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Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

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Re: Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

#151

Post by xienze »

magduf wrote: post #144
xienze wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The solution is simple: legislate so the very wealthy can't avoid it, while remaining in the country. ... then they'll leave the country. I don't think you've thought this through.

1) As the other poster said, how do you take real estate out of the country? 2) Where are they going to go? Somalia? Other countries are going to tax them at least as much. These rich people aren't idle rich, they're rich because they're working in some capacity. You can't do that in Somalia. They get their wealth from being located here. That means they can be taxed here.

>As the other poster said, how do you take real estate out of the country?

Sell it. Or don't, it's their choice. At some point real estate holdings aren't worth it if your host country decides it's entitled to 95% of your wealth.

>Where are they going to go? Somalia? Other countries are going to tax them at least as much.

There will always be another first-world country more than willing to undercut other first-world countries for the opportunity to host wealthy citizens. It's the same principle that gets us to where we are today, with states competing against each other to give tax breaks to corporations to entice them to set up shop.

It's funny how there's no end to people complaining about how the wealthy always seem to get out of paying their "fair share" through loopholes, but THIS TIME, we've got a foolproof plan to redistribute their wealth that they can't weasel out of! Sure thing.

Re: Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

#152

Post by zackmorris »

twblalock wrote: post #133
zackmorris wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my biggest concern as well. Just to address your points: * My firm belief is that once felons do their time, their debt is paid and they should be full citizens again. They should definitely have the right to vote, although gun ownership might need to be addressed on a case by case basis for violent criminals for the safety of society. So UBI might need nondiscrimination laws attached to it. * If UBI is per c…

> My guess is that the federal government wouldn't end up paying substantially more than it does now, although I'd like to see a study/projection on that. How could the government maintain current welfare payments and also give UBI to everyone at the same time without a massive spending increase?

Because in the long run, most forms of welfare are self-funded. For example social security and medicare are paid for by workers paying into the fund, and food stamps have an economic multiplier effect of about $1.8 dollars for ever $1 spent:

https://www.fool.com/retirement/general/2016/05/23/how-is-so...

https://www.medicare.gov/about-us/how-medicare-is-funded/med...

https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/how-food-stamp-cuts-coul...

Also defense and national debt payments total more than welfare:

https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_welfare_spending_40....

The above can be looked at as corporate welfare for defense contractors and the independently wealthy/large institutional investors.

It looks like a $12,000 per capita UBI would cost about $4 trillion per year for 325 million Americans. This is about 1/5 of US GDP and roughly equal to the current US federal budget. So UBI would cost an additional $3 trillion if we get rid of welfare, or an additional $4 trillion if we keep it.

I guess I jumped the gun a little on saying it's not that substantial, although I do wonder what kind of multiplier effects a UBI would have on the economy. My guesstimate is that it would be comparable to food stamps at 1.75x and probably generate an additional $3 trillion or so. But without a full study, it's hard to say. Hope this helps!

Re: Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

#153

Post by epicureanideal »

jaggederest wrote: post #86
epicureanideal wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDP isn't the best measure though of the actual health of the economy. In the current situation maybe doing what you're suggesting would work, somewhat... but I could imagine situations where it wouldn't. For example, Elon Musk is rich. If we just redistribute all his money to "people who still spend it" (the poor), we get a bunch of people buying slightly better cars instead of getting significantly better rocket te…

Completely agree. I think my back of the envelope calculations were that paying for a reasonable UBI in the US would require a new flat income tax in the 12% range, a wealth tax in the 2% per annum range, or a land value tax in the 8% range. I don't think that any of those would be too huge a disincentive for Mr. Musk - most of his ventures seem to yield either -100% or +30% per annum.

But adding another 12% on upper middle class workers such as myself would create a very large disincentive to work harder.

Re: Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

#154

Post by Spooky23 »

gph wrote: post #128
Spooky23 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SSA gives away money, administers programs and adjudicates disability claims. It’s nothing, relatively speaking. The lifting for social services is at the state and county level. There’s probably 3 million people engaged in that function, depending on what you scope into it. I betcha there are 10,000 people just doing children’s services in NYC.

>I betcha there are 10,000 people just doing children’s services in NYC Ok, but we aren't talking about UBI replacing CSA or really any of the local services are we? It's not like child abuse is going to disappear because everyone gets a UBI check. A lot of the state and county level social services are not going to be obsoleted because of UBI. I would think it's more of a federal/national program meant to replace fe…

It's all inter-related from a funding POV. All service delivery for social services is via county government in the US.

Even something like CPS is significantly funded via other programs. They perform functions like managing foster care, early intervention, medicaid enrollment, etc and draw administrative funding that is shared among programs.

It doesn't mean the UBI is bad, just that you cannot bank all of the "legacy" spending.

Re: Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

#155

Post by magduf »

xienze wrote: post #151
magduf wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) As the other poster said, how do you take real estate out of the country? 2) Where are they going to go? Somalia? Other countries are going to tax them at least as much. These rich people aren't idle rich, they're rich because they're working in some capacity. You can't do that in Somalia. They get their wealth from being located here. That means they can be taxed here.

>As the other poster said, how do you take real estate out of the country? Sell it. Or don't, it's their choice. At some point real estate holdings aren't worth it if your host country decides it's entitled to 95% of your wealth. >Where are they going to go? Somalia? Other countries are going to tax them at least as much. There will always be another first-world country more than willing to undercut other first-world…

What exactly are these people going to do to earn money in these new countries? We're not talking about idle billionaires here, we're talking about very high-earning people.

Re: Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

#156

Post by kire2345 »

3131s wrote: post #140
kire2345 wrote: post #83

I am wondering often with UBI: if everybody gets a certain amount of money. Wouldn't prices just adapt and everything gets more expensive, and there would be the same divide as before? Similar to Scandinavia where prices are very high. What mechanism could prevent this from happening?

Why exactly do you think this would happen? It doesn't actually make sense. Let's say Company A charges 2$ for an apple and each apple costs 1$ to procure, and then at some point a UBI is implemented. What changed that suddenly allows company A to raise the price of an apple without being undercut by Company B? The cost to procure an apple might increase somewhat because laborers have more leverage under a UBI, but t…

Yeah, i guess you are right in a perfect market. My hypothesis was that increased buying power leads to more demand. In your case for apples it would allow apple producers to increase prices and raise margins, as long as competitors don't undercut them.

What is the original cause that drives prices in countries like Switzerland or Norway higher? Is this only due to currency trading and a country's credit rating?

Re: Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

#157

Post by s3nnyy »

kire2345 wrote: post #156
3131s wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why exactly do you think this would happen? It doesn't actually make sense. Let's say Company A charges 2$ for an apple and each apple costs 1$ to procure, and then at some point a UBI is implemented. What changed that suddenly allows company A to raise the price of an apple without being undercut by Company B? The cost to procure an apple might increase somewhat because laborers have more leverage under a UBI, but t…

Yeah, i guess you are right in a perfect market. My hypothesis was that increased buying power leads to more demand. In your case for apples it would allow apple producers to increase prices and raise margins, as long as competitors don't undercut them. What is the original cause that drives prices in countries like Switzerland or Norway higher? Is this only due to currency trading and a country's credit rating?

Prices are stable and not really rising in Switzerland, same for salaries.

Prices in Germany are rising but salaries are stagnant.

Just my observation.

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