Just to test your hypothesis that a UBI of $20k per household (or $5k per person) would be prohibitively expensive from a budgetary standpoint.
- There are 325m people in the USA — if they all receive $5k, that amounts to $1.625 trillion
We should probably take into account that around 60m people are receiving welfare payments currently, so if the welfare they required fell by up to $5k each, that would reduce net cost of this UBI by several hundred $bn also. Same goes for savings from other costs related to managing poverty (ill health, crime, alcohol and drug abuse etc).
2. Total personal income in the USA is $16 trillion.
This would require an income tax rate on all income of just 10% (not the 20% you state).
Of course, there are other gov’t services and programmes that require funding, but you can see how easily any UBI can be absorbed into taxation, especially when savings from current welfare programmes and other spending are taken into consideration
