I’m extremely interested in universal basic income, and I think we’re going to need UBI or something like it if we’re going to make it into the future without catastrophically upending society. I’ve just recently started reading about negative income tax, which has the same effect, but might be significantly easier to implement.

I’ll seize this opportunity to plug GiveDirectly, where your money simultaneously supports people in enormous poverty, and contributes to the largest study ever done on UBI.

This town in California’s Central Valley has long functioned as a display case for wrenching troubles afflicting American life: The housing bust that turned Stockton into an epicenter of a national foreclosure disaster and plunged the city into bankruptcy. The homeless people clustered in tents along the railroad tracks. Boarded-up storefronts on cracked sidewalks. Gang violence.

Now, Stockton hopes to make itself an exhibition ground for elevated fortunes through a simple yet unorthodox experiment. It is readying plans to deliver $500 a month in donated cash to perhaps 100 local families, no strings attached. The trial could start as soon as the fall and continue for about two years.

It’s worth noting that the article makes a fundamental and very common error: “In the United States, a program supplying $10,000 a year to every American would cost $3 trillion.” But of course (all else being equal) everyone receives $10k a year, and because the money has to come from somewhere, everyone pays an extra $10k a year (on average) in taxes. In other words, the base cost is zero. Because we have a progressive income tax system (as we should!), people who are poor enough to pay no taxes end up $10k ahead. People who have enormous wealth will end up paying considerably more than is offset by the $10k they receive. So it’s basically a low-bureaucracy way of making our tax system more progressive, at no intrinsic cost.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/business/stockton-basic-income.html