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Comment by optimiz3 | Hacker News Reader

> You tax a couple dozen ultra rich billionaires and a couple dozen ultra profitable companies. There's plenty of money.

The federal deficit is 2.8T for 1 year.

If we confiscated the 100% assets of the top 10 US billionaires we don't even get close to half of 1 year of federal spending. It's not plausible that a massive increase in taxes would pay for UBI.

https://www.usdebtclock.org/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/201426/the-richest-peopl...

As is, people not participating in the workforce right now is implicated in large parts of the various shortages. It's not clear how UBI improves things.

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The public holds over $22 trillion of the national debt. Bonds.

Somehow we still get away with funding other welfare programs, even though we have a rising debt ceiling.

Anyways, this is why you increase taxes on the ultra-wealthy, in order to pay for UBI. It doesn't mean more debt.

The "ultra-wealthy" are not where the money is. Besides, what many leftists actually end up saying by focusing on those is that Gates and Buffett should not be allowed to put their money towards eradicating malaria, giving every African safe drinking water, and countless such high-value causes. Instead that hard-won wealth should be taxed from them and frittered away to fund a one-time super binge of mindless political activism and foolish "green" boondoggles in the highly developed West. Needless to say, I think this is a very bad idea.

You want to tax Larry Ellison's yacht and other ludicrous spending, fine by me. But that's the ultra-wealthy's consumption - it's not even their income, much less their wealth. If you can't tell the difference, you're not getting the point of this debate.

I agree with you, taxation does nothing but enable the government to work on projects it deems important in the name of helping the public. It's inefficient and obviously open to corruption.

If we really think that it is unjust for money to be concentrated in the hands of the rich and should go to the public instead of their heirs or private interests, there should be an option of zeroing out one's bank account. That is, literally destroying money (not to be confused with wealth). This should have roughly the same effect as dividing up one's fortune and distributing it evenly to all holders of that currency.

You've always been able to burn all your cash.

Not legally, and with a large enough balance not practically either.

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