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You're right. That was wrong. I obviously meant it's the effect of A plus B.

It would depend on the amount of "bottom feeders". That's a bad way to define it though, "non-productives" might be better, since it would include pensioners, children, students (including people who go back to studying if this program is introduced, but are older than 0-24 years), really ill people, ... mostly not people I'd define as bottom feeders.

I would say that it's a lot larger than 1-2%. Let's assume that a lower bound on the non-productive people would be 30% of the total (which would mean tax levels need to be, at bare minimum . I would say that various factors are going to make that close to 50% over a period of time that's not very long.

Suppose you'd have the same tax level for these things as you currently have for social programs + medical programs (~50% of total taxes), then here's how much it could be (ignoring administration costs, which would take another bite):

Non-active population => basic income possible using 50% of govt. budget

30% => 11,249

40% => 9,642

50% => 8,035

60% => 6,428

70% => 4,821

(the current labor force participation rate is 65%. Since that is likely to drop, prudence would suggest you take the 50% or 60% figure as realistic. Increases in the govt. budget dedicated to this cannot make these numbers rise by a significant amount. So I would think the 30% figure is the maximum attainable even if the military were to be defunded)

Since even the largest of these numbers is only barely sufficient to live + insurance + ... is this really worth it ? This amount is not of the level that it's going to do what this program needs to do to improve our economic situation : give the poor disposable income.

The basic problem we have is of a different nature. We do not have any economic reason for 70% of the world population to be alive, and that number is growing fast. In the US that number is currently amazingly low, but it's bound to rise as well.




> It would depend on the amount of "bottom feeders". That's a bad way to define it though, "non-productives" might be better, since it would include pensioners, children, students (including people who go back to studying if this program is introduced, but are older than 0-24 years), really ill people, ... mostly not people I'd define as bottom feeders.

You're absolutely right, thanks for the correction.




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