Even if social security was completely removed for a basic income of 10k (I'll clarify again that I'm not endorsing that figure as a blanket basic income), it would be a cut of a couple thousand a year, not a cut of more than 10k as you claim. Hell you could even keep all the net SS+basic income payouts the same and social security costs would drop to 1/5th of what they are now, saving over a trillion dollars.
Also, That was like, one third of one fourth of my post. The fact that your estimate was way way off (far from "simple math") is barely changed by excluding social security.
> That was like, one third of one fourth of my post.
The importance of different pieces of your post shouldn't be measured in word count, but in dollars. I picked the part that matters the most (by far) from this perspective.
Sure, my phrasing seemed to minimize the importance of SS in terms of dollar amt, but the fact remains that even with the most dramatic cut possible to SS (i.e. "completely replace it"), the SS cuts amount to less than half of the savings in costs (i.e. the error in your simple math claiming to show why it's mathematically impossible). Once you include the revenue increase I mentioned (the one that works out to a tax burden that's no higher for anyone because it just cancels out the basic income for certain income tax tiers), SS cuts become even further below 50% of the cost-savings I mentioned.
I'll assume that you don't actually disagree with my original comment from the fact that you're resorting to picking successively more microscopic nits.
http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/quickfacts/stat_snapshot/
Even if social security was completely removed for a basic income of 10k (I'll clarify again that I'm not endorsing that figure as a blanket basic income), it would be a cut of a couple thousand a year, not a cut of more than 10k as you claim. Hell you could even keep all the net SS+basic income payouts the same and social security costs would drop to 1/5th of what they are now, saving over a trillion dollars.
Also, That was like, one third of one fourth of my post. The fact that your estimate was way way off (far from "simple math") is barely changed by excluding social security.