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Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

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Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#101

Post by ToucanLoucan »

FredPret wrote: post #67
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it with new taxation on XYZ Bring back the 70% corporate tax rate that was considered normal when Reagan was elected. That should give us a solid start. After that take all the money from every billionaire. You can have up to $999,999,999.99 in your bank + assets, and everything after that goes to healthcare and UBI. If you get to a billion, we'll name a dog park after you and you get a little trophy that says y…

70% corporate tax rate will get you another Reagan. It's a fast track to destroying entrepreneurship, reducing competition to introduce new, better products or lower prices of existing products. This is bad for the middle-class consumer because they'll have less to buy, and fewer places to work at. Furthermore, even if you went full Stalin and confiscated the entire wealth of all the billionaires, that's only $12T [1…

> 70% corporate tax rate will get you another Reagan.

What do you mean? We still have Reagans, they never went away.

> It's a fast track to destroying entrepreneurship, reducing competition to introduce new, better products or lower prices of existing products.

Right America wasn’t even remotely an economic power until the 80’s. How could I forget?

> Furthermore, even if you went full Stalin and confiscated the entire wealth of all the billionaires, that's only $12T [1]. Sounds like a lot? It's a whopping $1500 per person in the world. You'll completely obliterate the economy for the ability to give everyone a check for $1500. One month later, 95% of that money will be spent and back in the hands of innovators and value providers.

It’s not confiscating, it’s tax. Tax everything above one billion at 100%. It’s not one time, it’s every year. And it’s not like we wouldn’t still have incredibly rich people, we just wouldn’t be permitting them to lock up entire GDPs worth of money in nothing.

Like if you think there are tons of people out there who will refuse to create businesses because we cap wealth at a mere, paltry one billion dollars, I think that’s a those people problem not an argument against that idea.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#102

Post by throwawayfrsbob »

arp242 wrote: post #62

Most of these are either fairly short-lived limited pilots, or aren't really "UBI" (e.g. Alaska's $1,600 a year hardly qualifies as UBI as it's just enough to buy groceries with, never mind rent or any other basic needs). A large population with basic needs met and nothing particular they have to do is untested. I don't really know how that will end, but I fear it may not end especially well. Let's be real: no one wo…

Actually, Spongebob was (originally) a depiticion of a real-life personality; the type of person who is truly so sheltered, optimistic and naive to actually ENJOY his job, even though he is supporting an immoral, materialistic crab who has ptsd from being in the Navy and hoards wealth as a coping method.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#103

Post by lazyasciiart »

CityOfThrowaway wrote: post #45

Yes, of course giving people money makes their lives better. It especially works when a very small subset of the population receives such treatment, such that their relative income is higher than those outside the experiment. The issue with UBI is that enacting it at scale has two huge problems: 1. Financing it. These programs are monumentally expensive. You need to get the money from somewhere. The easiest place to…

I don’t think any of that is correct.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#104

Post by entropicdrifter »

chimprich wrote: post #77
woofcat wrote: post #2

I don't think anyone is doubting that giving people money improves their lives. That seems to be the conclusion of these studies. However what is seemingly _never_ studied is how to finance such an operation. The money has to come out of the system somewhere. Is it with new taxation on XYZ, or slashing services somewhere else etc.

> However what is seemingly _never_ studied is how to finance such an operation You haven't understood the concept of UBI. It doesn't have to be "financed". It's a different way of assigning tax and benefits. E.g. imagine a population of only two people, Alice and Bob. Currently Alice pays £100 in tax, and Bob receives £50 in welfare payments because he's unemployed. You could set up a UBI scheme to be net zero. Unde…

I mean with progressive tax brackets it'd be redistributive even if everyone got the same exact payments

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#105

Post by phmqk76 »

CityOfThrowaway wrote: post #45

Yes, of course giving people money makes their lives better. It especially works when a very small subset of the population receives such treatment, such that their relative income is higher than those outside the experiment. The issue with UBI is that enacting it at scale has two huge problems: 1. Financing it. These programs are monumentally expensive. You need to get the money from somewhere. The easiest place to…

Your comment beats me to it! I used to be in favor of UBI, but every point you make is valid. And the so-called Modern Monetary Theory of printing unlimited sums of money without triggering inflation either doesn’t work conceptually, or requires too many ancillary policy changes to ever be an option.

I think a good solution looks more like good old-fashioned workers rights laws that we see in Europe, which includes sector-level wage bargaining. And I would also like to see a federal jobs guarantee that would cause upwards wage pressure in the private sector, while providing a livable minimum wage for all who are able to work.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#106

Post by neilv »

How about Universal Limited Income?

No one can have more than $X of wealth.

Analogy: Town of houses. Everyone gets help building a house, can fix it up however they like, etc. One day, some person tries to take many house lots, to build a massive temple to themself. As a corrective mechanism, other townspeople repeatedly throw that person into the river, until the person is cured.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#107

Post by slowmovintarget »

anon25783 wrote: post #29
woofcat wrote: post #2

I don't think anyone is doubting that giving people money improves their lives. That seems to be the conclusion of these studies. However what is seemingly _never_ studied is how to finance such an operation. The money has to come out of the system somewhere. Is it with new taxation on XYZ, or slashing services somewhere else etc.

The GDP of the USA is about 28 trillion dollars. The US military's budget alone is over eight hundred billion dollars. I think we can manage.

We did this during the pandemic and it resulted in inflation that we're still trying to deal with. Exactly the kind of inflation that detractors claim would happen.

Safety net, yes. UBI and other redistributionist fantasies, no.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#108

Post by orangecat »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #89

Any money given to non-property owners will eventually be extracted by the property owners. UBI given to everyone will eventually lead to the same effective poverty we have now and much wealthier landlords.

Why specifically landlords and not sellers of food, gas, cell phones, etc? Everyone would like to raise their prices, but as long as there's competition they can't do so arbitrarily.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#109

Post by febeling »

UBI is the weirdest thing. I'm certainly no fan of an economic system which casually threatens each of it's member with starvation and homelessness if personal misfortune strikes. But universal basic income is something different than support for someone in need. It has to be paid by someone, but this someone isn't ever mentioned. It's somehow the government. But government needs to be funded, too. So ultimately it's an attempt make everyone hand over responsibility of our lives and livelihoods to some opaque sustenance function, without thinking or asking any questions.

Re: Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time

#110

Post by J_Shelby_J »

Americans spend 1/3rd of their income on cars, and 1/3rd to 1/2 on housing.

UBI is not going to fix this. It will just move the prices of these nessecities up like we saw durning the COVID stimulus.

America and most of the developed world is stricken with a supply problem. Car dependency is resource intensive and housing is in such short supply that it costs 2x what it would in an efficient market. Any attempt to fix it on the monetary side via ubi or minimum wage is a waste of time. Although, if we did fix it, then UBI would be great, but probably not really necessary.

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