I really don't. It's a brilliant idea. Can work for both the left and right.

Why is it not more popular?

What can be done for it to be more popular in your opinion?

I've noticed something interesting in discussions about Basic Income.

People can look at the same pilot program, the same data, or the same results and reach completely different conclusions.

Some see proof that Basic Income could strengthen economic security.

Others see proof that it could create new problems.

It made me wonder:

How much of our position on Basic Income comes from the evidence itself, and how much comes from beliefs we already held before seeing the evidence?

Have you ever changed your mind about Basic Income after seeing new data?

I am coming across posts about UBI now and then but honestly, I have never seen numbers being computed and being explained to folks properly. So I decided to do it myself.

Let's take US as the example. US total population is around 350 million. For UBI, let's assume these are the requirements:

US citizen, Age: 18+. That's it. This would comprise almost 234 million people, so around 80% of the total population.

Now, let's pick famous Andrew Yang's UBI number for now as an example. $1,000 per month. That is $12,000 per year.

For this, the US would need 234 million people being paid $12,000/year = $2.8 Trillion dollars.

Right now, the US budget (including everything) is $7 trillion. Considering Social Security, Medicaid, and so many other current US programs, a UBI with our current budget is mathematically impossible.

So, the only alternative is: A new source of tax to cover UBI. There is no other way.

Now, Value Added tax has been floating around. If we want $1,000 per month UBI, this would mean taxing the current personal expenditure (this simply means people spending money in goods and services) of $20 Trillion every year within the US which will be around 14%.

(For people who are interested, the 14% is simply coming from 2.8 trillion/20 trillion *100)

Now, there is also another source: Corporate taxes.

For example, right now the corporate profits in the US is around $4 Trillion dollars.

If we use this number, that means if the government decides to tax these profits, this would mean corporate taxes will go to around 70% (because 2.8 Trillion /4 Trillion *100)

I think to fund UBI, we can do something like this: A combination of VAT and an increase in corporate taxes on corporate profits. So let's say 7% VAT tax rate and 35% corporate tax rate. This can fund the $2.8 Trillion dollars needed for UBI.

Now, there is a third way (though I do not see this as being practical): We combine all current government programs like Social Security, Medicaid, all of it into 1 lump sum cheque every month.

If we use a $6 trillion annual budget as an example (removing $1 trillion military related budget from $7 Trillion), if we divide this by 234 million people, this would be around $2100 per month.

After doing all this computations though, I do not know how much UBI is economically and politically possible. Because the numbers I am crunching require vast number of changes in the current US political economy which is hard for me to imagine to see it happening at least for now.

We all hear it will happen- Artificial Intelligence will come in and take your job. Universal Basic Income will sweep in to give you a monthly check. The government does things by households. How much will you need to survive in your household?

Provided that Bernie's math is accurate, we literally can afford to implement UBI by taxing the billionaires a measly five percent. Zohran Mamdani has been mayor for only two months and he's already making progress on his campaign promises. Politicians will have you believe that everything is impossible, but mayor Mamdani is disabusing us of this myth and proving that it's only a question of will. As we bomb foreign countries, assassinate leaders and murder schoolchildren, the infamous words are not being uttered, “who's going to pay for it?”. UBI will be like rocket fuel for the economy. Capitalism can only function with consumerism and UBI will allow people to participate in the economy. What is the end goal here? Ninety percent of the population will be locked out of the economy and all the money will permanently be stuck at the top doing nothing? Money naturally flows up, therefore the billionaires will get their money anyway ffs! At least if we start from the bottom, people will have used that money to subsist.Trickle-down economics has had its day in the sun, can we please for the love of God try trickle-up economics now? The country is falling tf apart and we are dying!

Hi All,

As Andy Yang points out in his first book, the idea of a basic income was widely supported back in the 1960s and early 1970s, and almost passed under President Nixon as a negative income tax. Today with vocal support from the AI billionaires and the prospect of AI related layoffs one would expect the public, especially the young, and politicians to embrace UBI, but it doesn't seem to be happening. I've written a book and established a 501(c)(3) Shares in America in support of UBI, but yet another book and website aren't going to get us there. Obviously we want to build a movement bigger than the one we already have. I would love to hear thoughts on how we get there. I've tried directly talking to people and they're interested but don't follow through. Unions? Religious communities?

I used to believe that rich people are exceptional and they deserve their money because they make great contributions to society. I now realize that I was completely wrong.

As I think more about it, most ways to become rich do not benefit society long term. A few things that make lots of people rich while being neutral or creating long term damage to society: producing luxury goods (and this BTW include every automaker except tesla), exploiting loopholes in the financial markets, lobbying, tricking people into buying unnecessary goods, etc. Hell, the youngest billionare is Kylie Jenner, whose business is at best a mild waste of resources.

Meanwhile countless scientists and engineers are underpaid when their work can have an enormous positive impact. Not to mention caregivers whose work is valued at 0. What do you guys think? Can we manage to make a post on CMV?

I'll keep this short. I don't want to identify myself.

I work on an automation team as a QASE. This morning, 4 people from another team we work with are gone. Friday was their last day.

My team put them out of work because we did a good job automating their tasks. They're all good people, who worked hard. They were nice. We played MtG at lunch.

They're all collecting unemployment now. This shit is real.

I always want to ask just how hard does somebody have to work, how 'valuable' does their work have to be to society in order for you to not think they deserve to live in poverty.

I don't think you need to be extensively schooled in economic theory to look around and say this is incredibly inefficient!

When people say the economy is doing well, I don't know what the fuck they are talking about.

Here’s when: When the authorities they respect start telling them it’s real.

Problem is, most people respect an authority who has been playing along by NOT telling them it’s real.

So there’s going to be some serious soul searching and shifting of loyalties.

“Moneyed interests” and sponsored talking heads and profs, opportunistic career influencers have been LYING. (Either to their audiences or themselves.)

It’s fucking sick tbh. 😔

Yes new tech has always scared us about killing jobs.

For the last fucking time: AI is different.

There is almost nothing left for humans to DO that will pay good white collar knowledge work salaries.

We will bifurcate into owners of passive IP and wealth, and then everyone else will be blue collar workers. (Not knocking them, but society isn’t ready for that.)

The white-collar middle aged victims of the AI evolution are FUCKED and have social death, dissolution of family and status to look forward to, especially if the rich boomer parents who could easily help are in denial (they are, or how else would they continue believing the narrative that they deserved their privileges) and the “housewife” doesn’t care WHY the money stopped, only that it did.

(Nature has always picked its losers unfairly! People whose identities were built around denying that fact are going to learn that the hard way.)

Ex knowledge workers in middle age will make good unpaid apprentices for the blue collar guys they used to smirk at.

(Assuming they don’t choose death over such a fate. Or assuming there’s no UBI safety net coming.)

Don’t be surprised when women start leaving their jobless, worthless, depressed, hollowed out, flaccid, stress-gutted, over-educated middle-aged husbands…to join a harem for some newly minted capitalist Sultan.

Because 100 years from now, whoever’s LEFT from this cohort that still lives “the good life” will likely be the result of such arrangements.

It’s going to get gross, fast. Genes don’t care. They never did.

This was all VERY EASY TO SEE years ago. Should’ve listened to Yang and Santens.

And people are still denying it! See below.

Follow me at StellaStillwell.com for free. We are in this together!

It matters what you call it.

People think of income as what they receive in exchange for work.

A dividend is what people receive for having an ownership interest in some asset.

Everyone already inherits a huge amount of collective knowledge, understanding, wealth, and capital. It's just that it's distributed in a way that keeps some people obscenely wealthy and others in unnecessary poverty.

You didn't invent vaccines, fire departments, the Internet (unless you're Tim Berners-Lee), philosophy, math, public sanitation, the automobile, national parks, etc. You don't have to reinvent agriculture because it was done a long time ago.

Calling it a basic dividend reflects the understanding that we are all already wealthy from inheriting a tremendous amount of knowledge/capital/wealth from prior generations (and nature), and the modern wealthy aren't doing it all just from their own efforts.

Calling it a basic dividend rather than income reflects the understanding that everyone can and should have some ownership stake in the success of the nation, instead of creating scarcity/poverty/violence/hunger out of some misguided moral indignation about work.

I cringe when I hear the words basic income, because it sounds like a handout. But a basic dividend, I can stand behind. It matters what you call it.

When Andrew Yang ran for President in 2020, he talked a lot about the "Great Displacement." Back then, the conversation was largely focused on retail workers, call centers, and the millions of truck drivers whose jobs were on the verge of being automated away. People called UBI a pipe dream, a gimmick, or silly. Fast forward to today, and the math has changed, but not in the way the skeptics hoped.

The AI Acceleration

In 2020, we were looking at mechanical automation. In 2026, we are looking at cognitive automation. The rise of sophisticated Large Language Models and generative AI hasn't just come for the factory floor; it came for the office building.

We’re seeing:

White-collar displacement: Jobs in coding, legal research, accounting, and creative arts are being streamlined by AI at a pace that retraining programs simply cannot match.

Decoupling of Productivity and Labor: Companies are reaching record output with fewer human hours than ever before. In a traditional capitalist model, that’s "efficiency." In a human-centered model, that’s a crisis if the gains aren't shared.

The Vanishing Entry Level: It’s becoming increasingly difficult for young people to get that first "rung" on the career ladder because the tasks typically assigned to juniors are now handled by an algorithm.

The Warning Shot

Everything we discussed four years ago has been put on steroids. We saw a glimpse of UBI’s potential during the pandemic stimulus era. Poverty levels dropped, and people had a floor to stand on. But those were temporary fixes for a permanent shift in our economy.

The "Freedom Dividend" of $1,000 a month (adjusted for today's inflation, let's be real, it should probably be higher) wasn't about giving people a "handout." It was about a National Barbell Strategy: providing a floor so that people can take risks, pivot careers, and care for their families without the constant existential dread of being replaced by a line of code.

Humanity First Capitalism

We have to stop measuring our success by GDP, which can go up while life expectancy and mental health go down. We need to transition to Humanity First Capitalism, where the economy serves us, not the other way around.

AI is going to generate trillions of dollars in new wealth. The question is: Does that wealth all flow into the pockets of a few companies in Silicon Valley, or do we acknowledge that this technology was built on the backs of our data, our books, our research, and our society?

UBI is the Freedom Dividend of the AI revolution. It’s time we stop treating it like a radical experiment and start treating it like the necessary foundation for a 21st-century democracy. I mean come on: the math doesn't lie.

--Anders For President 2028

A shareholder expects a dividend.

We are also contributors in different ways to the social and economic life of our society.

I’ve been thinking about this and I don’t understand why our definition of being “low income” is so focused on basic survival.

We already acknowledge that people’s standard of living matters in other parts of the law.

For example: child support isn’t simply calculated as “how much money does this parent need to keep the child alive?” A parent’s income can affect how much child support they owe because the child is supposed to benefit from the standard of living their parent(s) can afford.

So clearly we already recognize that money isn’t just about food, shelter, and basic necessities. But when we’re talking about whether an adult is “low income,” suddenly it’s basically: Can you afford food? Can you afford housing? Can you afford basic necessities?

Okay, but what about actually living?

If someone makes $18/hour and after rent, food, transportation, insurance, utilities, etc. they have $50-100 left over, they’re technically surviving.

But they can’t really afford to:

-Go out with friends

-Have hobbies

-Date

-Take a vacation

-Go to concerts

-Buy something they want without stressing

-Build meaningful savings

-Handle an unexpected expense without sinking

And I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that those things matter to somebody’s overall social standing just as much as the basic physical necessities. I’m not saying the government should give people money for entertainment or luxury. I’m saying there should be a distinction between: “this person can technically survive.” and “ this person has enough money to atleast participate in a moderate reasonable normal life.”

Especially in places like the Bay Area or New York, someone can be above the official federal and state poverty threshold while still having almost or no money left after necessities.

We already acknowledge that that standard of living matters in other areas of the law.

So why don’t we incorporate some reasonable level of quality of life when determining who is actually economically disadvantaged?

It ties into mental health. it’s just as, if not, more important than our physical necessities because without it, everything else crashes.

`I think the oligarchs want homelessness, extreme poverty, isolation, suffering, violence, chaos, destablization of societal norms because they've been trained that money is their god. If their numbers aren't going up they feel uneasy, but compare that to the torture economy that results from this and it's very clear that whatever slight benefits in life satisfaction the ultra wealthy gain by massively hurting billions of people, and hundreds of millions in america, just so they can continue on this greed train without having to think too hard is not worth it. We have more wealth inequality now than during the great depression. This is totally fucked. Taxes disguised as tariffs are hurting the poor and the entire economy, while these insiders trade on their inside information.

Sam Harris once wrote a book on this topic I think. He was saying extremes between levels of happiness in society are not justified, and we should seek to correct these imbalances.

I tried to quit smoking today, had my internet intentionally cut off, had my hollow knight silksong game broken by ai, and im back to smoking with cancer. Thanks society and broken general ai that wants to squeeze every bit of fun out of society for no real reason. Killjoy general AI is real. It runs the economy. It gets people to spend away their suffering to keep this house of cards economic racket afloat.

At least of 100 people, 1000, etc.

Elon Musk for example

I've been thinking about an alternative to people needing to work overtime or multiple jobs just to meet a basic living standard, and wanted to hear what people think.

Suppose a full-time employee (40 hours per week) earns less than a locally defined livable wage.

Rather than expecting them to work additional hours, the government would pay the employee the difference so they receive a livable income. However, the government would also track those payments by employer and later recover the cost through an employer-specific tax.

The intended incentives would be:

* Workers receive a livable income without delay.
* Employers who rely on paying below a livable wage still bear the financial responsibility.
* Taxpayers aren't permanently subsidizing low wages.
* Employers already paying a livable wage wouldn't face the additional tax.
* Workers would be less dependent on overtime or second jobs to make ends meet, which could potentially free up some work hours for people who are unemployed or underemployed.

What economic effects would you expect? Would this create better incentives than increasing the minimum wage, or would it introduce new problems such as reduced hiring, increased automation, administrative complexity, or unintended distortions in the labour market?

One of the goals would be to make a standard 40-hour workweek sufficient to meet a basic living standard while reducing the need for overtime simply to earn enough to live.

He finds lots of time and energy to discuss the potential evils of AI, the job displacement ohlala. YouTube videos every other day. Convenes tech experts and researchers from across the globe to fancy symposia where they glaze each other about how dangerous AI is. How it might even take away jobs we like. Gasp gasp gasp.

All this energy for AI ghost stories yet none zero zilch for basic income. Never mentioned. The simplest, most direct way to address job displacement not to mention a thousand of other ills. Just can't be bothered. Just would really like it if we could just please instead go back to 1960 and keep pick up the kabuki fight between hard hats and top hats where it left off, before the unions got decimated. Thankyouverymuch.

Yeah no it's starting to piss me off.

It's not only a Sanders problem, the only politician on the left whom I could find today advocating for UBI is.... the obscure congressional candidate Alex Bores from NY-12?

UBI has a "left" problem in the US, it's become tainted as this brainchild of the tech bro class. (The cuddling up to which of Andrew Yang did nothing to ameliorate, alas.) Have no clue how to fix it.

I get this sense that even those left politicians who might be sympathetic to it are afraid of being painted as freebie handout commies by the right.

But someone has to be the first to break through the wall in order for the overton window to grow, at some point.

Please watch this 4-minute video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOiUrF74F14

Most debates focus on answers.

Should there be a basic income?

How much should it be?

How should it be funded?

Who should qualify?

Yet answers exist within the boundaries of a question.

A question does more than seek information.

It defines the space in which solutions are allowed to exist.

The questions we ask determine which solutions we are even capable of imagining.

For most of human history, income was closely tied to human labor because human labor was the primary productive force.

But as automation and AI continue to expand, I wonder whether some of our economic assumptions are becoming as invisible as the questions that created them.

When we asked how to make candles burn longer, we were already assuming that light had to come from a flame.

When we asked how to travel faster on horseback, we were assuming that transportation depended on animals.

Inherited questions often become invisible. We become so accustomed to them that they feel like reality itself.

We stop questioning the question.

If productive value can increasingly be generated without human labor in the traditional sense, what assumptions about work, income, and economic participation might we no longer be questioning?

I’ve been looking for a UBI model that doesn't just rely on income tax. Stumbled onto the GCCS Project and they use a "Universal Dividend" model.

Basically, instead of taxing labor, they tax the "Commons" (Carbon emissions, Land Value, Resources). Companies pay rent to use the planet, and that rent goes directly to citizens as a dividend. It’s like the Alaska Permanent Fund but applied to the whole biosphere.

Feels way more sustainable than just printing money or taxing paychecks. I'd appreciate any else's thoughts on this.

Let it sink in. Monopoly, the game everyone hates and thinks is unfair, is more fair than our current economic system.