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0 pointsprostoalex9y ago0 comments

> You get $700 / month from the government for basic income. Your social security, welfare, unemployment, disability, etc is reduced by $700 / month.

What happens to Medicare under that scenario? Some medical procedures, particularly for old people, can exceed that.

Current federal government revenues top out at $3 trillion. Dividing it by a rough population number of 300 million (and ignoring the fact that portion of it comes from corporate income tax, excise taxes, etc.), the revenues collected stand at $10,000 a year a citizen. Distributing $8,400 a year back requires rather deep cuts to every single entitlement program and then some (defense, USPS, air traffic controllers, national parks, etc.)

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Grishnakh9y ago

Medicare and UBI would have to be separate programs, just like Social Security and Medicare are today. Poor old people living off of Social Security don't pay their medical bills out-of-pocket, they have Medicare to pay for them.

In a system with UBI, we'd really need to have universal healthcare ("Medicare for all"). Someone making only the basic income isn't going to have any money for sky-high Obamacare premiums, and would likely be on Medicaid. But that whole system is a complete mess, with a lot of people unable to afford Obamacare because their state didn't expand Medicaid enrollment. And now with one of the biggest insurance companies pulling out of the Obamacare exchanges, rates are going to skyrocket even more. There's only two solutions to this: 1) repeal Obamacare and change to a system where people who have no insurance are denied healthcare and are left outside the ER to die on the street, or 2) universal healthcare.

The way politics are going in this country, I predict we'll see #1 before we see #2.

prostoalexOP9y ago

If one is keeping the largest entitlement program of them all, the originally quoted $700 a month is a bit pie in the sky number.

mac010219y ago

Check out these pie charts to see what money get's spent for each different entitlement programs [1].

It seems like we currently have 2 buckets:

- living money for people who, for whatever reason, have no source of income

- publicly funded medical insurance

It doesn't seem totally unreasonable to classify medical expenses separately from routine living expenses.

The amount of spending in the routine-living-expenses bucket is enough to pay about $350 per month to each of the country's 320M residents.

I think a good proposal is to instate that $350 universal half basic income, replacing social security and unemployment insurance, and then reduce the minimum wage to $0. Even with the rise of a robotic workforce, just about anyone should be able to find work that will pay the remaining 350 if they're allowed to work for little enough.

[1] https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-bud...

Edit / Afterthought: No one currently receiving social security or unemployment will support this proposal because they are all receiving way more than that. More than 700/month, and certainly more than they need to survive.

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