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Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

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Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#281

Post by fragmede »

blooalien wrote: post #174
throwawa14223 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's my incentive for subsidizing non-work in others?

What's your incentive for continuing to eat, drink, and breathe once your overlords have fulfilled their greatest dream and replaced their need for human labor with robots and machines and other forms of automation? Your purpose will have been fulfilled and your existence now meaningless. That is the ultimate goal we're all working for, right? Being freed from working for our overlords so that we can all just lay dow…

the "overlords" already have enough money to pay a team of real live human beings to tend to their every need until they die, AGI robots aren't going to change that for them.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#282

Post by throwaway2037 »

smileysteve wrote: post #246
harimau777 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard negative income taxes suggested as an alternative to our current approach. I'm not an expert on them, but it might be worth looking into for people who are interested in ideas for improving our system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax

Re-introducing progressive tax rates would be a small start; Though, allegedly, a majority of Americans don't comprehend progressive tax rates. Many state income taxes reach the top income tax rate before the federal poverty rate (ie The federal tax rates are poorly graduated; the first, 10% rate, cuts at $11,600 over to 12%; and then we jump 10% to 22%, only for the next bracket to have only 2% bracket gap again. Im…

    2024 tax brackets
    Tax rate Single filers Married couples filing jointly Married couples filing separately Head of household
    10% $11,600 or less $23,200 or less $11,600 or less $16,550 or less
    12% $11,601 to $47,150 $23,201 to $94,300 $11,601 to $47,150 $16,551 to $63,100
    22% $47,151 to $100,525 $94,301 to $201,050 $47,151 to $100,525 $63,101 to $100,500
    24% $100,526 to $191,950 $201,051 to $383,900 $100,526 to $191,150 $100,501 to $191,150
    32% $191,951 to $243,725 $383,901 to $487,450 $191,151 to $243,725 $191,151 to $243,700
    35% $243,726 to $609,350 $487,451 to $731,200 $243,276 to $365,600 $243,701 to $609,350
    37% $609,351 or more $731,201 or more $365,601 or more $609,351 or more
I'm confused. These look progressive to me. Can you explain?

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#283

Post by astromaniak »

dataflow wrote: post #151
beejiu wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have different definitions of UBI, but in my mind 'basic' doesn't translate to quitting your job and not working. People in a functioning society still have to work.

> People have different definitions of UBI, but in my mind 'basic' doesn't translate to quitting your job and not working. There's nuance worth teasing apart here. The only definition I've ever heard is that UBI allows you to lose your job and still be able to pay for the basic necessities (food, water, shelter, transportation, etc.). Anything less misses the whole point. However, just the basic necessities would mak…

> The only definition I've ever heard is that UBI allows you to lose your job and still be able to pay for the basic necessities (food, water, shelter, transportation, etc.). Anything less misses the whole point.

Excellent. Now open the border and hang out citizenship, or other form of voting rights. Does your definition require having a job once in a life time at least?

> However, just the basic necessities would make for a pretty dull and repetitive life, which most people hate

Oh no, many people would love it. Hundreds of millions for sure, if not billions.

I think it's called dystopia, and cannot last long.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#284

Post by shkkmo »

TeaBrain wrote: post #271
whimsicalism wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're not describing a negative income tax

I wasn't describing anything. A negative income tax is approximately what the guy I replied to was describing. It obviously wasn't a perfect description, but I didn't think my label of the description in his comment would be taken so literally. If you'd care to describe why you believe this isn't an approximation of the outcome of a negative income tax, then feel free to explain.

A negative income tax increases your total benefits as you earn more (up to a point), the system that was being described is one where total benefits are decreased as you earn more.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#285

Post by whimsicalism »

TeaBrain wrote: post #271
whimsicalism wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're not describing a negative income tax

I wasn't describing anything. A negative income tax is approximately what the guy I replied to was describing. It obviously wasn't a perfect description, but I didn't think my label of the description in his comment would be taken so literally. If you'd care to describe why you believe this isn't an approximation of the outcome of a negative income tax, then feel free to explain.

because in the scheme described the effective tax on your income is positive (the more you earn, the more is transferred away) as opposed to negative (the more you earn the more is transferred to you).

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#286

Post by yibg »

mandmandam wrote: post #58
beejiu wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have different definitions of UBI, but in my mind 'basic' doesn't translate to quitting your job and not working. People in a functioning society still have to work.

> in my mind 'basic' doesn't translate to quitting your job and not working In society A, machines and clean energy allow the population to work an average of 20 hours a week. Some, even many people choose not to work at all, but still get access to a basic apartment and have their basic food, social and education, etc, needs met. In society B, machines and dirty energy allow a tiny segment of the population to live…

The way to get to A is through people working. We didn’t get from where we were 100 years ago to now because society as a whole was fine with working the minimum amount needed to sustain life.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#287

Post by TeaBrain »

shkkmo wrote: post #284
TeaBrain wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't describing anything. A negative income tax is approximately what the guy I replied to was describing. It obviously wasn't a perfect description, but I didn't think my label of the description in his comment would be taken so literally. If you'd care to describe why you believe this isn't an approximation of the outcome of a negative income tax, then feel free to explain.

A negative income tax increases your total benefits as you earn more (up to a point), the system that was being described is one where total benefits are decreased as you earn more.

Benefits do not increase with income in a negative income tax system. I'm not sure where you got that idea from. The point of a negative income tax system is to allow total income, from the combination of work and benefits, to increase as work income increases, preventing the incentive to not work due to benefits exceeding or only matching potential work income due to a hard income cutoff for qualifying for a non-dynamic amount of benefits. In this way, as work income increases in a negative income tax system, the benefits will incrementally decrease, until the individual meets the level where they become a net payer, not receiver, but those that are net payers will not have a total income less than any of those that are net receivers.

In the system that was described it would take two units of income to decrease one unit of benefits, allowing total income to increase with an increase in levels of work income, while not having a hard cutoff for benefits. This is an approximation of what would occur in a negative income tax system and it would not result in a net decrease in earnings considering it takes twice the earnings units to lower one unit of benefits.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#288

Post by adolph »

Conceptually the flaw is treating cash as a proxy for value.

Consider the assertion “Cash is one important piece of the puzzle. The impact may be limited without other resources like health care and child care.” This is paradoxically spot-on in highlighting that money in of itself doesn’t create value, people create value for one another. Taking people out of an underperforming value stream by injecting cash is like confusing palliative and restorative care. Pain meds can keep a person limping along, and it is great as a bridge to get to a cure, but long term use has risks.

As an alternative, I would advocate for a government (or other org) facilitation of people strengthening the streams of value between themselves. This doesn’t rule out a cash distribution based on increased taxes, but would focus more on enlisting community cooperation.

One might look at wealthy people as tax cows to be milked or as people who have insights into how value is created. Instead of creating an adversarial relationship of tax avoidance, create a mutually beneficial relationship of opportunities to give and serve.

The most successful wealthy people serve large orgs in boards of directors. What if there was a similar set of local boards that guided a grant or a loan program for life transformation in the way that student loans or GI Bill works but with an explicit stipulation (as opposed to the implicit stipulation of education) of how the funding would be used to create a better life well after the funding is complete?

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#290

Post by namibj »

fdr wrote: post #228
jimt1234 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in my college speech class, a woman gave a presentation basically supporting the "welfare today is a disincentive to work" myth, with emphasis on "today" (or current), while totally destroying the notion that welfare recipients don't "want" to work. She was a stay-at-home mom with 2 kids, her husband commit suicide after serving in Iraq and then being pushed out of the military (this was the 90s when the US mili…

You are looking for the term "effective marginal tax rate." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_marginal_tax_rate To give a sense how much benefits code and tax code have in common, see this worksheet for SNAP eligibility, which resembles a second tax return: https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/recipient/eligibility . You get to do something similar, again(!), for Medicaid. The American benefits code is a patchwork of…

Under that concept, well, if actually taking the social security (Grundsicherung) in Germany as a given, even assuming low CoL situations (it's worse in higher-CoL situations), the effective average tax rate past like about 160 EUR/month of income will rise to a peak at around 1500 EUR/month income and then continuously decrease to the super wealthy limit tax just under 50%.

At least you technically never have less money from more work (but only if you consider bureaucracy free; there is severe bureaucracy especially for those that fluctuate in and out of coverage).

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