Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Feb 17, 2024, 7:07 PM UTC

beej71 wrote: post #226

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Financing it. These programs are monumentally expensive. You need to get the money from somewhere. The easiest place to take it is via the money printer and the second is from the rich. This is not actually that hard because they're only expensive on paper. Right now you have a slew of means tested programs with phase outs that amount to high marginal tax rates on the poor. Meanwhile we try to do the opposite with…

> you can use a flat tax system Maybe you could help me with this because I never understood it. It seems like the tiered rates of our tax is the least of our worries. I can see an argument that mathematically it's more complicated than flat, but it's just arithmetic. And practically speaking, nobody does it anyway. The computer figures it out, or they look in the tax table. And that's the same thing they're going to…

> I can see an argument that mathematically it's more complicated than flat, but it's just arithmetic.

No, it's more complicated because then you need to keep track of things at all.

Suppose you go to your job and make a salary and they withhold some of it for the IRS. Then you take a side gig and make a little extra money, or you owned some stock and got a dividend, or anything else that changes your taxable income. Now you have to file taxes to reconcile all of this and determine what your tax rate even is.

If there was a single rate then your employer takes out that much and gives it to the IRS and your side gig takes out the same percent and gives it to the IRS and your brokerage takes out the same percent and gives it to the IRS and you don't even have a tax return because there is nothing to calculate. Or you can just use VAT and not even have to do withholding.

One of the other big things to keep in mind here is that a lot of the conventional wisdom on taxes is PR from rich people/corporations, e.g. claiming that consumption taxes don't tax the rich because they don't spend most of their income. It sounds plausible until you realize that what the super rich and international corporations actually do is keep their money offshore so they don't have to pay income tax on the interest until they repatriate it, which they then never do and instead take out a loan when they want to buy something. So it's actually the income tax they don't pay and a consumption tax they would have to whenever they buy things.

> doing away with those doesn't mean we need to do away with tiered tax rates.

Tiered tax rates are a hideous hack to begin with to avoid people having to do calculus. What you really want is a continuous curve where effective tax rate starts off negative and increases up to some maximum rate with increasing income or spending. Which is exactly what you get with a flat tax + UBI.

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

#232

Post by stray » Sun, Feb 18, 2024, 1:48 PM UTC

op00to wrote: post #85

stray wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoosh! Ok, the price of literally everything, then. Google "Weimar Republic".

Oh, they had UBI then?

They increased the money supply which led to increased prices, so they increased the money supply which led to increased prices, so they increased the money supply which led to increased prices, so they increased the money supply which led to increased prices, so they increased the money supply which led to increased prices, so they increased the money supply which led to increased prices, so they increased the money supply which led to increased prices, so they increased the money supply which led to increased prices, so they increased the money supply which led to increased prices, so they increased the money supply which led to increased prices, so they increased the money supply which led to increased prices, so they increased the money supply which led to increased prices, so they increased the money supply which led to increased prices, so they increased the money supply which led to increased prices, so they increased the money supply which led to increased prices, so they increased the money supply which led to increased prices, so they increased the money supply which led to increased prices, so they increased the money supply which led to increased prices, so they increased the money supply which led to increased prices, so they increased the money supply which led to increased prices, so they increased the money supply which led to increased prices, so they increased the money supply which led to increased prices, so they increased the money supply which led to increased prices...

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

#233

Post by Detrytus » Wed, Feb 21, 2024, 12:20 PM UTC

inyourtenement wrote: post #185

tsbinz wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We expanded the M1 money supply from $4T to $18T and largely handed it out in a diffuse way. This is often quoted and either comes out of ignorance or is intentionally misleading. Assuming it's the former, M1 in the US is not a good measure over the time span you are quoting, because there has been an accounting change that significantly expands of what kind of accounts are considered to be in M1. See the descripti…

Agreed, but this is such a red flag that a commenter is not thinking critically. Do they really think we quadrupled the money supply in a short time? And the only effect was 10% inflation? Usually that would disprove all of their other assumptions about the relationship between the money printer and inflation.

Yes, M1 money supply did quadruple in a short time, you can see it on one of the FED banks site:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL

Fortunately, the result was "asset inflation", i.e. most of that money went to stock market raising stock prices. That's why consumer goods inflation was so low.

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

#234

Post by niggerbenis » Fri, Feb 23, 2024, 1:07 PM UTC

Turing_Machine wrote: post #215

piva00 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sixty years is perhaps too long, neoliberalism really kicked off in the 80s/90s with an increase in globalisation, and corporate consolidation through M&As ramped up quickly in the 2000s after financialisation of the economy went in high gear. If we backtrack to the last thirty to forty years and check which top 20 companies got to that spot through M&As it might paint a different picture.

1990 list: 1 General Motors 2 Ford Motor 3 Exxon Mobil 4 Intl. Business Machines 5 General Electric 6 Mobil 7 Altria Group 8 Chrysler 9 DuPont Again, Exxon Mobil is the only overlap with 2020's list. (I presume that the references to "Exxon Mobil" in the 1990 and 1960 lists actually refer to pre-merger Exxon, since Mobil by itself is also on both lists). I checked, and of the 2020 list, only AT&T, McKesson, and Exxon…

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

#235

Post by niggerbenis » Fri, Feb 23, 2024, 1:11 PM UTC

dfxm12 wrote: post #148

Detrytus wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't depend on how it's funded. It's a simple mechanics: once the word gets out that everybody is getting free money then all the companies raise their prices, trying to capture that money, because why wouldn't they?

Greedflation already exists without any type of UBI in place. UBI is not meant to combat greedflation. You're right to be worried about greedflation, but being against UBI because greedflation exists simply doesn't follow.

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

#236

Post by inyourtenement » Sun, Feb 25, 2024, 5:49 PM UTC

Detrytus wrote: post #233

inyourtenement wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but this is such a red flag that a commenter is not thinking critically. Do they really think we quadrupled the money supply in a short time? And the only effect was 10% inflation? Usually that would disprove all of their other assumptions about the relationship between the money printer and inflation.

Yes, M1 money supply did quadruple in a short time, you can see it on one of the FED banks site: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL Fortunately, the result was "asset inflation", i.e. most of that money went to stock market raising stock prices. That's why consumer goods inflation was so low.

This is false, and is explained by the block of text below that chart. The definition of M1 was changed. Notice the addition of savings and money market accounts.

Thank you for demonstrating the lack of critical thinking I was describing.

> Before May 2020, M1 consists of (1) currency outside the U.S. Treasury, Federal Reserve Banks, and the vaults of depository institutions; (2) demand deposits at commercial banks (excluding those amounts held by depository institutions, the U.S. government, and foreign banks and official institutions) less cash items in the process of collection and Federal Reserve float; and (3) other checkable deposits (OCDs), consisting of negotiable order of withdrawal, or NOW, and automatic transfer service, or ATS, accounts at depository institutions, share draft accounts at credit unions, and demand deposits at thrift institutions.

> Beginning May 2020, M1 consists of (1) currency outside the U.S. Treasury, Federal Reserve Banks, and the vaults of depository institutions; (2) demand deposits at commercial banks (excluding those amounts held by depository institutions, the U.S. government, and foreign banks and official institutions) less cash items in the process of collection and Federal Reserve float; and (3) other liquid deposits, consisting of OCDs and savings deposits (including money market deposit accounts). Seasonally adjusted M1 is constructed by summing currency, demand deposits, and OCDs (before May 2020) or other liquid deposits (beginning May 2020), each seasonally adjusted separately.