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We're officially launching UBI

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Re: We're officially launching UBI

#2
I suspect that UBI, or something similar, will be necessary when automation/AI/whatever-you-like is good enough to replace "front-end", customer-facing jobs. At that point, it'll be hard to break into the job market without having a degree in something, and there'll be a sharp spike of unemployment in the lower class.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#4
Can someone explain to me why UBI is preferable to a negative income tax?

I don’t get why we’ve come up with a worse version of a 40 year old idea. Are these two ships passing in the night or were there some perceived problems with Negative Income Tax that UBI is supposed to solve.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#5
post #4

Can someone explain to me why UBI is preferable to a negative income tax? I don’t get why we’ve come up with a worse version of a 40 year old idea. Are these two ships passing in the night or were there some perceived problems with Negative Income Tax that UBI is supposed to solve.

Wait, aren't they essentially the same thing?

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#6
post #4

Can someone explain to me why UBI is preferable to a negative income tax? I don’t get why we’ve come up with a worse version of a 40 year old idea. Are these two ships passing in the night or were there some perceived problems with Negative Income Tax that UBI is supposed to solve.

I too think a negative income tax is a better method, but UBI is at least testable in some form. I think we'll see UBI tested and if successful, a negative income tax will be more politically feasible than UBI.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#8
post #4

Can someone explain to me why UBI is preferable to a negative income tax? I don’t get why we’ve come up with a worse version of a 40 year old idea. Are these two ships passing in the night or were there some perceived problems with Negative Income Tax that UBI is supposed to solve.

UBI is more psychologically palatable because you get it no matter what.

Negative tax creates this dissonance that if you start to earn more money you don't get as much. So then everybody tries to get around it and manipulate it so it appears they don't earn as much.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#9
post #5
post #4

Can someone explain to me why UBI is preferable to a negative income tax? I don’t get why we’ve come up with a worse version of a 40 year old idea. Are these two ships passing in the night or were there some perceived problems with Negative Income Tax that UBI is supposed to solve.

Wait, aren't they essentially the same thing?

[deleted]

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#10
post #5
post #4

Can someone explain to me why UBI is preferable to a negative income tax? I don’t get why we’ve come up with a worse version of a 40 year old idea. Are these two ships passing in the night or were there some perceived problems with Negative Income Tax that UBI is supposed to solve.

Wait, aren't they essentially the same thing?

Presumably the difference is that at some income threshold you start paying taxes, whereas right below it you don't.

So to me it sounds like a terrible implementation of a basic income scheme, since someone making X pays no taxes but x+n pays some fraction of n in taxes and presumably has little real incentive to work for n additional dollars when n is sufficiently small enough that x is close to x+(n - tax).

And then you've got all the bureaucracy of figuring out who earned less than x and applying whatever specific payment y to bring them up to x.

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