US GDP ~16 trillion. Government social spending 20% of GDP[1]
or about 3.2 trillion dollars. US population about 320 million.
That's right at about $10k per year to every American if we capped it at current government social spending.
So a family of 4 would get $40k a year.
You could make that 3.2 trillion go a lot further by raising taxes gradually so that when you reach say $75k you're paying as much extra taxes are you receive in Basic Income.
I'm pretty sure [1] includes state and local spending as well so this would be tricky.
I'm curious what that 20% of social spending covers. It certainly includes health so we can't say "eliminate medicare/medicaid, but you get a yearly check for $10,000!". That's not gonna cut it. Federal+State+Local welfare spending is only 8% of total gov. spend and only ~3.1% of GDP. A long, long, long ways from being able to cut a $10k check per person.
Edit: Why on earth would anyone downvote that? It boggles the mind.
>I'm curious what that 20% of social spending covers.
I'm sure there are plenty of things in that 20% that can't be replaced with $10k per person--things like extra equipment for poor schools. However this was just napkin math to show that it's within an order of magnitude of doable.
> "eliminate medicare/medicaid, but you get a yearly check for $10,000!".
For the vast majority of people that would be a huge net gain. The UK only spends about $3k per year on each person for health care, so I think the vast majority could get by on the insurance they could afford with $10k per person. You'd still have to account for the edge cases. This would probably work better in a country with a single payer system.
For the sake of argument, remove medicare/medicaid from the equation. That still leaves about 2.2 Trillion on other social spending. Let's subtract some other unknowns and leave it at just 1 trillion.
You can stretch that 1 trillion pretty far if you adjust it so that children don't get the full amount, and add extra graduated taxes so that households making over $45k (the national median) have a zero net benefit with only people making below the poverty line receiving the entire benefit.
I think it's very doable especially if you're willing to consider tax increases at the top. It's definitely not something outside the realm of possibility, and with demographic and labor changes in the United States over the next 50 years, I think something like a Basic Income is probable.
That's a good point that if you're giving everyone say $20,000 a year you could still set taxes such that for a majority of employed adults you're net zero. So for simplicity you could assume just paying welfare recipients.
The point of doing it this way vs current welfare would be increased transparency / reduced bureaucracy and providing more of a sliding scale of income classes rather than welfare / non-welfare buckets. In principle the costs could be made to be nearly equivalent.
That's right at about $10k per year to every American if we capped it at current government social spending.
So a family of 4 would get $40k a year.
You could make that 3.2 trillion go a lot further by raising taxes gradually so that when you reach say $75k you're paying as much extra taxes are you receive in Basic Income.
I'm pretty sure [1] includes state and local spending as well so this would be tricky.
[1] http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/...