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Comment by hartator | Hacker News Reader

I really don’t get the excitement about UBI. The US is not that rich of a country. Giving everyone $1,000 per month will cost $39t per year. US gpd is $21t per year. Maybe 50 or 100 years with some quantum leap in AI or something in likes.

[My bad my math here is bad. Should be $3.9t not $39t. My initial point stands though. It's just too much money.]

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$3.9t not $39t.

Think about it, US GDP can't be less than $1k per person per month.

Double-check your arithmetic.

Your math is off by a factor of 10. Giving 330 million people $12k/yr is only $4 trillion/yr.

$2.8t was the estimate for Andrew Yang's 1,000/mo for all adults. US gdp is 21t, so roughly 1/7th US gdp.

That money gets spent and comes back as tax revenue.

If you think UBI is expensive, wait until you find out how expensive it will be to have a hundred million unemployed (as a result of automation for one).

You give people money, they spend it on goods created by robots which are taxed, earning money to hand out to everyone as a dividend for being an owner in the national enterprise.

I'm probably missing something, but 12,000$ * 328 millions = 3.9 T$, not 39?

Should that be 3.9T per year? (330,000,000121000)

In addition to the missing zero, you'd hardly have everyone on UBI. Only those without jobs.

Keyword: Universal basic income.

Yes but UBI is offset by more taxes at higher income brackets. Most specific UBI proposals are 10x cheaper than 3.9b.

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