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Pelosi: It's time to consider universal basic income pushed by Andrew Yang

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Re: Pelosi: It's time to consider universal basic income pushed by Andrew Yang

#41

Post by vkou »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #5

How was $1000/month for anyone over age 18 supposed to be funded? Without exact details answering such, do voters believe this is more than seeking voter-attention. Are there actual plans of implementation whose economics/numbers work? I see people discuss such but never see answers.

By taking $950/month from the middle-class, $2000/month from the upper-middle-class, and $200 from the lower class. And a couple of million/month from billionaires. (If you can't tax the billionaires, increase all the payments above by $40/month.)

You can't squeeze enough money out of the rich to give the middle class a free ride, there's not quite enough of it, and there's too much of a middle class.

Edit:

If you really want to tax the rich, don't tax their money, tax the things they own. Land value taxes. Taxes on stocks. The purpose of doing this shouldn't be to fund a social program, but to align the prosperity of the nation with their prosperity.

If the government were a passive shareholder in ~40% of the S&P 500, then the nation as a whole would directly benefit from 40% of the returns of capitalism. If we had land value taxes, then the nation would directly benefit from the high cost of land (Which currently is nothing but a cost, and a drag on the economy, and funds all sorts of rent-seeking, unproductive uses of land.) And would skim a good slice of the rent-seeking parts of the economy.

Re: Pelosi: It's time to consider universal basic income pushed by Andrew Yang

#42

Post by umvi »

munificent wrote: post #16

I think well before we consider universal basic income, we should consider universal basic services . Many services are already highly regulated and naturally somewhat difficult to exploit. Healthcare is the obvious one. It's not like you can get a surgery and then resell it to exploit the system. (You could, of course, exploit things like pain medication, but overall healthcare is not expoitation-friendly.) Some amo…

> What people need to thrive is security the knowledge that if unfortunate events outside of their control happen, that they will be helped to the degree that society is able

I don't know if I believe this. It's unpopular, but I think being completely secure may have some negatives. For example, drawing upon my own life experiences, I found it hard to find motivation to be productive when I was completely secure in all my needs. I ended up playing a lot of video games and watching a lot of anime. However, once I lost my training slot in the Air Force and it looked like my cushy military job was no longer guaranteed, it lit a fire under my butt and I was highly motivated to start sharpening my computer industry skills, doing side projects, etc. in case it didn't work out and I had to find a "real job" (and it didn't work out).

We didn't need perfect social security to thrive historically. I don't see evidence of people in EU countries with tons of social services thriving.

Historically, all we needed to thrive was the promise that hard work, creativity, or both, would be proportionally rewarded. Somewhere along the way we've lost this (or at least part of it). We should work to bring that back, and provide enough social services to help people become self-reliant (if they aren't already).

Re: Pelosi: It's time to consider universal basic income pushed by Andrew Yang

#43

Post by legitster »

Honestly, it costs about the same to implement as Medicare for All, but I would much prefer a UBI.

Imagine if everyone had a catastrophic healthcare plan that was essentially an out-of-pocket maximum of $12,000. And then everyone gets $12,000 a year to spend on healthcare - or anything else.

Re: Pelosi: It's time to consider universal basic income pushed by Andrew Yang

#44

Post by jjtheblunt »

throwaway287391 wrote: post #12
jjtheblunt wrote: post #5

How was $1000/month for anyone over age 18 supposed to be funded? Without exact details answering such, do voters believe this is more than seeking voter-attention. Are there actual plans of implementation whose economics/numbers work? I see people discuss such but never see answers.

Yang proposed to fund it using a 10% VAT, which just about works out to the right amount if you assume you can enforce the VAT on the entire $20T US GDP. I doubt Pelosi has made a concrete funding proposal. (Edit: I answered specifically about Yang's/Pelosi's funding proposals because I thought that was what parent asked -- not sure if I'm crazy or they edited their post.)

Thanks for doing that; i edited the post realizing several had spoken of such.

Re: Pelosi: It's time to consider universal basic income pushed by Andrew Yang

#45

Post by xyzzyz »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #36
jjtheblunt wrote: post #5

How was $1000/month for anyone over age 18 supposed to be funded? Without exact details answering such, do voters believe this is more than seeking voter-attention. Are there actual plans of implementation whose economics/numbers work? I see people discuss such but never see answers.

Well if it was Andrew Yang's plan, then by a 10% VAT, and other things i.e. a carbon tax. In general, why the taxes are regressive, when paired with the UBI, the product is quite progressive.

But Yang numbers weren’t even close to adding up. Last I checked them, even if you are very optimist and assume that he’ll get exactly as much as he expects in taxes, this wouldn’t fund even half of $1000/mo.

Re: Pelosi: It's time to consider universal basic income pushed by Andrew Yang

#46

Post by mytailorisrich »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #5

How was $1000/month for anyone over age 18 supposed to be funded? Without exact details answering such, do voters believe this is more than seeking voter-attention. Are there actual plans of implementation whose economics/numbers work? I see people discuss such but never see answers.

They do not give answers because it is very clear with a simple calculation that this is unaffordable in addition to serving no purpose.

Giving $1000 a month to 210 million people costs $210 billion a month, $2.5 trillion a year.

I believe that the annual federal tax revenue is about $3.4 trillion.

Re: Pelosi: It's time to consider universal basic income pushed by Andrew Yang

#47

Post by standardUser »

bsanr2 wrote: post #2

Now is the time to watch closely. When Pelosi got on board healthcare reform, we lost the public option. The chances that her support is a mask for a campaign to water down any potential legislation are high.

There was never any chance the Senate was going to support a public option when Obamacare was being developed. It was a non-starter.

Re: Pelosi: It's time to consider universal basic income pushed by Andrew Yang

#48

Post by SubiculumCode »

quaquaqua1 wrote: post #22
jjtheblunt wrote: post #5

How was $1000/month for anyone over age 18 supposed to be funded? Without exact details answering such, do voters believe this is more than seeking voter-attention. Are there actual plans of implementation whose economics/numbers work? I see people discuss such but never see answers.

I was typing out a really long response to you with many if...then statements, but then I realized there are too many powerful agencies and institutions that don't want to give up their ability to tax/spend. Medicaid/Medicare, Social Security, IRS, all 50 states etc have defined (and flawed processes) and probably will refuse to give up control over welfare spending or tax revenue generation. So if you can't complete…

First off, it doesn't have to be funded. We have a fiat currency. However the extent that new dollars are to be offset because of fear of inflation (not an immediate concern given current deflationary trends), the a partial offset via a VAT tax could work.

Re: Pelosi: It's time to consider universal basic income pushed by Andrew Yang

#49

Post by guerrilla »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #15
cultus wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same way we are funding massive corporate bailouts. Sovereign government debt does not work like personal debt, for the simple reason that money can be printed. Fears of inflation in a time like this are completely unwarranted. edit: Back of the envelope math shows that 1000/month for the US population is about $4 trillion/year. The Fed has pumped more than that into financial markets since this pandemic has star…

Why are they completely unwarranted? I'm not an economist, so it's not obvious to me why printing money wouldn't lead create an inflation problem that is worse than the unemployment problem. I would be very interested to know the details that allow us to say such things so confidently. EDIT: Thanks to those who provided such insightful answers! Very helpful for a layperson like me.

Inflation is caused by "too many dollars chasing too few goods" not literal money printing. The demand for basic goods as needs are going unmet is actually pretty high. A lot of the printed money would actually go to paying off debt and thus actually destroying money.

Re: Pelosi: It's time to consider universal basic income pushed by Andrew Yang

#50

Post by bsanr2 »

nobodyandproud wrote: post #3
bsanr2 wrote: post #2

Now is the time to watch closely. When Pelosi got on board healthcare reform, we lost the public option. The chances that her support is a mask for a campaign to water down any potential legislation are high.

Can you explain? My recollection is that there was too much squabbling within the Democrat party to achieve it, with moderates wavering. And with the Senate putting in a watered down public option, it killed any chance for the House to submit tgeir own.

It could have been passed through reconciliation IIRC. They didn't, in a bid to insulate the final bill against GOP objections to the legislation as a whole.

We all know how that turned out.

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