Well, as we know, I'm passionate about basic income. It's the obvious centerpiece of my economic policy, but clearly it should not cover everything. We can't replace the entire safety net with basic income and expect it to work well. So what else should we have along side it?
Healthcare - high priority
We need a robust healthcare policy along side a basic income. I would ideally like a single payer medicare for all system. However, given the sheer cost of this, I have moved toward a slightly more incremental approach known as medicare extra for all, which establishes a public option that will likely aggressively displace private insurance over time without making it illegal.
The fact is, healthcare is a human right, we need it to survive, and currently it is very expensive. We need a public option that is free for the poor and affordable at the very least for everyone else if we want to be a civilized society. This is probably the most important supplementary idea to a basic income. Just like we needed medicare to complement social security, we need universal healthcare to complement a basic income.
Cost: $280-450 billion per year, funded by a variety of taxes that target the wealthy.
Climate change/infrastructure bill - medium priority
Ultimately, we do need to combat climate change and update our infrastructure. It's kind of a matter of survival. However, we should not turn this stuff into a gargantuan jobs program for the sake of creating work, such proposals need to be done on a temporary basis, and then discontinued once their objectives are achieved. Otherwise we're just doing make work. I support Joe Biden's infrastructure bill to accomplish such goals. It will update infrastructure, and many of these changes will help combat climate change. It will cost $2 trillion over the next 15 years, or $133 billion a year, and largely be paid for with changes to the corporate tax code.
Free college/cancel student debt - medium priority
We need to establish free college, and here's why. First of all, an educated populace, is a public good. Not just for the jobs market, although that's part of it. If we have an educated populace, we have a populace that can make good decisions for democracy. A populace that can't be fooled by bad logic or pseudoscience as easily. A populace that can think critically.
On the jobs front, we should be supportive of free college, because if we value economic mobility, we should give people the tools to do the jobs they want to do. If we do not make college free, it becomes the privilege to the rich. Rich parents will send their kids to college, but you won't be able to, or, if they go, they will be saddled with student debt. I believe everyone should have the same opportunities, and everyone should be able to educate themselves as they desire to end up in society where they desire. While I don't begrudge those who seek the bare minimum, I also want people who want to shoot for the stars to do so.
Bernie Sanders' free college plan is supposedly $2.2 trillion over 10 years. That's $220 billion a year. And a lot of that is student debt forgiveness. After the first ten years costs may get much cheaper.
Housing - low priority
Much like healthcare and education, housing is also an important idea we should address that is subject to market failures. Why don't I make it a higher priority though? Because I believe it's a difficult issue to address adequately, and would likely be expensive for little benefit. We already have more homes than we have homeless people. The issue is one of distribution. And while we can and should create more housing, I'm not sure that this will overcome the sheer supply and demand issues some places deal with. While I believe section 8 should be preserved and arguably expanded, I do think that a UBI and giving people portability where they can move to cheaper areas is likely the better plan.
Still, Bernie has a plan worth $250 billion a year to attempt to address the problems. I'm not sure it will fix them, but it may help.
Universal preK/Childcare - low priority
The fact is, if you want to work and have kids, it is difficult without childcare. However, childcare can cost almost as much as a job in some cases. That said, Biden has a plan to give us universal preK and free childcare via tax credits. This plan seems to be worth it, and would cost around $77.5 billion a year.
The reason this isn't higher priority is I believe the above goals are far more important.
Bonus: social security and unemployment
Obviously, in reforming the safety net, social security and unemployment should not disappear. However, given basic income, these programs should be heavily reformed to give fewer benefits, acting as a supplement to basic income rather than full programs themselves. As indicated in previous UBI funding exercises, we could likely raise $300-400 billion per year by refunding these programs to help fund UBI, while simultaneously not negatively impacting people on these programs, given the generosity of said UBI.
In the long term it might be possible to further reform these programs to act as smaller supplements, with UBI becoming a more dominant form of aid. This may be controversial and face challenges though.
Conclusion
All in all, we need programs on top of basic income to make a perfect society, in my opinion. The top complementary program would obviously be universal healthcare, with us likely able to implement a compromise option of medicare for all known as medicare extra for all. While we likely could fund the $450 billion aggressive option, in the short term the cheaper $280 or $350 billion options might be cheaper given other stuff we want to fund.
Education is another big pillar of our economic system, providing social mobility, as well as the public good of a more informed populace that doesn't vote for Donald Trump. It would be expensive at first due to the need to forgive student debt, but in the long term it should be far more easy to afford.
Infrastructure costs might be with us in the neat future, as we update our infrastructure and try to curb climate change, but we can likely redirect funding for such things toward other ideas in the long term.
Universal preK and childcare seem like good ideas, but I don't believe they're as important as the ones above. It would be nice if we could fit them in as childcare is expensive and does discourage people from working.
A universal housing idea would also be a nice to have, but it may be expensive, without providing tangible benefits that solve the problem. I do believe something should be done with housing but I'm not sure the sanders proposal is the best way to do it.
Ultimately, social security and unemployment should exist in some form, but I do believe they should be reformed in the future after the people grandfathered into the current system are no longer with us. I believe they should be smaller supplements that complement UBI. However, this may be controversial and is not a hill to die on.
All in all:
High priority costs: $280-450 billion per year
Medium priority costs: $333 billion per year
Low priority costs: $327.5 billion per year
All in all we could be spending up to $1.111 trillion per year in addition to UBI to make these proposals work. Given UBI itself would cost $3.565 trillion, this would bring total costs up to $4.676 trillion.
This is only slightly more than Bernie Sanders' entire platform, which would amount to around $4.435 trillion. This is probably doable. If not, we could always cut a few things to make it work in some form. Less aggressive medicare extra plan, maybe adopt more passive student debt forgiveness which might cost less and spread the costs over a longer period of time, maybe focus less on housing and prek/childcare. etc. The fact is, this platform is very doable in my opinion. If Bernie could make it work, and I believe he could, we can make this one work.
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