Because it is taken from the same economy. If I tax Bill $1 to give Bob $1 we didn’t see any net growth. The only way it produces growth is if we gave Bob $1 but never collected $1 from anyone which becomes unsustainable in the long term.

You made the claim and Im asking for your source for that claim. Do you have one?

Now please provide a source on your claim that the bottom 80% pay most of the taxes as Im fairly certain that is not true.

If it isn’t for everyone it isn’t universal. Even at 2 trillion it would devastate our economy. We don’t have that much free money in the system.

Most are homeless doesn’t describe their particular circumstances. There are people living in their cars who have jobs and credit histories who given a few grand can easily not be homeless . That is in contrast with the guy who is incredibly schizophrenic and constantly hallucinating who hasn’t held a job in years. That guy isn’t getting off the street because you gave him cash because he needs mental health care that he might not recognize.

Just saying they are homeless doesn’t describe who they chose and why.

It’s over 3.5 trillion if given to everyone.

Source on the bottom 80% paying most of the taxes please?

Don’t forget redirecting over half the budget to fund a UBI significantly alters the US economy.

No Im saying it will provide little to no net benefit to the larger economy whereas redirecting over 50% of the budget to give $12k/yr to everyone would be catastrophic to the larger economy. I suspect the economy tanking would end up hurting more than the 12k helps.

The only way UBI doesn’t significantly harm the US economy, and to be clear Im talking about only the USA right now, is if the payments are either so small they don’t help, the payments are not universal and are targeted towards those that need money, or if the entire thing is financed by increasing the national debt which is unsustainable over the long run. None of these are as beneficial as they seem.

We cannot afford to ditch over 50% of the budget to replace it with a UBI that won’t produce much if any benefit?

Given the results mirror other experiments that target successfully recent unhoused people I suspect they aren’t targeting “the most vulnerable” and that phrase is the author’s choice.

If you work with unhoused people enough you would know “the most vulnerable people” aren’t lacking for money as much as they frequently are fighting significant mental illness. One guy that used to sleep in the parking lot if a store I worked at, Eddie, wasn’t just homeless and an alcoholic. Eddie was incredibly prone to violent hallucinations and handing guys like him $1k a month isn’t changing that.

They are almost certainly targeting the recent homeless who has a job or recently had a job, has a credit history, and the ability to get off the streets and just needs money to do so.

Im not saying we shouldn’t look into this as a solution to part of our unhoused problems only that we shouldn’t restrict other programs meant to address chronic homelessness in favor of this.

30% would count as “much of the population” IMO. I didn’t say most.

Do you have a link to the original source or the name of the authors? Neither is in your article only a statement that it was sourced from another site.

And giving every person in America 12k/year would cost over 50% of the budget and produce almost no growth unless it was entirely funded by debt.

It might not foster dependency but it would be incredibly expensive.

Also the actual research on it is not as rosy as some seem to think.

Try looking at who they chose to give money to as they usually are not the chronically unhoused who represent much of the unhoused population

That’s because they often focus on those that just needed a few grand to get off the street which isn’t the cause of most homelessness. We should be doing this for those that need it but a program like this won’t help the chronically unhoused who tend to be mentally ill and/or have addiction issues.