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Universal Basic Income Is Superior to a $15 Minimum Wage (2019)

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Re: Universal Basic Income Is Superior to a $15 Minimum Wage (2019)

#151

Post by majewsky »

derekp7 wrote: post #147
slg wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And politically, I think it’s more appealing to be able to say to everyone: You have intrinsic value. The universality of UBI is key to its political viability. Just look at the number of people who are against forgiving college debt because they have already paid off college or are past the stage in their life in which they are personally concerned about college debt. Most people still view "fairness" as everyone b…

That is something I just really don't get. It is like being against the Polio vaccine simply because "I had gotten polio just before the vaccine came out, so if I had to suffer everyone else should too". I've never heard of anyone being against vaccines due to "fairness".

The difference is that people didn't choose to get polio. But they chose to go to college knowing that they would get into debt and then dug their way out of the consequences. If the next generation of college-goers would not have to put up with the same crap, that would mean that their own self-inflicted suffering was meaningless. At that point, cognitive dissonance kicks in and people make the illogical argument that "if I had to suffer, they should have to suffer too".

Re: Universal Basic Income Is Superior to a $15 Minimum Wage (2019)

#152

Post by dogma1138 »

azey47 wrote: post #138
dogma1138 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Negative income tax has the same problem as the insane creep in income tax allowance the UK has seen since 2010, it’s now double than it was a decade ago and it accounts essentially for the entire growth in the take home pay in the UK over the past decade. Negative income tax and yearly increases in tax allowances shift the burden on pay increases from the employer to the government and thus to the tax payer. In the…

>I would much rather see a universal basic services program that guarantees universal free at the point of use access to services such as housing, healthcare and education provided directly by a government body or non for profit enterprises. I agree that creating such a program creates political incentives for increasing it over time in excess of inflation. That's a real cost that needs to be weighed against alternat…

You might be right on the effects of market distortion, but with the current markets we have which many of them aren’t free and the fact that UBI/NIT will be funded quite solely through income tax levied on the 50th-99th percentiles which earn enough to actually pay some taxes but not enough to effectively avoid them will make it unfeasible.

We either have to completely change taxation and have wealth taxes and much higher corporate taxes as well as sufficient housing to ensure that most of UBI payouts don’t simply flow to a handful of landlords or find an alternative solution to UBI.

This is also the issue I have with UBI experiments, running an experiment that finds people lives improve when you give them money isn’t particularly interesting since all of these are too small scale to measure inflationary effects at a minimum an experiment that gives say a 1000 people UBI needs to have another group of people from income percentiles that are expected to fund it that will be taxed at a level that would incorporate the costing of the proposed UBI stipend.

Re: Universal Basic Income Is Superior to a $15 Minimum Wage (2019)

#153

Post by slg »

syshum wrote: post #150
slg wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an analogy. It doesn’t mean we are literally a family. If you want to use a tax analogy, let’s look at marginal tax rates. It is widely regarded by a majority of the population that a flat tax isn’t fair as it treats everyone the same. It is fine if you aren’t in that majority, but you can’t pretend that “fair” means treating everyone the same is some universal truth.

Well that is another bad analogy, and while I do find all income taxation to be unethical marginalize tax rates are not treating people differently, they are treating incomes differently. To treat people differently you would have to start basing income tax rates on characteristics of a person, such as race, sexual identity, age or height (like in your previous analogy) Saying all income from 0-50000 is tax X, and in…

>To treat people differently you would have to start basing income tax rates on characteristics of a person, such as race, sexual identity, age or height (like in your previous analogy)

Characteristics like their marriage status, the number of children they have, the status of their home, their status as a student, or even the specific example you used of age which is tied to all sorts of taxation issues?

Although I'm not sure there is any point to continuing the conversation if you are going to nitpick any analogy and refuse to recognize that your views on taxation are an extreme minority opinion.

Re: Universal Basic Income Is Superior to a $15 Minimum Wage (2019)

#154

Post by exabrial »

sdenton4 wrote: post #7
exabrial wrote: post #3

Kind of a self defeating claim; sorta like saying McDonalds burgers are better than Burger King. Both are pretty pretty bad for you.

Who is 'you?' Capitalism is a social good to the extent that it solves problems and makes people's lives better. But capitalism only solves the problems of people with money: their cash is THE incentive for others to figure out how to solve their problems. If people with problems have no money, they effectively create no demand. Add wealth to the bottom tier of society and we'll generate generate demand to solve prob…

Sometimes I wonder where people come up with the crap like 'minimum wage isn't inflationary'.

Make minimum wage $1,000,000/hr then!

Re: Universal Basic Income Is Superior to a $15 Minimum Wage (2019)

#155

Post by s1artibartfast »

true_religion wrote: post #70
reader_mode wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very narrative driven world view. The problem with UBI is that some jobs suck but need to be done, and if you set a guaranteed income for doing nothing the incentive for doing that job suddenly needs to be a lot higher to compete. Saying that it's just the capital owners is ridiculous - consider for eg. elderly care - good luck living in with your demented mother who needs assistance to perform even the basi…

I recently went through my mothers health failing and then subsequent death. If I didn’t have to work, I absolutely would have cared for her myself. However, there is no way I could have quit working and keep the house in a relatively expensive area that I bought to be close to job opportunities. UBI changes the calculus dramatically. Suddenly you can just do things for yourself .

How would 1,000 a month change this calculus for you?

For the 50% of american paying paying taxes, this means 1,000 less a month.

Re: Universal Basic Income Is Superior to a $15 Minimum Wage (2019)

#156

Post by AnthonyMouse »

randomdata wrote: post #110
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't pay income tax at tax time, it gets withheld from your paycheck on an ongoing basis. Suppose you make $20,000/month, i.e. $240,000/year if you made that the whole year. In January through March you make $20,000/month. Under a UBI you receive $1000 but then pay $6000 in taxes, a net payment to the government of $5000/month. Under a negative income tax you pay 5% on the first $4000 ($200) and 30% on the remai…

> You don't pay income tax at tax time, it gets withheld from your paycheck on an ongoing basis. You're shrinking the window down from a year, but does it change anything other than you might be able to get by for a couple of weeks easier than an entire year if your income dries up? Assuming monthly payments, and a loss of income on March 1st, I'm still under the impression that UBI will give you $1,000 to spend as o…

One way to do income tax would be that if you get paid $60,000 then your employer gives you $60,000 and at the end of the year you have to cut a check to the IRS for e.g. $18,000. The problem with this is that if you give people $60,000 then a lot of them spend all $60,000 and come tax time they don't have the tax money and you need to start having tax debtors prisons or something. The analogous thing for a UBI would be that you get all the money on one day of the year, whether it's January 1st or December 31st or July 4th, and then some people spend all the money immediately and starve to death six months later.

What we do instead is withholding. Your employer is to pay you $60,000/year, i.e. $5000/month, but instead of actually giving you $5000/month, they give you $3500/month and give the rest directly to the IRS. Then you don't owe anything at the end of the year and a lot of people actually get some back because they took out more than they needed to.

The reconciliation period for this is in the law somewhere but in principle it can be whatever you want. It could be instantaneous. As soon as you get your paycheck, the employer cuts one to the IRS at the same time.

With a negative income tax, some people would have a negative withholding amount. So the IRS would cut a check to the employer and then the employer would include that money in your paycheck.

So what happens if there is no employer? Well, then you're the employer. You're a sole proprietor making $0. So you fill out the paperwork with the IRS to reconcile your withholding, which would be in a negative amount, and they send you a check (or direct deposit the money in your bank account). There is no reason in principle that they couldn't do this as soon as you fill out the paperwork, i.e. on March 1st the instant you lose your other job and become a sole proprietor with no income.

Re: Universal Basic Income Is Superior to a $15 Minimum Wage (2019)

#157

Post by noodle »

andrewflnr wrote: post #118
noodle wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone talks about it. This is pretending that businesses would do nothing in response to the changes. They'd do a lot of stuff, like raise prices, invest in efficiency improvements, invest in their employees, reduce employee hours, offset the increase in lower level wages by reducing upper level wages, etc.. What the response would be just depends on the business and their circumstances. Edit: also, I can't find t…

> This is pretending that businesses would do nothing in response to the changes No it's not, it's proposing that one of the things they'll do in response is hire fewer people. Which will absolutely happen in a non-zero fraction of cases. The only question is how big a fraction.

Sure, but that isn't the topic I was responding to. The previous poster suggested that its not a topic that anyone talks about, when it is; and suggested that businesses hiring fewer people is the only possible outcome/side-effect, when it isn't.

Re: Universal Basic Income Is Superior to a $15 Minimum Wage (2019)

#158

Post by AnthonyMouse »

robocat wrote: post #112
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only difference between a UBI and a negative income tax is framing. Suppose you have a negative income tax in the amount of $12,000 which phases out at a rate of 25% up to $48,000 in income, and a 5% marginal tax rate on people who make less than $48,000 and a 30% marginal tax rate on people who make more. Suppose you have a $12,000 UBI and a flat 30% tax rate. These are really the same thing. The advantage of th…

> The only difference between a UBI and a negative income tax is framing. No way. Taxation requires benefit systems for those that are not working (unemployment, disability, maternity etc). UBI simplifies benefit systems, administratively and for the needy. The social outcomes for benefits are entirely different from what a UBI would bring. Taxation is chunky (per year) and delayed (processing delays). There are heap…

> Taxation requires benefit systems for those that are not working (unemployment, disability, maternity etc).

Not a negative income tax, for exactly the same reason that a UBI doesn't, because they're the same thing.

> Taxation is chunky (per year) and delayed (processing delays).

Neither of these is inherently different. You could have a per-year UBI with processing delays. You could have an instantaneous tax reconciliation system with electronic transfers.

> Taxation has more scope for fraud so requires much more overhead for prevention.

You say that as if the existence of a UBI would cause there to not be taxation.

Having a negative income tax is entirely orthogonal to tax complexity. The explanation is more complicated, because it's just a harder to reason about way of describing the same system.

Re: Universal Basic Income Is Superior to a $15 Minimum Wage (2019)

#159

Post by reader_mode »

gtsop wrote: post #79
aww_dang wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>argument is being propagated by the same people who will never have to do these jobs or live by limited money How were you able to determine this from across the Internet?

> How were you able to determine this from across the Internet? Who told you my source is the internet? :) we all live irl and discuss with people. I never heard a low-paid worker throw this argument. It always comes from people who have better jobs and more stable income

> I never heard a low-paid worker throw this argument. It always comes from people who have better jobs and more stable income

I grew up in dirt poor family of 6 in a post civil war country and my mother is a nurse - I'm very familiar with the realities of these jobs. I just know for a fact that if a nurse would start making 2x her salary a lot of people would suddenly not have access to assisted care. It's a shitty situation - but supply of cheap labor solves the problems of poor people - if you can't see that you're out of touch.

Rich and well off people will always have access - they already pay more anyway for quality.

Re: Universal Basic Income Is Superior to a $15 Minimum Wage (2019)

#160

Post by reader_mode »

imtringued wrote: post #131
reader_mode wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very narrative driven world view. The problem with UBI is that some jobs suck but need to be done, and if you set a guaranteed income for doing nothing the incentive for doing that job suddenly needs to be a lot higher to compete. Saying that it's just the capital owners is ridiculous - consider for eg. elderly care - good luck living in with your demented mother who needs assistance to perform even the basi…

UBI is the wrong tool to solve inequality because there is already an existing tool for that. It's called inflation.

Inflation is the best tool to create inequality - rich people are always closest to the money source.
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