A Guaranteed Income for Every American

There is no spectrum. Taxes on private income are grossly authoritarian and should be abolished for basic justice.

Basic income, like all compulsory income redistribution programs, is a disgusting authoritarian intrusion that should be rejected by all moral people.

Some sanity checks that UBI fails in every method I've seen: it's some combination of (usually multiple): 1) costs a huge amount more in taxation, 2) screws those most needing help, 3) is not universal, but simply a tax on rich to give to poor, or 4) does not address the economic consequences that negate a significant part of the claims. Simple checks for this one:

1) 236,000,000 Americans aged 21+ [1] times 13,000 each is $3 trillion needing gathered in taxed to hand out. Entire Federal receipts for 2015 was $3.25 trillion [2].

2) The author scraps all current transfer programs (common), including Social Security and Medicare. The plan requires 3K of the 10K to be for health insurance. Average Social Security payment is 14,784 [3]. So we screwed Social Security recipients, who more likely need the money than then average person getting the new free UBI.

3) Medicare currently spends around 900B, which I assume will still need covered, since people will still have medical needs. The 3K allocated above, times 236M people, is 708B, not enough to cover Medicare, and certainly not enough to replace all current health care insurance.

4) The transfer programs cut total at most 2T [2].

5) An analysis of his tax scheme, using [4]. The first 30K is not taxed (23.5% of households). Those above 60K get no UBI (46% of households). As such, I wonder if they still need to pay an additional 3K for insurance since they didn't get the 13K? We'll assume so. The rest we can assume has linear benefits from 30K (13K free money) to 60K (no free money). This means for each $2.3 earned over 30K, one loses $1 in free money, which I think would create a huge disincentive to jump this weird benefit gap. Here's [5]effective federal tax rates by quintile. Coupled with the income breakdown above, those under the 60K range will get tax breaks, meaning those above 60K will shoulder a decent amount more in taxes.

6) It would be interesting to chase down who will have to pay what to meet these requirements - it's late; perhaps I'll do that later.

7) Removing targeted money (for housing, for food for kids, etc), and simply giving cash allows people to spend on bad items. The reason many programs are targeted is to help ensure people buy the necessities first. I would expect UBI as posed here would realize this, and then add back targeted programs to avoid the bad effects, negating the claimed simplicity of UBI. Also, many poor get money from multiple programs, and removing those programs and giving everyone a fixed 10K would mean a lot of them now get a lot less (as I claimed, these plans screw the most needy quite often).

8) UBI will most likely make the entire country poorer: the report on Mincome gives an example of a previous UBI experiment causing a 13% reduction in hours worked. OECD reports show as benefits increase across countries, more people live off benefits as opposed to working. Basic economic theory also would make the same claim. If so, less production means we have less goods and services.

9) Counter to 8, prices will likely rise for things the poor buy, especially rent, forcing people back to work. This is also basic economic theory; currently someone willing to put forth X effort to trade for a place to stay will still do so, and giving that person free money (and everyone) will allow landlords to raise rent to consume some of the free money. Think of the common complaint that govt making money easy for houses or college causes those prices to climb faster than without the easy money - except now this applies to a lot more goods.

So, if we have limited resources, which we do, why not use them in targeted ways to alleviate problems instead of trying a ham-handed, one-size-tries-to-fit-all solution? This is my main complaint about UBI desires - it necessarily removes benefits from the most needy to give to the less needy by ignoring the level or situation (or even regional cost of living changes).

And if your reply is we simply raise taxes, then why not apply targeted benefits with those increased taxes? It still would provide help where most needed, instead of blind (and suboptimal) allocation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_State...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget

[3] https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/quickfacts/stat_snapshot/

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...

[5] https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments...

Anything can be made a crime by passing a law. But only violent and/or fraudulent behavior should be illegal. Laws imprisoning those who refuse to hand over a share of the currency they receive in private trade are unjust, and should be abolished.

Those billions in a cayman account are dead money. They are the marginal efficiency of labour crystallised, and then transformed into a immotile instrument which benefits nobody.

You say it does no harm, but why do you think we're still working 60 hour weeks when we've improved efficiency in all fields by orders of magnitude since industrialisation? All that efficiency gain's benefit was "realised" by the elites, but until that money is spent, loaned, invested, used - that value is destroyed.

Sure, sure, tell me it's a store of value, but you'd still think the squirrel that stored 1000 tonnes of acorns for winter and wouldn't share, causing furry famine, to only then after winter forget where he left them and demand more acorns from the working squirrels was pretty damn irrational.