So start with an interesting hypothetical: does everybody need to work anymore? I understand work from an ethical/character perspective, this is not here my point. Since we no longer need e.g. manufacturing jobs—cheaper elsewhere or with robots—since those labor costs have evaporated, could that surplus go towards paying people simply to stay out of trouble? [...] Let me be explicit: my question is not should we do this, my question is that since this is precisely what’s happening already, is it sustainable? What is the cost? I don’t have to run the numbers, someone already has: it’s $150/mo for a college grads, i.e. the price of food stamps. Other correct responses would be $700/mo for “some high school” (SSI) or $1500/mo for “previous work experience” (unemployment). I would have accepted $2000/mo for “minorities” (jail) for partial credit.
I couldn’t find an average benefit estimate from the department of labor for unemployment insurance, but sufficiently many sources claim on the order of $300-500/week, possibly before taxes. $1500/mo is perhaps reasonable.
I don’t know where he’s getting the jail number from, but some random googling suggests that the average cost per inmate of American prisons is something like $20k-40k/year. Presumably he means minimum security prisons (as he uses the example of an incarcerated marijuana user later).
The Last Psychiatrist bats another one out of the park:
the meaning or source of the $ amounts if very unclear to me. Is there more on it somewhere?
$150/mo for SNAP (i.e., food stamps) is in the right ballpark; the average in 2011 was $133.85/mo.
$700/mo for SSI is an overestimate; the average benefit for those under 18 (i.e., “some high school”) was $621.30/mo.
I couldn’t find an average benefit estimate from the department of labor for unemployment insurance, but sufficiently many sources claim on the order of $300-500/week, possibly before taxes. $1500/mo is perhaps reasonable.
I don’t know where he’s getting the jail number from, but some random googling suggests that the average cost per inmate of American prisons is something like $20k-40k/year. Presumably he means minimum security prisons (as he uses the example of an incarcerated marijuana user later).