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>If hypothetically fewer people were to work, more people wouldn't start receiving it because everybody gets it either way.

That money comes from taxpayers. If less people work, less pay into it.

>In general this goes the other way.

If less people work today, less will get made today. When a few percent of people suddenly don't have work, we have a recession, tax revenues fall drastically, raising deficits. The last recession makes this perfectly clear.

The UBI experiments so far have around 10% of people stopping work. That would be devastating to any modern economy.

>Taxes are (approximately) a percent of GDP

Because people are working. Drop 10% of workers, you lose a massive amount of tax base. Expenses are still fixed for many items, which is why when less people work deficit spending increases.

>And it was back to where it was at the height after one year

Because people were getting back to work.

I also never mentioned the stock market as the indicator to measure - that is a strawman you brought up.



> That money comes from taxpayers. If less people work, less pay into it.

But none more receive it.

> If less people work today, less will get made today.

What do you expect companies to do if some of their employees quit? Give up? No. Either they'll pay higher wages to get employees again or they'll automate the job.

There are millions of jobs that could be automated right now, this year, except that the automation equipment costs slightly more than paying current wages, so they pay the wages instead. If it becomes somewhat more attractive to not work and employers have to pay higher wages, some of them will get automated instead. The same work gets done with fewer people.

> When a few percent of people suddenly don't have work, we have a recession, tax revenues fall drastically, raising deficits. The last recession makes this perfectly clear.

Tax revenues fell and deficits rose because they cut taxes and increased spending. The reduction in GDP (i.e. the tax base) was, again, only ~3% and only for one year.

> The UBI experiments so far have around 10% of people stopping work. That would be devastating to any modern economy.

I have already explained this. If you give one person a UBI and not everyone, they don't need work as much, but everybody else still does, so employers don't have to pay higher wages since they can still hire any of the other >99% of people who didn't get the UBI and pay them the existing wages.

If you give everyone a UBI, employers do have to pay higher wages to retain employees, so they do, and then more people stay working.

Someone else also pointed out that your 10% also mostly "stopped working" so they could go to school. Which is obviously not a permanent condition and generally precedes taking a better job, which pays more and generates more tax revenue.

> Because people were getting back to work.

The unemployment rate went from 5% in 2007 to 9.9% in 2009. It was still at 9.3% in 2010 when GDP had fully recovered. Apparently the economy did just as well without the other 4.3%.




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