
A basic income could boost the US economy by $2.5 trillion - rbanffy
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/09/a-basic-income-could-boost-the-us-economy-by-2-5-trillion?utm_content=buffer6b70b&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
======
11thEarlOfMar
It's more than the expense of paying the money and whether people will
continue to work. What needs to also be closely studied is:

\- Effect on crime

\- Effect on drug addiction

\- Effect on family outcomes

\- Effect on education opportunities

I'd gladly pay more taxes if I could draw a direct link between UBI and a
safer, happier society.

~~~
cmiles74
There was recently an article about a study on the prevalence of hookworm in
is US south[0]. It seems to me that basic income could go a long way towards
resolving this issue. One of the examples cited in the article involved a
trailer park where they pumped sewage into open pools. If every member of the
park was getting some form of basic income, the state could require the
trailer park to install a septic system and the trailer park, in turn, could
charge it's renters more and put in the system.

Currently it sounds like a blood from a stone situation: no one has any money,
so requiring the park to install a sanitation system would simply cause it to
file bankruptcy, likely with no change of any kind.

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15179440](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15179440)

~~~
chimeracoder
> If every member of the park was getting some form of basic income, the state
> could require the trailer park to install a septic system and the trailer
> park, in turn, could charge it's renters more and put in the system.

What you're describing is a special case of the exact sort of inflation that
critics are afraid of (more money for tenants across the board just means more
money that rentiers can extract).

If the argument is "we could use tax money (via a stipend to citizens, and
then extracted as rent) to implement a law that required a trailer park to
provide a functioning sewage system", then the easiest and most efficient way
to do that would be use tax money to provide a functioning sewage system.

~~~
lotu
> If the argument is "we could use tax money (via a stipend to citizens, and
> then extracted as rent) to implement a law that required a trailer park to
> provide a functioning sewage system", then the easiest and most efficient
> way to do that would be use tax money to provide a functioning sewage
> system.

That's assuming the only objective was to fix trailor park sewage, when
realistically there are thousands or maybe tens of thousands of similar
problems that different populations. The federal government simply doesn't
have the resources and logistical capabilities, to identify and address each
need in turn. If they tried lots of needs would end up overlooked. So instead
you provide the UBI and let the money get directed to the most pressing need.

~~~
chimeracoder
> The government simply doesn't have the resources and logistical
> capabilities, to identify and address each need in turn.

We already made the assumption that they do, with the original claim " If
every member of the park was getting some form of basic income, the state
could require the trailer park to install a septic system".

Without that requirement, you're taking on the risk that the rentiers will
extract the additional income and make no changes to the sewage system. That
assumes a few things:

(1) The trailer park owners don't currently have the money to building a
sewage system

(2) The lack of money is the _only_ reason that the owners aren't building a
sewage system

(3) The owners don't have other goals that they prioritize _higher_ than
providing a sewage system to tenants

(4) The amount that the rentiers would be able to extract from the stipend
would be enough to cover a sewage system

I'm generally pretty sympathetic to the premise that allowing rational actors
to choose how to spend their limited resources tends to produce results that
~everyone agrees are better than top-down planned efforts. But when you're
talking about a situation in which the negotiating leverage of the two parties
is so drastically imbalanced, and a problem which has such wide-reaching
externalities as this one does, that's a really big leap of faith to take.
Compare that to the alternative, where we've identified a concrete problem
that we're looking to solve, and we use a normal process for budgeting and
directing funds towards a targeted goal.

------
craftyguy
At a cost of $24 trillion? Ha!

250m[1] * $1000 * 8 * 12 = $24,000,000,000,000

1\. [http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/99-total-
populat...](http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/99-total-population-
by-child-and-adult#detailed/1/any/false/870,573,869,36,868/39,40,41/416,417)

~~~
rbanffy
If you increase taxation at the top ranges (and close loopholes the very rich
and their corporate personas use to evade taxes and so on) you'll end up just
injecting those trillions back into the economy.

If you use that to replace means-tested aid, you get rid of the management
overhead.

And, maybe, if the US cuts costs for the military, making them build roads and
schools instead of bombing them, you'll realize you really didn't need to
spend that much in the military anyway...

There is also an important point in terms of opportunities lost due to low
surplus. As you reduce the pressure on the poor, they will end up making
better decisions ([http://thepsychreport.com/research-application/featured-
rese...](http://thepsychreport.com/research-application/featured-research/the-
cognitive-burden-of-poverty/)) with better overall outcomes.

~~~
kazinator
> _you 'll end up just injecting those trillions back into the economy._

Right; that is, whichever economy those rich folks choose to call home. :)

~~~
nickthemagicman
There's been studies that found the rich don't leave a place due to taxes.

I.E. California has one of the biggest economies in the world...

[http://minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2011/02/documents/...](http://minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2011/02/documents/millionaire-
migration.pdf)

~~~
arcticbull
Makes sense, if you’re already wealthy then you pick where to live based on
where you want to live. Optimizing based on taxes seems cheap, I’d imagine
they’d rather solve that by making more money.

Plus it’s not like US citizens have much choice, they have to pay the IRS no
matter where you live in the world forever. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide
haha.

~~~
rbanffy
> Optimizing based on taxes seems cheap

Depends on the total amount of taxes paid. Some people dodge a couple billion
every year by doing some clever tricks with their residence, citizenship and
tax domicile.

~~~
arcticbull
Not if you're a US citizen :) even renouncing forces you to pay taxes to the
IRS on your way out the door (the expatriation tax:
[https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-
taxpayers/expa...](https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-
taxpayers/expatriation-tax))

~~~
rbanffy
You do. Your companies not so much.

------
bmcusick
Ignoring whether the study's assumptions are accurate, one problem with this
sort of rhetoric is that "the US economy" isn't a political constituency.
There's just people, and their claims on the economy in terms of personal
wealth and income.

It's sort of like when you say "NAFTA grows the US economy but $1 trillion"
and the guy who's job was outsourced to Mexico ask "Okay, but how does that
help me make rent or buy groceries for my family?"?

Basic Income (and other welfare schemes) are like that too, except for the
rich. They're absolutely worse off if the economy grows 10% but their personal
wealth and income declines by 20%.

Personally I'm a fan of UBI, but I sell it as (1) welfare is the right thing
to do, and (2) UBI is the most efficient way to do it.

I'd probably start with something less than $1,000/month though. I'd offer a
package deal to employers and the rich that looks like this: the government
will pay healthcare costs and provide $500/month to each adult and $250/month
for each child, and in return we abolish the minimum wage.

~~~
oneplane
Minimum wage isn't just "you have to pay workers enough to survive", it's also
"you have to acknowledge that workers are worth amount X".

~~~
LyndsySimon
Alternatively, it's "you cannot hire employees who are less valuable to you
than this arbitrary threshold."

If someone wants to work for $1 / hour and someone else wants to hire them for
$1 / hour... what right does a third party have to prevent them from doing
business with each other?

~~~
malyk
Coercion, basically.

People need money to live. Some of them need money more desperately than
others. Some are willing to work long hours under shitty conditions for almost
anything.

So, if you have 1 job, and 2 people need to work to survive, then the salary
for that job will approach zero because those people have no other choice.

We, as a society, realize that is a bad outcome for everyone, and so we say
"Look, I know you /could/ hire someone to clean your toilet for $1 an hour,
but that isn't the true cost of toilet cleaning because we don't live in a
truly free market and there are larger factors that might force people to
accept that wage against their will. Therefore, we're going to say that $X is
the lowest you are allowed to pay to overcome the inherent coercion in jobs."

One of the beauties of UBI is that, at least theoretically, low wage jobs will
have salaries that actually come closer to the true market clearing price of
the job itself. To be clear, it is likely that the true cost of toilet
cleaning is closer to $3 or $4 an hour, but people with no options would take
the job for $1...and there are a ton of those people out there. Under UBI
there might not be people that desperate any longer and so they would only
take the toilet cleaning job if it paid more...closer to the true market value
of having clean toilets.

~~~
bmcusick
Yup, good summary. The coercion angle is one more reason why maintaining "full
employment" is a pro-labor policy. By keeping the number of job openings
larger than the number of people looking for work, you create bargaining power
for workers to increase wages.

The UBI angle works both for and against worker negotiating leverage. On the
one hand, workers know that their entire income isn't on the line if they
quit, so they have more leverage. On the other hand, they know that they're
getting X from the government, and while they need Y to live, they'll accept
work at Y-X.

------
brookside
I'm currently on an Amtrak train between Philadelphia and NYC.

Especially in leafless winter, the sheer _uglyness_ of this swath of in-
disrepair America is almost shocking.

Abandoned factories and houses. Lifeless downtowns. Trash along the tracks.
Non-sweet graffiti.

Paying people to do _nothing_ when there is _so much to be done_ seems crazy
to me. It's not like we have figured out how to solve these problems with AI
or robots yet.

I could listen to an argument for paying people to participate in FDR-style
public works programs. Building a bicycle lane network. Planting flowerbeds.
Demolition and recycling and then re-urbanization or re-forestation of those
crumbling factory grounds. And so many more things that would make this a
better place to exist.

~~~
ChuckMcM
If you want to point to the single concept that has to be re-examined to
understand basic income it is this one:

    
    
       "Paying people to do **nothing** when there 
        is **so much** to be done seems crazy to me."
    

It speaks to the foundation question of value for capital that is pounded into
our heads (in the US at least) from birth that if you want to make it you need
to get a job that pays well. And it forces us to ask the very important
questions and re-examine some of our assumptions.

Some of the things I have thought about when considering BI have been, is it
really "nothing" we are paying for? Lets say you're living in a neighborhood
without any jobs available, and without jobs and property taxes your
educational infrastructure is lacking, and without a job in the first place
your mobility is lacking. However you do find employment in selling illegal
drugs, the market is wide spread, the risk is low for the street level
dealers. Now into that market your provide a basic income for the youth who
can now pursue their interests _without_ participating in some form of
underground economy. Can you see paying people to not participate in that
economy?

When I think about BI I have come to think about removing worry rather than
paying for 'nothing'. IF you look at income disparity versus economic
efficiency, economies grow when there is incentive to get ahead but they begin
to contract once that disparity exceeds a threshold. If the bottom of the
economy is worried about where they are going to sleep and eat tonight, they
aren't very efficient or contributory to the overall GDP, if the top end of
the economy is keeping all of its wealth bottled up in trading games with
other top end users, it isn't contributing to the overall GDP either.

If you force disparity to zero, you essentially get communism, if you leave
disparity unconstrained forever you appear to get monarchistic type trapped
wealth. If you change the rules of the game so that people can be wealthy or
not, but the total difference between maximum wealth and minimum wealth is
constrained to 2 orders of magnitude rather than 4. Perhaps you get a better
system overall.

~~~
psadri
Money represents value created. If you simply hand out money, say in the form
of BI, without it being in exchange for value created, you are simply
deflating the value of money. This will cause inflation. And you'll end up
back where yo started - the recipients of BI have more money but its buying
power has been reduced, canceling each other out.

I'm with the parent comment. There is so much work to be done in this world -
we should first try to tackle those before taking the BI shortcut.

~~~
Frondo
I find this argument unconvincing not just because the evidence _doesn 't_
support it (and it doesn't), but because this claim is the same one made
whenever anyone proposes _anything_ to put more money in the hands of the
poors.

Every time, it's the exact same argument, "if you give the poors more,
everything will cost more, and they'll be right back where they started." And,
well, we didn't always look like this. Obviously it's possible for there to be
a different equilibrium in society, one with less disparity. So _something_
has changed.

Seems like there should be ways to change it back, even to the disparity we
had (overall, I know life was horrible for PoC) in post-WWII America. That'd
be a step up from this.

------
asherwebb
For the most part the poor in the USA already can get access to food stamps,
medicaid, section 8 and a number of other programs that provide a safety net -
especially if there are dependents in the household. For the middle class a
reduced income tax rate would be much more effective than a UBI when it comes
to saving money and having more for personal spending. The idea of giving a
UBI to the rich strikes me as a bit of a stretch. Again paying people not to
work while the rich continue to amass more wealth due to technology and
capitalization seems to me a great way to create a permanent under class. The
idea that government printing money to "take care of its people" strikes me as
a naive experiment in socialism that is bound to fail.

------
AznHisoka
" enacting a UBI and paying for it by increasing the federal debt would grow
the economy (and increase GDP)"

Printing trillions and trillions of dollars of money would increase the debt
and increase GDP. Let's do that too!

~~~
sergiosgc
We're already doing that[1]. It's just that Quantitative Easing is being
injected in the economy via banks.

[1] I'm actually European, but the ECB and the Federal Reserve are behaving in
similar fashion, in this case.

~~~
jrs95
In a sense basic income would be an improvement over this in that the money
would be going to everyone instead of primarily to the rich.

~~~
chimeracoder
> In a sense basic income would be an improvement over this in that the money
> would be going to everyone instead of primarily to the rich.

Quite the opposite.

The people who benefit the _most_ from quantitative easing and inflation are
people who are in debt. The rich tend to be net debt _holders_ , not net
debtors, so they're the ones primarily _harmed_ by quantitative easing and an
increase in the money supply.

 _EDIT_ : Fixed typo

~~~
sdljfslkjfdsj
It's stunning that anyone who has witnessed per asset class appreciation
(consider wages an asset class as well) since the GFC could believe what you
said.

Inflation obviously helps those in debt but QE didn't inflate anything except
risky asset classes objectively held by the wealthy. Even by the feds own
studies & public communications by the chair woman inflation continues to
remain "subdued" almost 10 years after.

Wages have stagnated & only recently picked up, GDP has been the lowest post-
recovery ever, net household debt is again at new highs, interest rates at
forever in the history of human civilization lows. Meanwhile every single risk
seeking asset class primarily owned by the wealthy has appreciated to levels
last seen at prior bubble peaks.

QE helps the rich & if it helps anybody else it's an accident. Sadly by the
time non-rich households are able to participate in risk seeking asset classes
they are so expensive that when objectively measured against historical
readings future returns are flat to negative. Uncle Warren said "the fool does
in the end what the wise man did in the beginning" & QE will guarantee the
non-rich fall into the same foolish traps.

~~~
chimeracoder
> It's stunning that anyone who has witnessed per asset class appreciation
> (consider wages an asset class as well) since the GFC could believe what you
> said.

Between the two of us, one has a degree in economics from one of the top
universities in the US and is posting under an established, identifiable
handle. The other is posting from a brand-new throwaway account.

I'm willing to accept that I might be wrong about things sometimes, but when a
random, anonymous person on the Internet says they're "stunned" by me
paraphrasing an established economic principle, I'm going to be pretty
unconvinced unless they present some compelling evidence and solid analysis.

As for the rest of your comment, even if one takes your statements about the
current state of the world at face value, it doesn't leave you anywhere. You
can't generalize entire economy of the last ten _years_ and assume that it
reflects the effects of quantitative easing (and no other confounding
factors).

I don't really want to litigate the post-2008 economy here, because that's
pretty off-topic. In the context of the orginal statement - the claim that
"basic income would be better than EQ because QE primarily benefits the rich"
\- yes, it's pretty clear that that goes against a rather straightforward and
established body of both economic theory _and_ empirical research.

~~~
sdljfslkjfdsj
More than $4.5T in bonds bought in multiple policy regimes over years and have
been halted for sometime but we can't use that as a benchmark? I suspect it
has something to do with not aligning with your narrative.

How about Japan pre GFC since they started QE in March 2001[1] meanwhile CPI
in japan since 2001 has remained near 0[2]. Is 17 years enough data points?
Which QE regime that resulted in any meaningful inflation or wage growth would
you like to discuss? I'm afraid any I'd bring up from G7 sovereigns would be
marginalized due to your credentials.

Buying bonds does not help out anyone other than the rich. Artificially
reducing interest rates makes borrowing easier which companies take advantage
of[3] to buy back stock[4] which adds buying pressure to risk assets. Fewer
shares to buy[5] helps the "E" in the P/E through financial engineering.

Who buys those corporate bonds for the juicy yield (besides the ECB & BOE)?
Hedge funds & those who have disposable income that can be allocated to risky
assets via pensions & mutual funds. Not part-time workers or FTE's that live
pay check to paycheck which most do[6].

QE doesn't primarily benefit the rich, it ONLY benefits the rich.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing#Japan_befo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing#Japan_before_2007)
(see its citations) [2] [http://www.inflation.eu/inflation-
rates/japan/historic-infla...](http://www.inflation.eu/inflation-
rates/japan/historic-inflation/cpi-inflation-japan.aspx) [3]
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TDSAMRIAONCUS](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TDSAMRIAONCUS)
[4]
[https://www.yardeni.com/pub/buybackdiv.pdf](https://www.yardeni.com/pub/buybackdiv.pdf)
[5]
[https://www.yardeni.com/pub/sharesos.pdf](https://www.yardeni.com/pub/sharesos.pdf)
[6] [https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/most-americans-live-
paycheck...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/most-americans-live-paycheck-to-
paycheck.html)

------
JonFish85
Outside of the "how to pay for it" question (which has never been addressed
beyond vague "tax the rich" promises) there's another problem: how to save
people from themselves. One could think of this as an annuity, and try to cash
it in for total cash value today (e.g. lump sum payment): get $200k today, and
sign over the rest of the checks you get for life. Then what do you do with
bankrupt folks? Sorry, you had your chance, now you starve in the streets? Of
course not -- so you still need another safety net for those people.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Then what do you do with bankrupt folks? Sorry, you had your chance, now you
> starve in the streets?

The institution of bankruptcy already answers, in general outline, the
question of what to do with bankrupt folks: in short, cancel debts that aren't
payable without excessive hardship. UBI should obviously be payable only to
the beneficiary (except in the case of legal incapacity), who might _contract_
to pay an equal amount to someone else, but such a contractual liability would
be as subject to cancellation in bankruptcy as any other debt.

------
jeffdavis
How would BI work with immigration? I could see that creating a lot of social
problems if immigrants are percieved to consume more in BI than they
contribute in taxes.

------
joshuaheard
"$1,000 paid monthly ... by increasing the federal debt would grow the
economy."

Borrowing money from my credit card does not increase my annual salary.

~~~
jkn
No but it does grow the economy. Things you buy with the borrowed money count
towards the GDP.

If you have people buying and selling nothing that's going to be a small
economy.

If you have the same people, with the same wealth, buying and selling stuff to
each other, that grows the economy.

If you have the same people buying and selling stuff faster, they may still
retain the same wealth but the economy will grow even further.

The size of the economy is about the number of transactions, and printing
money or borrowing money can definitely grow the economy (IF that money gets
used to accelerate economic transactions).

~~~
jtuente
> If you have the same people buying and selling stuff faster, they may still
> retain the same wealth but the economy will grow even further.

At the expense of future growth. All of the money borrowed must eventually be
paid back, which reduces growth by reducing that same money supply (increasing
taxes to pay for it reduces the money supply similarly). It only makes sense
to borrow when the future rate of return is greater than the interest rate of
the debt, i.e. it'll take more than 8 years to see any return on investment
from UBI.

------
bluetwo
The only place I can think of that has done something similar is the oil and
land rights of the native people of Alaska, who get checks somewhere in that
range. How has this turned out for them?

~~~
abfan1127
the difference is the Alaska pulled natural resources out of the ground. Basic
Income is just wealth transfer.

~~~
genzoman
Hipster way to say "stealing" ;)

~~~
llamataboot
Absolutely not. There's no such thing as individually made profits that don't
rely on a ton of collective factors. It s not stealing if it wasn't yours in
the first place. It's ours.

~~~
draugadrotten
> There's no such thing as individually made profits that don't rely on a ton
> of collective factors.

You're confused. Depending on a factor does not mean that this factor owns
what you produced. Example: To make ice-cream, you depend on cows. Cows do not
own your profits.

~~~
Fraterkes
Bad example, because we don't acknowledge the concept of animals owning things
in the first place. The above argument is a moral one; arguing that closing
the wealth gap is stealing (often) ignores that most "self-made" people depend
on the labor of others and the recources we all use in society.

------
BatFastard
Here is what I calculate 250m[1] * $1000 * 12 = $3,000,000,000,000 Now take
away the people on social security - 56m Now take away the people currently
employed - 145m Give us around 50 million people, at a cost of around 600
billion per year. Wow, thats a lot BUT if we now look at cost for existing
social welfare programs - 927 billion.

Means we would save around 300 billion per year!

Of course families would require more, but this does not seem quite as crazy
for a country that has a 18 trillion GDP.

~~~
openasocket
Except those social welfare programs would still be essential. If you're poor
and get sick, or you're disabled, you get a lot more (and need a lot more)
than $1000/mo from today's social welfare programs.

Also, your math doesn't make sense. You say we currently spend $927B on social
welfare programs and propose BI as a complete replacement for those programs.
But that number includes Social Security, and you subtracted the people on
social security from your list of people. Social security cost $917B by the
way, almost all of our social welfare spending.

You also can't just subtract all the people currently employed. A large
portion of people on welfare are employed.

[https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/policy-
basics-w...](https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/policy-basics-where-
do-our-federal-tax-dollars-go)

~~~
BatFastard
Some good points. So what would you estimate and how?

~~~
openasocket
Assume you give $1000/mo to all people below the poverty line as a replacement
for all current social safety net programs (including ETC and SNAP and Social
Security, but not or Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP). There are currently 43.1
million Americans living in poverty. But, keep in mind many Americans are only
above the poverty line because of government assistance. According to the link
I gave, without any government assistance it is estimated 79.1 million
Americans would be in poverty.

You wind up with ~$949.2B, which is close to what we're paying currently.

It would also involve cuts to various groups. For instance, the average
retiree gets ~$1,300/mo from Social Security.

There's actually a larger issue I forgot to mention: what you're talking about
isn't actually BI. In your computation you assume we're only paying $1000/mo
to those who are not on Social Security and are not employed. But the whole
point of Basic Income is that it goes to everyone. What you're talking about
is just a different form of welfare, and completely unrelated to what this
system is proposing.

~~~
BatFastard
The tapered income tax idea has value.

[https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2017/5/30/15712160/b...](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2017/5/30/15712160/basic-income-oecd-aei-replace-welfare-state)

------
blunte
Whether this estimate is accurate or not is less relevant than the question:
If the US economy were boosted by a basic income (or any change, in fact),
what percentage of that economic gain would go into the pockets of the people
who have been capturing 90% of all growth over the last 20 years?

If the answer to my question isn't a very high percentage, then such a program
would never even be discussed in Congress.

------
asherwebb
Perhaps the correct question to posit is the following - is making people more
dependent on the government ever going to truly empower people and their
communities or will it eventually lead to disenfranchisement? Look at what
happened with all the government sanctioned urban renewal projects in the
1970's. You had the government claim land by eminent domain in many inner
cities with the idea that they would renew that area and folks would be able
to move back to their homes. Instead you had large numbers of those folks who
had been living with very little government assistance for generations move
into housing projects en masse. Those projects are now hotbeds for drugs and
crime, the residents never got to move back to their houses and it has created
generational dependance on welfare. Don't trust that company scrip in other
words - especially when the company is the government

------
jeffdavis
Let's say someone is comfortable enough with BI in their twenties, and never
bother to get a substantial ("real") job. Are they effectively stuck that way
for life?

Older, with no work experience, and maybe having children, are they really
going to be able to launch a career from scratch?

------
erjjones
Instead of a basic income, why not make the first $1,000 each month of taxes
owed exempt.

~~~
cestith
Destitute people don't pay taxes.

------
king07828
Is $1000 per month too high to start with? Okay, then start with $100 per
month. Too low? Okay, then go up to $500 ... settle on an amount > $0. Also,
eliminate all other welfare programs and require attending at least one 3 hour
class per week (or teaching a class or do 3hrs of volunteer work). Financial
feasibility, check. Getting people to do more than smoke or gamble, check.
What more do you want?

------
dynofuz
And it would cost 3.6 Trillion (300M adults x 12k), so where does that come
from? I'm all for basic income, but id love to see a way this to actually be
funded. Ideally from the corporations that are gaming the tax laws. Or is it
reducing social security / medicare / other welfare etc?

~~~
rqtaylor
The same way we fund the government now
[https://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/us_deficit](https://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/us_deficit)

------
ketsa
>Other nations, such as India and Switzerland, have discussed experiments of
their own in the coming years.

It may not be called basic income but it exists already in Switzerland. I know
people that haven't worked since a decade and still receive their monthly
payments.

------
nickik
No matter what you think of basic income, this study is clealy absurd.

------
jeffdavis
This is the kind of thing that could be tried on a small scale. Why is it
being pushed at the national level?

------
leifaffles
This is not convincing in the slightest... and a great example of why
proponents of basic income need to up their game.

