Math to do this in the USA in case you're intererested:
210,000,000 working age adults * $5900 / mo * 12 months ~= 15 TRILLION dollars per year.
The annual GDP of the USA is about 21.5 trillion.
210,000,000 working age adults * $5900 / mo * 12 months ~= 15 TRILLION dollars per year.
The annual GDP of the USA is about 21.5 trillion.
I am not from the US, would it be realistic to live on 1k USD a month?
For context, during the recession I managed to survive one year of severe underemployment, living in Houston, on an income of less than $20k for the year. Things were tight, and I had no savings at the end of that year, so I’m glad it didn’t last any longer. But if I imagine having that same experience with an extra $1k/mo in baseline income, it would have gone from “stressful” to “not where I want to be, but okay.”
Is it enough to live on? Well I think that depends on expectations, but it is a start and it is certainly better than nothing.
A true UBI would make abuse of low wage workers difficult as they can easily leave the job without worrying about being able to eat.
And again, that's only from the UBI. If you have even a crappy part-time minimum-wage job, your quality of life would increase by quite a lot.
This is about 2-3X the budget.
Then of course, you can begin walking the number backwards at tax time, and can recover more from folks at the top end of the wealth and income spectrum to offset.
It's worth comparing this to the US median income. That's about $32k annually, which equals $2,666 / month. I wouldn't expect a universal basic income program to attempt to be an equivalent alternative to earning the median income.
Effectively UBI but declines as the person makes money.
Some rough calculations:
In 2019 there were 34m people in poverty[1], lets assume 2 people per household (lower than nationwide average of ~3) so 17m households.
Topping each of them up to above the poverty line (~13k/y/person) would be 26k / household / year would be 442bn (and that's assuming all people below poverty line make 0 dollars).
Not bad considering the government already spends over twice that (1tr) on welfare each year[3].
Like others have said healthcare, housing issues etc would still be very damaging to some, but it's an interesting concept that could put every person in the country above the poverty line for not that much $$.
I also like that it (theoretically) still encourages working since a) poverty line is still a lower quality of life. and b) when you're below the line and make more money, the government gives you less $$ but less than you are making. i.e. if you make an extra 2 dollars, the government stopped reduces by 1, or something akin to that.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax
[2] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2020/demo/p60-27...
[3] https://www.budget.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/CRS%20Report%20-...
However, this UBI would generate tax income to offset. In fact, its been stated that welfare like food stamps (SNAP) actually brings in more 170% revenue vs. assistance provided [1]. If this is tax revenue positive (even if the return isn't as high as food stamps), why would the cost be a concern?
Not sure how you calculate things like tax credits and other methods of inflation/printing money.
Even if we were talking UBI, this calculation is pretty meaningless; nobody believes a version of UBI would be rolled out without tax changes.
Edit: for example in France there is a minimum income benefit that everyone is entitled, one might call that 'universal basic income', then: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenu_de_solidarit%C3%A9_acti...
The suggestion that this should be paid to everyone then clawed back from most people though taxes is rather odd. A lot of these discussions on UBI in the US seem to either be utopian or try to reinvent the wheel...
People in higher tax brackets probably wouldn't immediately benefit sure, but tax bracket isn't permanent.
So when American speak of convoluted UBI systems do they in fact just mean having an European level of welfare state?
I would see it to be much simpler just to take some basic level of current benefits and last resort benefits and just giving it to everyone. And then claiming it back in some way like higher income tax.
In Germany I can't get welfare, because I have too many savings. After graduating from university, I also could not get unemployment benefits because I had not earned enough when working as student.
Last time my work contract / research grant was about to expire, they said I would not get unemployment benefits, because I need to have a valid government id and my id card was expired. My still valid passport would not count. Although the grant was renewed, so I did not need unemployment benefits.
Now the grant is expiring again, and probably won't be renewed soon, so I applied again. I forgot I need to apply 3 months before expiration, so I only did it 1 month before. Now they want a copy of my work contract (which I do not have, because I seem to have lost the contract) as well as a attestation from my employer how long I have worked there (which I also do not have. The university said they will write one, but have not yet). Not sure what is going to happen now
I'm not sure what you mean by convoluted though. To me it seems much less convoluted to the existing patchwork welfare we have in this country.
UBI is never universal, that is just a marketing term. Where should the money come from? To finance UBI, you first have to get the money from somewhere, and for those people, UBI means just paying higher taxes.
The reason behind giving it to everyone of working age is to prevent people from falling into cracks like what can happen with unemployment.
It's an efficiency.
You can claw back from folks who don't need it at tax time.
Completely agree. Means-test the taxation, not the handout.
If rich people are getting the handout and don't need it, adjust tax to offset the handout with a phaseout.
We have a well developed process/venue to handle fairness of taxation - best place for means-testing.
1. Some people on disability need far more than any reasonable UBI would provide
2. SNAP, Social Security, Medicaid: Debt is an issue here. Even if you shield UBI payments from bankruptcy, that would still require those with large debt burdens to declare bankruptcy. Libertarians will say that choosing to starve rather than file bankruptcy is a valid life choice, but proponents of the mentioned entitlement programs will probably disagree.
> 1. Some people on disability need far more than any reasonable UBI would provide
Is that due to medical needs? Because if so, that would seem to be a job not for UBI but for a proper medical system, which this country is also woefully lacking.
> 2. SNAP, Social Security, Medicaid: Debt is an issue here. Even if you shield UBI payments from bankruptcy, that would still require those with large debt burdens to declare bankruptcy. Libertarians will say that choosing to starve rather than file bankruptcy is a valid life choice, but proponents of the mentioned entitlement programs will probably disagree.
While true, and I agree that it would have to be shielded from bankruptcy...
Gallup found that voters who identify as libertarians ranged from 17 to 23% of the American electorate. However, a 2014 Pew Poll found that 23% of Americans who identify as libertarians have little understanding of libertarianism.
At that point we're saying libertarians are the "10th dentist who hates Colgate."
While I appreciate their principled stance today, I'm confident that given the choice to cash their UBI check or starve, they'll be the first ones in line at the bank.
> Is that due to medical needs? Because if so, that would seem to be a job not for UBI but for a proper medical system, which this country is also woefully lacking.
First of all, you suggested eliminating (among other things) medicaid in favor of UBI.
Secondly, define "medical needs" if you are mentally incapable of managing your life, then someone has to care for you in a non-medical manner. As an extreme case, there are people who, if you walk up to them and say "please give me all your money," they will ... give you all their money.
Medicaid is a pretty predatory program in its implementation. It provides the bare minimum of care and comes after your personal effects to try and pay for it - for those over 55, states are required by law to recover whatever they spend on you, and they put a lien on your house. [1]
This serves to lock in systemic inequalities by taking away the inheritance from poor children while wealthy folks see their estate tax burdens removed or eliminated - it's a regressive tax on the poorest.
The program is an atrocity. It deserves to be nuked from orbit and replaced with something humane. It's only one step above "just let them die at the entrance to the hospital."
There's two ways to move forward if you choose to eliminate Medicaid. You either take a portion of the UBI payments and purchase private care, or you expand Medicare to, well, All.
> Secondly, define "medical needs" if you are mentally incapable of managing your life, then someone has to care for you in a non-medical manner. As an extreme case, there are people who, if you walk up to them and say "please give me all your money," they will ... give you all their money.
I do actually consider those to be medical needs but understand the point of contention there.
Libertarians would probably say "maybe" and "no" respectively, while others are more likely to say "no" and "yes".
Personal responsibility and freedom imply the freedom to be irresponsible and starve. Lots of people feel icky about that.
If you set the cutoff threshold high, then you're barely saving any money and end up spending a lot more on the bureaucracy than you'd save. On the flip side, if it's anywhere close to the income of a middle-class person then you could get an effect where earning more money makes you worse off.
Of course you can taper it off instead of making it a sudden cut-off, but that makes the bureaucracy even bigger.
Say you send everyone a check, adjust income tax so it washes out at something like 2x or 3x the base rate. No extra bureaucracy because your tax authority already has to to that, and at the same time you can same money on administration of a bunch of current programs (and get rid of them). Note that it clearly doesn't replace all programs. But UBI + universal health care of some sort would sure make a dent (US specific).
There are valid critiques of UBI's viability but universality isn't one of them.
It is clear that the Modern Monetary policy is one of infinite spending so why not... by the end of the year we will probably 1/2 to that number in COVID relief anyway