Replacing existing benefits doesn't work out from either a math or political perspective. The UBI would be quite small, and people wouldn't be willing to replace existing benefits.
Fully paying for a benefit with new taxes doesn't seem very likely either.
Maybe if economic growth picks up significantly due to AI and other technology advanc…
Replacing existing benefits doesn't work out from either a math or political perspective. The UBI would be quite small, and people wouldn't be willing to replace existing benefits.
Fully paying for a benefit with new taxes doesn't seem very likely either.
Maybe if economic growth picks up significantly due to AI and other technology advances, along with many jobs perhaps going away, then the outlook changes. I think studying UBI now makes sense, but I see it mostly as research on potential future scenarios rather than something we could implement with our current economic constraints.
I won't argue about the political reality. I've gradually come to the realization that doing _anything_ real in today's political climate is pretty impossible, but I don't understand the "math" comment. If the money is small that definitionally means that the benefits they are receiving currently are small, unless you are arguing that the government is somehow able to get large multiplicative value out of providing non-monetary things relative to just the cash, to which I am pretty skeptical.
Replacing existing benefits doesn't work out from either a math or political perspective. The UBI would be quite small, and people wouldn't be willing to replace existing benefits.
Fully paying for a benefit with new taxes doesn't seem very likely either.
Maybe if economic growth picks up significantly due to AI and other technology advances, along with many jobs perhaps going away, then the outlook changes. I think studying UBI now makes sense, but I see it mostly as research on potential future scenarios rather than something we could implement with our current economic constraints.
I won't argue about the political reality. I've gradually come to the realization that doing _anything_ real in today's political climate is pretty impossible, but I don't understand the "math" comment. If the money is small that definitionally means that the benefits they are receiving currently are small, unless you are arguing that the government is somehow able to get large multiplicative value out of providing non-monetary things relative to just the cash, to which I am pretty skeptical.
Math is discussed in detail here: https://www.milkenreview.org/articles/the-pragmatic-case-for-a-universal-basic-income