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A Guaranteed Income for Every American

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Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#161

Post by mac01021 »

gizmo wrote: post #103
mac01021 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a single mother with 3 kids has to make do with $10,000 a year? Actually, under Murray's proposal, she has to make do with 10k per year plus whatever she can earn. If she's earning very, then she's probably doing all the childcare herself and her living costs are not much more than a single, childless woman. If she works full time, then her total income (earned and unearned) will be 30k at minimum. I'm not saying I…

The point is when you give the same subsidies to a healthy 22 year old who lives with his parents and a single mother of three, we're dealing with one of two situations: 1) the subsidies are sufficient for both groups to do OK. This is fine in theory, but taxes would have to go up by a lot to have the minimum take care of the needy with the largest expenses. The UBI would have to be closer to 25,000 USD. If it's poli…

I think you are probably right that a welfare system that does not consider the cost of dependents is likely misguided.

And we're in agreement that properly raising three kids is a tremendous undertaking that demands either a whole bunch of money or almost all of your time.

I take issue, though, with the idea that a family of 4 living on other people's money should spend so extravagantly. You do not need a car. You need a 2-bedroom home within 2 miles of a school. Housing will almost certainly be more than half of your expenses. Food for 4 people is a few thousand more. Clothing, entertainment, and diapers cost almost nothing (do not use disposable diapers except on special occasions). If you want to work part time then find another mom who will swap days with you or pay you to take her kids while she's working. I could see $10k turning out to be slightly less than what's really needed, but it shouldn't be considered "cruel joke" territory.

In the spirit of not paying people more than they need, I could suggest paying the young adult who gets free housing from her parents only $3k per year, but that opens a huge can of worms that'll have kids pretending to rent their own apartment to get more UBI while really living at their parent's house, etc.

Again, I think we're in agreement on the flaws of this UBI proposal. But I assert that, until such time as our society reaches a level of technological advancement where no one needs to work, the amount of extra work that working people are required to do to support nonworking people should be no more than the minimum amount to maintain their health and physical comfort. If you think people should get more than that, I'd like to know how you propose to decide how much.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#162

Post by notahacker »

avatarlite wrote: post #142
gizmo wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is when you give the same subsidies to a healthy 22 year old who lives with his parents and a single mother of three, we're dealing with one of two situations: 1) the subsidies are sufficient for both groups to do OK. This is fine in theory, but taxes would have to go up by a lot to have the minimum take care of the needy with the largest expenses. The UBI would have to be closer to 25,000 USD. If it's poli…

From the article: >Or consider the unemployed young man who fathers a child. Today, society is unable to make him shoulder responsibility. Under a UBI, a judge could order part of his monthly grant to be extracted for child support before he ever sees it. The lesson wouldn’t be lost on his male friends. > Or consider teenage girls from poor neighborhoods who have friends turning 21. They watch—and learn—as some of th…

Assuming the father is a living US citizen whose identity and whereabouts the mother knows, of course.

Either way, that doesn't really affect the argument that a BI payment supposed to be a minimum for one person to live off is unlikely to stretch to paying for the food, living space and private health insurance costs for another three, even if another parent's minimum payment is also being garnished to help.

The author's arguments you've cited essentially amount to the view that children of single parents should be punished for their parents' life decisions. It looks particularly crass in the context of accompanying arguments in favour of spending money on adults who choose to "idle away their time" and including those fortunate enough to be "already living off other people’s money".

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#163

Post by katedye »

mac01021 wrote: post #16
arcanus wrote: post #2

"As of 2014, the annual cost of a UBI would have been about $200 billion cheaper than the current system. By 2020, it would be nearly a trillion dollars cheaper." Remarkable how much entitlement spending is booked in the near future.

I don't think this adds up. Here ( https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-bud... ) is federal spending for 2015. It shows a total federal spending of 3.8 trillion dollars. This is all spending, including 0.5 trillion on the military, 0.2 trillion in interest on debt, and tons of other spending on things that are not welfare or social-safety-net programs. Meanwhile, $13k * 300m people, results in an…

Spending on social security (most programs, minus food stamps...I think) is in the neighbourhood of $930 billion. Right now, that's delivered to 65 million people. Of 330 million people total, ~80% are over 21. And it would be safe to assume 50% would qualify (because 1 in three households make between 50k-100k and 1 in four make less than 24k).

That leaves 132 million people drawing from $930 billion, which means everyone gets $7153. For everyone to get $13,000, 71 million people would be allowed to qualify.

This doesn't take into account the taper at all, so it could be stretched to reach more people. But even if 60 million people receive 13k, which leaves ~2.5k for another 60 million, that's still less than 132 million and doesn't align with the author's 6.5k number.

All this is to say: I find the idea appealing because it reduces the cost of bureaucracy and creates autonomy, but I'm not sure if it's feasible.

Sources: https://www.ssa.gov/finance/2015/Overview%20SSA.pdf https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/quickfacts/prog_highlights/i... http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/16/156688596/what-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_programs_in_the_United_...

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#164

Post by fzeroracer »

I am all for Basic Income but the way the author wants to implement it would be a disaster.

My mother is fully disabled and unable to work as a result of her stroke and she relies on Medicaid, Food Stamps and SSI to live. $13000 per person would be lower than what she gets right now and that's without considering the insurance issues. These changes would quite literally kill or leave homeless a large amount of America's disabled, poor or elderly population.

If Basic Income is to work then it needs to be actually liveable and adjusted based upon the CoL in each area.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#165

Post by mac01021 »

chimeracoder wrote: post #125
brador wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In difficult times people stop spending money, even with UBI. This means less income to spread around, the solution, print more money = inflation. Second, under UBI a proportion of the population stops working and this increases over time as robots replace workers. Reducing earned income, lowering UBI cash availability. Solution? Print more money = inflation. With a land value tax you get a known relatively unchangin…

> In difficult times people stop spending money, even with UBI. This means less income to spread around, the solution, print more money = inflation. This is... not really correct. It's true that expansionary monetary policy is often practiced in times of economic recession, but that's not really because there's 'less income to spread around'. And the reason expansionary monetary policy is practiced isn't to give peop…

> Expansionary monetary policy reduces the costs of loans and investments

How does it do that? Suppose I want to borrow $1M to build a factory, but nobody (banks, venture capitalists, whatever) can afford to invest in my endeavor.

So the fed prints a bunch of money, causing 5% inflation. Now the bank can more easily afford to loan me $1M, because that $1M is worth less.

But now I need a $1.05M loan to build my factory.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#166

Post by Roboprog »

If only all of the things that needed doing for the common good were actually being done now, either by robots, or by a small number of people with machine assistance, this discussion might make more sense.

Once the roads are fixed, and the parks are clean, the disabled are cared for, etc, etc, etc. THEN maybe we should have a discussion about "Basic Income".

Our current technology is NOT "The Culture". There is still work to do, it is "simply" (not so simple) a matter of clawing back some cash from those who benefitted most from a stable society.

The WSJ's "10K" plan just sounds like a scam to cut more government jobs while throwing out a small consolation prize to prevent outright rebellion.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#167

Post by nugget »

throwaway13337 wrote: post #4

"The UBI is to be financed by getting rid of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, housing subsidies, welfare for single women and every other kind of welfare and social-services program, as well as agricultural subsidies and corporate welfare." How the hell does that happen politically? I would love to see basic income replacing a large portion of social programs in the stat…

We can have either basic income or open borders/mass immigration -- but I don't see how we can have both.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#168

Post by mac01021 »

LNMNMMMC wrote: post #108
mac01021 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. (see my edit). I would love to be even more wrong - to the point where the proposal outlined in the article is clearly viable. So, if anyone has solid numbers demonstrating that, please do share.

You missed the part about people under 21, that should cut off another ~25% from your estimate. Medicare + Medicaid + Social Security is well over 2 billion, so I think it's pretty close.

I tried to get rid of people under 21 by reducing the population from 320M to 300M, but I guess I should look and see what the actual numbers are.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#169

Post by danbruc »

sokoloff wrote: post #154
danbruc wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was meant to read »non-viable«, i.e. if customers are not willing to pay enough for a product or service so that a full time worker can live on the salary, then efficiency must improve, the job must be automate away entirely or the business must go out of business. I consider neither simply exploiting the employees nor subsidizing the business and customers by giving benefits to the employees a good solution. Be…

What's wrong with letting the work be done at a market rate lower than the current (ideally abolished) minimum wage? I'd pay someone $5/hr to pull weeds, but I won't pay them $10 or $15/hr. Now, in which system can a neighbor earn an extra $20 a week for a morning of work? In which system does my front garden look nicer from the sidewalk? Someone (probably a teen) gets some walking around money, the whole neighborhoo…

I mentioned that in another comment, there are certainly a lot of cases like your example where it makes no or not much sense to apply a minimum wage. I want the minimum wage to target specifically normal (full time) employment. An employer should not be able to pocket most of the money for say selling relatively expensive cloths but pay shitty wages to its sewers. You might argue that employees are free to negotiate wages and free to not accept bad conditions, but that easily fails if, for example, there is a surplus of possible employees. Sure, it is an important mechanism to reduce costs for consumers, but that should in my mind not come at the expenses of the employees.

Re: A Guaranteed Income for Every American

#170

Post by opo »

stale2002 wrote: post #144
arbre wrote: post #73

Wouldn't the price of everything raise accordingly, so that you basically can't afford anything with the basic income?

Only if the government added money to the system without removing it elsewhere. Any sane policy doesn't involve just printing money and giving it to people. It involves taking that money from someone else, through taxes, and THEN giving it to people.

The current government deficit is more than 500 billion. We can't currently pay for current government spending - not sure why you think the government would try and pay for a huge new entitlement when the political firestorm from that would probably kill it.
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