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ADDENDUM: In a completely different context (namely the UK), here is another attempt at putting a specific cost on a basic income scheme (from people who are favorable to it). Based on a similar multiplication, they arrive at a total cost of GBP 276 billion and then explain how to pay for it.

The main difference with the proposal discussed above is that this citizen's income would be GBP 71 per week for an adult, well shy of the UK's poverty line. (Note however that poverty is defined and measured differently in Europe and that it make most sense to look at households rather than individual persons). It can be valuable nonetheless but it's a very different idea.

How much it costs to provide $30,000 to each and every US resident can be computed with a simple multiplication. For 320 million people, it works out to 9.6 trillion dollars. If we take adults over the age of 20 and the $11,670 poverty threshold from the Department of Health and Human Services for a single-person household, we end up with $2.7 trillion (all numbers for 2014 or 2015, source: Wikipedia articles on Demographics of the United States and Poverty in the United States). Those are obviously very rough estimates but it's useful to seriously consider these numbers to get a feeling of the magnitude of the costs involved.

How much it costs to provide $30,000 to each and every US resident can be computed with a simple multiplication. For 320 million people, it works out to 9.6 trillion dollars. If we restrict the program to adults over the age of 20 and to the $11,670 poverty threshold from the Department of Health and Human Services for a single-person household, we end up with $2.7 trillion (all numbers for 2014 or 2015, source: Wikipedia articles on Demographics of the United States and Poverty in the United States). Those are obviously very rough estimates but it's useful to seriously consider these numbers to get a feeling of the magnitude of the costs involved.

Looking at it from another angle, $9.6 trillion is about 57% which is close to the level of government spending in France or Denmark, the (stable/developed) countries with the highest level of government spending in the world. That's the entire government spending, which include things like law enforcement, military spending, investments in infrastructure, debt service and, for these countries, education, healthcare, etc. All this would still need to be funded somehow.

Looking at it from another angle, $9.6 trillion is about 57% of GDP which is more-or-less the level of government spending in France or Denmark, the (stable/developed) countries with the highest level of government spending in the world. That's the entire government spending, which include things like law enforcement, military spending, investments in infrastructure, debt service, etc. and, for these countries, education and healthcare. All this would still need to be funded somehow.