Except almost all of that money will be immediately spent by the recipients, greatly accelerating economic activity. It should provide quite a boon to local entities and the federal government through taxes. Not to mention the various businesses who will suddenly have more customers with money to spend.<p>Economics is not a zero-sum game and trying to treat it as one will always lead you astray.<p>P.S. If total US household income was 13 trillion and we assume that the top 1% took home half of that we can just tax the uber-super-mega rich at 50% and pay for a basic income for every man, woman, and child in the US.<p>I&#x27;m also willing to bet that those rich people will end up better off as the resulting economic spending boom circulates through the economy and ends up back in their pockets.<p>If current trends of automation continue there simply won&#x27;t <i>be</i> many jobs (Foxconn is deploying a million robots right now to replace &quot;cheap&quot; Chinese workers). How long do you think society will last under those circumstances? Makes a 50% tax look like a bargain.