Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?
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Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?
#2$12k per year x 320M people = $3.84 trillion, which is 22.9% of annual GDP.
That's a pretty steep price tag for a thousand dollars a month.
Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?
#3Because with more automation, if
we don't, then the population
will shrink, in principle to zero.
Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?
#4$12k per year x 320M people = $3.84 trillion, which is 22.9% of annual GDP. That's a pretty steep price tag for a thousand dollars a month.
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Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?
#5$12k per year x 320M people = $3.84 trillion, which is 22.9% of annual GDP. That's a pretty steep price tag for a thousand dollars a month.
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Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?
#6$12k per year x 320M people = $3.84 trillion, which is 22.9% of annual GDP. That's a pretty steep price tag for a thousand dollars a month.
Please take a look at the FAQ[1] on reddit and perhaps at this article[2] about calculating whether USA can afford BI.
[1]: http://en.reddit.com/r/basicincome/wiki/index
[2]: http://www.economonitor.com/dolanecon/2014/01/13/could-we-af...
Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?
#7$12k per year x 320M people = $3.84 trillion, which is 22.9% of annual GDP. That's a pretty steep price tag for a thousand dollars a month.
Depends on how that income gets taxed. At a certain level of income, the gains of basic income are lost to extra taxation. However you always know that if you get fired you have a safety net, so it provides value to you even if you get 0$ net effect.
Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?
#8I always found the idea interesting, at the condition that we suppress all other forms of benefits. It is a simple and elegant way to solve the welfare trap and it also would be easier and cheaper to manage than the layers of benefits from various gvt agencies.
To me there are only two real risks. First the idea that this will lead more people to stop working instead of less, which would be counterproductive. And I find it worrying that the counter-argument is "people are working too hard anyway". It is impossible to guess what would happen but as all former communist countries know, it is not fun to have grand economic ideas experimented on a live population.
The second risk is that this could work in a closed society like Japan. But most western countries have mass immigration and such a system wouldn't survive very long the abuse it would inevitably trigger in an open society.
Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?
#9The question is whether the money comes out of existing spending or is in addition to it. There's no reason that it couldn't be entirely sourced from existing spending (~36%+ of GDP in US, $6.2T).
Re: Why Should We Support the Idea of an Unconditional Basic Income?
#10$12k per year x 320M people = $3.84 trillion, which is 22.9% of annual GDP. That's a pretty steep price tag for a thousand dollars a month.
That is a rather trivial analysis that assumes a system where everyone, regardless of income, got $12k more than they would otherwise.
It would be easy to set a tax system such that people got $12k as a minimum, but those who earned (say) $20k received $6k and by $50k there was no increase. I'm not suggesting a curve with those figures, that is purely for an example.