21–30 of 389 posts
> America competitive in the world—lies in giving every citizen a regular allotment of money to cover basics like housing, food, and shelter. Out of curiosity don't we already do this? We have public/section 8 housing, food stamps, medical/dental, etc... If we are talking about handing out cold hard cash as basic income, as the statement implies, then that is a recipe for disaster. There would be no guarantee that pe…
In ancient Rome there were a few honest reformers who felt bread subsidies (classical UBI) were deserved by the people. It was an economic argument (as is Sam's) since Roman conquest generated massive wealth that did not reach the masses who made it possible. It was an honest attempt at economic reform by a few forward thinking leaders. Within a generation the movement was captured by politicians who used its popular…
This is a legitimate concern, but it's at minimum partially addressed by the "as a share of the gdp" part.
We should also probably forbid Congress from increasing this share without a massively overwhelming vote.
Doing some back of the envelope math, US gov revenue is 3.31 trillion and the population size is 323.1 million. Which leaves about $10244 per capita to play with. How would a BI work, give people $7k per year and save 3k for military and basic services? Seems like BI would need big tax increases to become viable.
Doing some back of the envelope math, US gov revenue is 3.31 trillion and the population size is 323.1 million. Which leaves about $10244 per capita to play with. How would a BI work, give people $7k per year and save 3k for military and basic services? Seems like BI would need big tax increases to become viable.
BI would get marginally smaller the more money you make. Not a steep cutoff like current services for poor, but it would probably be taxed as income so someone making 20'l,000 gets the full 7k, someone making 150k makes 3.5k.
Because I've heard everything from what you're saying, to negative income tax, and to flat, unweighted income for everyone.
I think reinstituting a 2 year (or whatever length of time) national service requirement is a much more realistic, practical way of moving the country, and this general discussion, forward. UBI feels like a tactic with too many complications and opportunities to distort incentives, motivations, etc.
"We’re still in our pilot. It turns out that giving money to people is much harder than you might imagine. We’ve had to work with state, local, federal governments so that people in our study don’t lose their housing eligibility, lose their food assistance just because we’re giving them money and raising their income level. And what we don’t want is to make anyone worse off." It feels like this statement is what woul…
Sure that could be the goal, but when you run a small pilot you can't just ignore the existing policies and laws... Also it's not the main benefit of UBI. It's just one benefit (or side effect) of UBI - when it's universal (not just a pilot) you can reduce the overhead of administrative costs.
Doing some back of the envelope math, US gov revenue is 3.31 trillion and the population size is 323.1 million. Which leaves about $10244 per capita to play with. How would a BI work, give people $7k per year and save 3k for military and basic services? Seems like BI would need big tax increases to become viable.
BI would get marginally smaller the more money you make. Not a steep cutoff like current services for poor, but it would probably be taxed as income so someone making 20'l,000 gets the full 7k, someone making 150k makes 3.5k.
In ancient Rome there were a few honest reformers who felt bread subsidies (classical UBI) were deserved by the people. It was an economic argument (as is Sam's) since Roman conquest generated massive wealth that did not reach the masses who made it possible. It was an honest attempt at economic reform by a few forward thinking leaders. Within a generation the movement was captured by politicians who used its popular…
Here is a subreddit discussing UBI + crypto combinations https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoUBI/
Personally, I believe that collective human interests can be accurately modeled with crypto currencies. Things like UBI, health insurance, other new unrealized collaborative goals likely will be modeled in this way. For example, if I could help end homelessness by accepting a certain coin for my goods and services, I likely would.
Doing some back of the envelope math, US gov revenue is 3.31 trillion and the population size is 323.1 million. Which leaves about $10244 per capita to play with. How would a BI work, give people $7k per year and save 3k for military and basic services? Seems like BI would need big tax increases to become viable.
> Wouldn’t the enormous wealth that our increasingly productive society is generating, which now flows into just a few pockets, be a fair source? Some of the concrete ways this could happen are through the transfer of existing federal assets like land, buildings and portions of the wireless spectrum into the new fund. Other measures could include increases in taxes on capital that affect mostly the wealthy such as estate, dividend and financial transaction taxes and the creation of a new type of corporate tax that requires companies to directly issue new shares to the social wealth fund on an annual basis and during certain corporate moves such as initial public offerings, mergers and acquisitions.
> Another way to bring assets into the fund would be to modify the way the Federal Reserve pumps money into the economy. Currently, the central bank does that by buying up Treasury bonds. If instead we used newly created money to buy up stocks that are then deposited into the social wealth fund, it would gradually socialize wealth ownership without the need to raise taxes on anyone. As Roger Farmer and Miles Kimball have argued, these kinds of asset purchases could also be ramped up during recessions, allowing the federal government to acquire significant portions of the national wealth relatively cheaply while also stabilizing financial markets and stimulating the economy."
Noah Smith makes the additional economic case that a social wealth fund is a buffer against decreasing labor share of income driven by technological change: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-05/robot-tak...