- A Seattle basic income pilot gave low-income residents $500 a month, nearly doubling employment rates.
- Some participants reported getting new housing, while others saw their employment incomes rise.
- Basic income pilots nationwide have seen noteworthy success, despite conservative opposition.
Absolutely they would. Everyone would.
Of course taxes would rise to cover it, so the average person would be absolutely no better off than they are now.
In return the really poor get some breathing room, and we can kill all the “money grabbing dolescum” discourse around claiming benefits. People with low outgoings who just want a break from the treadmill can take it.
That’s actually incredibly optimistic, imo.
$500 a month is $6000 a year.
If we gave that amount of UBI to all working age Americans (rounded down for easy math, numbers 200 million), that’s a price tag of $1.2 trillion, every year.
That’s slightly more than the amount the US spends on welfare programs annually. The entire federal budget is about $6.2 trillion, so this would mean an increase of almost 20%. Where could we possibly get that much more tax revenue?
You’re getting half that back every year. You forgot that part. So it only cost 600 million a year. In fact that means we could kick it to a thousand a month and still be close to our current welfare budget. Find the number that matches exactly, (something like 928) and we can match our current spending while giving poor Americans ~$11,000 a year.
And the government smaller thing actually works here too. You’d think the conservatives would love this! Unless, it’s actually about hurting people isn’t it? Was smaller government just code for hurting people?