of civilized existence for all members, or if there is a core requirement that some people are going to need to suffer so that a plurality will be able to live comfortably. Same for health care -- can we simply not afford for everyone to have a basic level of health care? Must someone else suffer so that I can get adequate care for myself and family?
UBI and things like it are just a means to that end.
It’s like saying “it’s hard to model how prepend will marry Katherine Hepburn.” It’s true, I suppose. But it’s true because that’s an impossible situation on many dimensions.
And again, it’s not about some suffering so others don’t (although I think that’s an unhealthy way of looking at it). Even if you take all money from all billionaires. Like every penny and they suffer. That doesn’t even support a simple UBI of only $13k/year. So there’s not a suffering model that works out. There’s no proposed taxation plan that would account for this.
I’m trying to say this with utmost respect. But $12k x 330M is $4T/year.
In 2021, the US collected about $4T [0]. The US spent about $7T [1]. So it would take lots of iterations to figure this out.
I think there are some efficiencies so you can reduce some of this budget but introducing a UBI like this would up the spent to $10T and require an extra $6T in taxes every year.
It just seems so non-sensible. As the only way to reach this level would be to inflate money so it bought nothing much.
Proposing this seems less likely than just researching Star Trek replicators to reduce the need to buy food or something.
Or free housing for everyone is more feasible since that seems more achievable than increasing tax revenue by 150%.
Even if you seize every penny of US billionaires assets that’s only $4.2T [2]. At least that covers the first year but then those assets are gone.
[0] https://datalab.usaspending.gov/americas-finance-guide/reven...
[1] https://apnews.com/article/business-economy-government-spend...
[2] https://americansfortaxfairness.org/billionaires/