Dave, Newsweek, a mainstream magazine, just published an article about basic income. It provides some other numbers to mull over.
http://www.newsweek.com/how-fix-poverty-write-every-family-basic-income-check-291583 Harry On Wed, Dec 10, 2014 at 11:09 PM, David Roberson <[email protected]> wrote: > > Did you stop to make an estimate of the amount of money being distributed > if this scheme is implemented? A quick figure is 300,000,000 x 15,000 = > 4.5 trillion bucks! The entire GDP of the US in 2014 was 17.4 trillion > dollars. It appears that a tax rate of about 40% of the GDP would be > required just to give out that much money, not counting defense, and all > the other required government functions. > > From the budget numbers I found on wikipedia it looks like the total tax > taken in by the government would at least double in order to cover the > distribution. I suspect that the burden upon the economy would be too > great to sustain anywhere near the amounts we are considering. > > Perhaps someone can check my figures and see if they make sense. I am in > favor of some type of system, but the numbers need to be reasonable. > > Dave > > >
