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Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

Don't have an opinion on any of this, but how many of the population you calculate are citizens over the age of 18? And what would be saved from the US budget by eliminating various existing programs that would be superfluous by UBI?

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Do children not typically receive the universal basic income? If not, is it fair to give a parent of three children the same allowance as I (a single person) receive? I also wonder about whether or not $10,000 is more or less than someone on disability currently receives.

Is there a risk here that the more vulnerable members of society will end up receiving less money?

There's a risk that people decide that pumping out children is an effective way to make money in the short term.

I've often wondered this too. I suspect that a family making use of WIC, medicaid / medicare and/or disability is commonly using more than $10k/person/year or gov't assistance, and would lose money going to UBI at that rate. I also wonder what could be done to avoid the UBI version of the two-income trap[0] - seems like UBI would naturally pressure entry level wages downward.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Paren...

Be careful of the incentives you create with these methods.

As a side note, will a poor person who is unable to have a child be allowed to adopt and receive an increase in basic income, and will the adoption process by significantly more discriminating in who is allowed to adopt compared to who is allowed to have children?

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