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AB2712 – California Universal Basic Income

leginfo.legislature.ca.gov

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Re: AB2712 – California Universal Basic Income

#151

Post by the_gastropod »

SkyBelow wrote: post #127
danhak wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm, how about my right to a fair and speedy trial? That requires the labor of others, doesn’t it?

It is a cost that the government has to provide you if they want to try you. Put another way, it is saying the government has the right to try someone only if they can provide a fair and speedy trial (with lawyers for those who can't afford one). If they cannot provide this, they cannot try you for a crime. Thus, by choosing to try someone, they consent to the payment required to provide these services. At least in t…

I think you're drawing a distinction where one does not exist. The government pays for these services with tax money (which you seem to be suggesting is "receiving someone's labor without their consent")

Re: AB2712 – California Universal Basic Income

#152

Post by the_gastropod »

geddy wrote: post #133
danhak wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm, how about my right to a fair and speedy trial? That requires the labor of others, doesn’t it?

How is that, in any remote capacity, the same thing? One is being forced to give my money to someone else for reasons of "fairness", the other is a right to not be locked up for a reasonable amount of time after being accused of a crime. One of those involves taking my freedom, the other, my money.

It's simply the other side of the ledger. The process requires labor, paid for by the government via taxation (taking other people's money). It's precisely the same thing.

Re: AB2712 – California Universal Basic Income

#153

Post by [deleted] »

ac29 wrote: post #128
dessant wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What percentage of your income goes to taxes? In the EU almost half of your income would be withheld for different taxes, and depending on the country, you would also get absymal health care, with a system that forces you to pay out of pocket, after a part of your salary was already taken to pay for universal health care.

The top tax bracket in CA would require you to make well over $1M for a married couple: a rate of 37% federal + 13.3% state. But depending on your definition of "almost half", this could be much lower - a combined rate of 41.3% starts at about $325k for a couple. These are income taxes only, mandatory medicare and social security taxes add a bit more.

[deleted]

Re: AB2712 – California Universal Basic Income

#154

Post by AnthonyMouse »

mcv wrote: post #52
gedy wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mainly a try at introducing a VAT, populist UBI stuff is probably secondary goal

VAT seems an odd way to fund Basic Income. It should be part of the income tax system. I believe Friedman called it a negative income tax. If it's a livable BI, it should replace welfare and similar benefits.

> VAT seems an odd way to fund Basic Income.

It actually makes a lot of sense, because the primary benefit of using income tax is the progressive rate structure, but for a tax funding a UBI you actually want a flat rate because the tax is the de facto phase out of the benefit.

We currently have two systems that basically invert each other. On the one hand, we have a progressive tax. On the other hand, we phase out assistance for the poor as incomes increase. These two things cancel out. With a UBI you "pay more tax" but you don't lose the assistance. When the assistance is cash that's a no-op.

Except that administratively it's dramatically simpler -- you don't have to vary the tax based on how much money anybody makes, you don't create arbitrage opportunities for rich people to pay lower tax rates intended for poor people, you don't accidentally create poverty traps by imposing de facto higher marginal rates on lower income people than higher income people due to overlapping benefits phase outs, etc.

Re: AB2712 – California Universal Basic Income

#155

Post by thereisnospork »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #108
michaelt wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing markets are a zero-sum game if you refuse to build more housing when demand exceeds supply If ten families want houses and there are only nine on the market, one family will go without whether you have auctions, price caps, land taxes, means testing, subsidies, or any other economic intervention, because nine is less than ten

Houses get built, maybe just not in the favorite places. People get roommates. Sure housing is more inflexible than some products, but not a whole lot.

> Houses get built, maybe just not in the favorite places.

So 9 out of 10 families get to live in a commutable distance to where they work, or 2 families get to live in half the appropriate space. Not good for the economy, not good for the families, very good for landlords.

Whether or not housing is naturally flexible, CA's government has done pretty darn well making it inflexible. See rents vs. inflation.

Every dollar of rent above costs for construction and necessary administration is a monetary redistribution from the renting class to property owners. CA doesn't lack land, and it doesn't lack the ability to pour concrete into earthquake-safe cubes with plumbing; the difficulty in construction and resulting high rents is the result of intentional obstruction and regulatory capture by the benefiting property owners.

Re: AB2712 – California Universal Basic Income

#156

Post by AnthonyMouse »

jngreenlee wrote: post #73
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you double taxes, but the money is literally just going back into people's pockets, less administration fees of the UBI program, it's just income redistribution and can completely work.

>less administration fees of the UBI program Show me a success story where this didn't become a gigantic suck on the funds

There are many valid criticisms of social security, but the administrative costs are less than one percent.

Re: AB2712 – California Universal Basic Income

#157

Post by oDot »

burlesona wrote: post #85
oDot wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You write as if markets are a zero sum game, however they are most certainly not. You say the poor tenant will transfer wealth to the wealthy landlord as if the tenant is losing. However -- they are both gaining. Say the rent is $1000. Obviously, the property usage right is worth to the landlord less than $1000, otherwise he would've just used the property himself. He gains. The property usage right is worth more tha…

The transaction isn’t even close to this. Imagine the case of a working class family that has lived in CA for generations. The elderly grandmother owns a home because she bought it in the 1950s when things were not so broken. She has two grown children, each with families. One family lives in her house with her, because that’s all they can afford, but that’s okay because they want to stay close to home. The other fam…

> So back to that family, the landlord notices the market has moved, and he raises the rent 10%. The landlord gains $400/mo. The tenants gain nothing except the “privelege” of non-eviction.

It seems like that "privilege" is worth to the tenant than the money, even after the increase. Otherwise they would have moved. Therefore, it is not a zero sum game.

Re: AB2712 – California Universal Basic Income

#158

Post by superkuh »

rmah wrote: post #24

Can they not do basic math? There are around 30 mil adults in California. Even if provision 18992.1 (b) is 5 mil people, that's still 25 mil people. That's 25 mil * $12,000 = $300 bil a year. The ENTIRE California state budget for 2020 is only $220 bil. They would have to more than double the tax revenue for a state with already very high taxes. Now, assuming the most generous interpretation of their 10% VAT proposal…

All they have to do is change the way the current basic income system works. Right now basic income is granted to any corporate bank with charter. They are free to create M0 money out of thin air as debt on their balance sheets to loan out money that they don't have (fractional reserve). There are about 4500 commercial banks in the USA. If California simply assumed this role of money creation within the state it'd have more than enough to distribute for a universal basic income instead of the normal centralized basic income to corporations that then filters out according to their whims.

Re: AB2712 – California Universal Basic Income

#159

Post by jchanimal »

mech1234 wrote: post #132
jchanimal wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My view on taxes is that it’s already the government’s money. Redistributive policies aren’t different in moral character from eg setting an interest rate. The most valuable thing about UBI is that it creates the conditions for a free market in labor. I can only guess that would be better for the economy than the current state of forced labor.

Why is it already the government's money?

They print it and they defend its value by providing a legal and defense framework within which the market operates.

If it is better for the economy that quantitative easing happen via cash payouts to the people rather than via capital injections to banks, the government has the purview to do that.

Re: AB2712 – California Universal Basic Income

#160

Post by AnthonyMouse »

michaelt wrote: post #72
timerol wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the stated benefits of UBI is that it has the potential to replace other forms of welfare more efficiently. Instead of people getting separate benefits for food, housing, unemployment, etc, they get the one benefit: UBI. This removes the problem of "I don't work hard enough to be poor in America", where the people going through the worst situations have to spend the most time going through forms and bureaucrac…

> Most serious UBI proposals do what this one does: Either keep your current benefits or go on a UBI, whatever works best for you. I appreciate that we wouldn't want the situation where instituting UBI stops (for example) severely disabled veterans getting specially adapted cars. But doesn't this mean we retain all the forms and bureaucracies and weird income caps and disincentives to work, and the administrative cos…

> But doesn't this mean we retain all the forms and bureaucracies and weird income caps and disincentives to work, and the administrative costs that go with them?

Mostly not, because everyone whose weird byzantine collection of benefits doesn't add up to more than the UBI will abandon all of them and choose the UBI. That should be nearly everybody even if it isn't literally everybody.

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