Comment by vintermann
2 days ago
> Show me how much UBI saves police departments, social welfare services, the health-care system, etc
Sure, people can do that, but remember that it's impossible to measure wealth without distributional concerns. Whenever you ask "will this make us richer", there's an implied wealth distribution in the question, since what's valuable depends on who has money.
I'm asking more in the lines of "will this sort of and roughly make for its cost by savings elsewhere, resulting in minimal cost to tax payers?"
Generally speaking, it reduces the cost of welfare programs by replacing complex need-specific bureaucracies with a simple blanket payment. Food stamps go away, for example, assuming a large enough payment. Similar for low-income housing, government cheese, Medicaid, etc. (Again, depending on the payment.)
So the total cost to government is lower, but probably not enough that the costs of the program are covered. Beyond that, it’s a wealth redistribution program. Wealthy and/or high-income earners pay more tax so that low-income earners get a net benefit.
The argument in favor is that the wealthy paying more tax is a net positive to society, because $3000 is worth more to someone earning $20K/yr than it is to someone earning $500K per year.