Universal basic income has been floating around for years. Tech leaders warn that automation could wipe out entire industries. Others argue a guaranteed check is the simplest fix. If robots end up doing the work, humans still need a way to pay the mortgage.
But how big would that check have to be?
On an 2024 episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” host Joe Rogan threw out a number that wasn’t small. Not $1,000 a month. Not a modest safety net. He wondered what it would look like if every adult in the U.S. received $200,000 a year as a base paycheck.
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The conversation with 4BiddenKnowledge Inc. founder Billy Carson started as a philosophical one. If machines take over most jobs, would people even need to work for survival? Rogan said he would still do what he does. Carson pointed to passion-driven work. Then Rogan shifted gears.
“If there was a base paycheck for the whole country,” he said, before asking the obvious question: what would it actually cost?
He told longtime producer Jamie Vernon to check the math. They talked through the adult population, rounding to 200 million to keep it simple. Then came the on-air multiplication: $200,000 times 200 million.
Anyone who has tried to calculate massive figures out loud knows what happened next. Zeros started stacking up. Rogan asked what the number was called. Million? Billion? Trillion? They bounced between possibilities before landing on $40 billion.
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Rogan’s reaction was instant: “$40 billion? That’s it? That’s so reasonable.”
From there, he painted the lifestyle that number could support. With an income of $200,000 a year, he said, “You can live in a nice house, go on a vacation, you can eat well. $200,000. Not bad at all.” And people could still work if they wanted to. The check would simply lift everyone to a baseline.
There was just one issue. The math was off.
When $200,000 is multiplied by 200 million adults, it equals $40 trillion, not $40 billion. Three missing zeros turned a thought experiment into something several times larger than the entire federal budget.
