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Giving $500/mo to everyone would cost like half of the current federal budget per year.

I think the idea is that it would grow the economy and overall tax revenue. Struggling with housing and joblessness is a great way to avoid paying tax - if you’ve got nothing you pay nothing. For people who don’t need the money, it just flows into their taxes, and their purchases. In addition the insane amounts spent on policing, and other downstream costs of poverty would help recoup.

But the final argument for something like this is: do you want to thrive while someone else starves? Would it not be worth it to you to thrive a small amount less in order to ensure that nobody is starving?

It might also just inflate the cost of everything to the point where increases in rent, groceries, etc. eat up whatever money we distribute like that.

I mean, inflating away debts is certainly one way to reduce the associated pain, but inflation can also wipe out wages, so it’s a bit of a balance. We haven’t seen a permanent UBI scheme in a large enough way to know what might happen.

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