Comment by qrendel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by qrendel | Hacker News Reader

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People seem to forget just how much is currently spent on a lot of extremely... debatable programs. These are approximate numbers off the top of my head, but:

US military spending = $1.5 trillion per year (~$700 billion for the DoD, the rest from other military and NatSec programs)

US per capita healthcare spending = $8,600/person/year (edit: corrected by caseysoftware below, that includes private and public spending)

Social Security = another ~24% of the federal budget

Interest on the national debt = 7% of the US budget

Again, rough numbers off the top of my head, but you could get a decent basic income going across the entire US just by switching to an affordable healthcare system and cutting the military budget to something on par with what the rest of the world spends. UBI would also replace and simplify a lot of the existing welfare and social security system, so that portion wouldn't even be additional spending compared to what's already happening.

The obstacles seem more political and cultural than fiscal and economic. To a large extent it's basically wanting to replace the current corporate welfare for the military-industrial complex, healthcare, college bubble, etc. systems with something that would (arguably) benefit society far more.

Don't guess when the actual 2015 budget is a single search away:

https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-bud...

Your $1.5T number for military isn't backed up by facts as the entire discretionary spending for all agencies is only $1.1T

US per capita healthcare spending - do you mean Medicare and Medicaid? I'm not sure how you came up with this number because $8.6k * 320M people = $2.75T which would be about 66% of the federal budget.

Social Security itself is closer to 33% of the federal budget, not the 24% you cite.

Discretionary spending doesn't even make up half of US Federal Government outlays. The CBO estimates that total budget outlays in 2014 were 3.5 trillion dollars (https://www.cbo.gov/about/products/budget_economic_data#2). As for how much the US actually spends on Defense alone (as in the function, not just the discretionary portion of the budget that goes to the DoD), no one really knows for sure. The only estimate I can find is on wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_De...) and all the references lead to dead links.

However, for whatever reason, the Oregon State Hospital hosts a copy of one of these documents (the 2010 DoD Agency Financial Report: http://www.oregonstatehospital.net/d/otherfiles/Fiscal_Year_...) Buried on page 58, in an appendix, are the actual numbers: 1.2 trillion dollars total DoD budgetary resources in 2010. The GAO have previously stated that DoD financials are so messed up that they are unauditable:

As was the case in 2010, the main obstacles to a GAO opinion on the accrual- based consolidated financial statements were: (1) serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense (DOD) that made its financial statements unauditable [http://www.gao.gov/press/financial_report_2011dec23.html]

But don't worry, the DoD have a plan to have proper financial statements by 2017... [http://www.gao.gov/highrisk/dod_financial_management/why_did...]

Wikipedia gives 24% for both healthcare and social security for 2014.[1] Total military spending is more complicated but is estimated at 28-38% of the total budget (though no citation).[2] That gives somewhere between 0.98 and 1.33 trillion, so I guess I was off there, but it has been much higher at (estimated) 54% in recent years.

Per capita healthcare spending is similarly estimated at $8,713 for 2014 or $9,146 for 2013 depending on which of those estimates you go with.[3] Presumably that includes total healthcare spending, public and private, but the issue is how much potential savings are there to pay for a UBI (by switching to a more effective healthcare system), so I think the total is relevant still, not just medicare + medicaid.

Your 33% number for SS seems to come from the inclusion of spending on unemployment and labor. The military spending being larger than total discretionary probably comes from inclusion of veteran's benefits and other programs included in with mandatory.

The exact numbers aside, I think the larger point still stands that the money is there - once you start looking at how much money is already being spent it's not hard to imagine getting a few trillion together for a UBI. Political feasibility is another matter, I agree it probably won't happen anytime soon for that reason, but saying it's economically infeasible just seems... wrong.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending_-_F...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...

I get what you're saying, but this is exactly the sort of stuff that makes me think "wow, this is never going to happen". You're talking about in a very small span of time dismantling entire industries and a huge portion of both federal and state governments (shattering the value of billion-dollar companies, and temporarily putting millions of people out of their jobs) in order to implement an economic policy that has never been tested on a large scale in one of the world's most complicated economies.

I really don't see how a plan like that could ever work in a democracy. You'd make too many people mad. Even if it were to everybody's long-term benefit the moment the layoffs started people would petition their state governments, who would drop out or refuse to comply with the plan, grinding the whole thing to a halt. The political will to do such a thing just isn't possible IMHO.

Exactly. A disabled guy collects $908 a month which is 10896 annually, with housing and food stamps it comes to $18744 annually. The difference of $7848 annually is social services to allow survival and to keep all those social service employees employed. Figure 56.7 million disabled people in the USA(0), that's a lot of cake. $445 billion on top of the disability checks. I think this would cover the cost of the program plus save a bundle on social service employment. Average social worker earns $45,000 annually(1). 649,300 social workers (1) (2014) totals $29.2 billion.

I don't believe we could eliminate all the social workers, but a substantial number of them.

(0) http://1.usa.gov/1nQXOL7 (1) http://1.usa.gov/1nQY38Y

Are you saying that people on disability get a housing allowance in addition to the $908 a month and food stamps? That's news to me.

Rental Assistance

https://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/topics/rental_assi...

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