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But if we could trade B.I. for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, and other social progams-- it would probably be more cost efficient as individuals look after their money better than other people do.
Here's a video from Milton Friedman (not Tom Friedman!) who is advocating for a negative income tax-- a variation of basic income.
I've got a twist on this basic idea. Fund basic income with a large tax on various CO2 producing activities. With the idea that - on average - people can pay this tax out of the basic income received from it. And people will have direct incentives to find ways to reduce CO2 consumption. Then get rid of silly specific legislation that tries to achieve the same goal in less successful ways. Thus fuel efficiency, Califo…
This idea seems to incur very high bureaucracy costs. What are CO2 producing activies? How much are each of them taxed? Who measures the tax and is responsible paying for it? Etc. One selling point of basic income is that there's no loopholes and there's very little bureaucracy costs, therefore a larger portion of the money is actually used for consumption instead of doing unnecessary (for society) work.
I've got a twist on this basic idea. Fund basic income with a large tax on various CO2 producing activities. With the idea that - on average - people can pay this tax out of the basic income received from it. And people will have direct incentives to find ways to reduce CO2 consumption. Then get rid of silly specific legislation that tries to achieve the same goal in less successful ways. Thus fuel efficiency, Califo…
1) The numbers don't work out. Even a very steep CO2 tax will produce too little revenue for any form of meaningful BI.
2) The money collected on the CO2 tax could also be used for a general tax cut. So you still have the political problem of explaining to working middle class why their money is being handed out to lazy bums.
And where the money to pay for that will come from? I suspect if you just tax the rich like crazy, they will just move out to somewhere else.
The Mincome experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome) dabbled with this idea and the results were rather surprising. Most people seemed to want to work rather than loaf around and collect benefits.
Don't think you'd have to "tax the rich like crazy". Would returning to the tax rates of the 1990s be "crazy"? Would closing corporate loopholes be "crazy"? Would investigating why trillions of dollars in tax havens have somehow escaped oversight be "crazy"?
I've got a twist on this basic idea. Fund basic income with a large tax on various CO2 producing activities. With the idea that - on average - people can pay this tax out of the basic income received from it. And people will have direct incentives to find ways to reduce CO2 consumption. Then get rid of silly specific legislation that tries to achieve the same goal in less successful ways. Thus fuel efficiency, Califo…
This idea seems to incur very high bureaucracy costs. What are CO2 producing activies? How much are each of them taxed? Who measures the tax and is responsible paying for it? Etc. One selling point of basic income is that there's no loopholes and there's very little bureaucracy costs, therefore a larger portion of the money is actually used for consumption instead of doing unnecessary (for society) work.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This idea seems to incur very high bureaucracy costs. What are CO2 producing activies? How much are each of them taxed? Who measures the tax and is responsible paying for it? Etc. One selling point of basic income is that there's no loopholes and there's very little bureaucracy costs, therefore a larger portion of the money is actually used for consumption instead of doing unnecessary (for society) work.
Of course there are details to work out but it is fundamentally a solvable problem. A tax on any coal natural gas or oil should cover most of the bases (per ton of carbon contained). If it is being purchased for a use that won't end up in the atmosphere (IE carbon capture and storage), the burden is on the purchaser to prove the case for a tax write-off.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect that the rich would rather pay higher taxes than face civil unrest from the ever-increasing fraction of the population that can't find work.
Money and business moves to where it's most welcome for the same reason people move to neighborhoods with low rates of theft (after all, taxation and inflationary monetary policy is theft no matter which way it's painted). The reason people can't find work now is due to the failures of central planning, not the lack of it. Communist and hard-socialist countries all have tried the basic income idea and failed. The onl…
I know of a few short lived experiments, but I'm not aware of any country that has implemented a basic income, let alone failed at it. Could you let me know where you're thinking of?
> It all sounds good in theory, but in practice...
... where has it failed in practice?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Money and business moves to where it's most welcome for the same reason people move to neighborhoods with low rates of theft (after all, taxation and inflationary monetary policy is theft no matter which way it's painted). The reason people can't find work now is due to the failures of central planning, not the lack of it. Communist and hard-socialist countries all have tried the basic income idea and failed. The onl…
> Communist and hard-socialist countries all have tried the basic income idea and failed. I know of a few short lived experiments, but I'm not aware of any country that has implemented a basic income, let alone failed at it. Could you let me know where you're thinking of? > It all sounds good in theory, but in practice... ... where has it failed in practice?
1.) Cheap money via gov't Fed Policy (created the artificial boom) 2.) Government mandates in mortgage lending (caused a lot of people to buy homes when they weren't in a realistic position to do so)
So Communism wins？