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Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

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Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#431

Post by iainmerrick »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #359
Dylan16807 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it would take 100% socialization of income to reach that level of UBI I want to see you attempt to do the math to show that. Here's my rough math: Mean income is about $60k. If we take the extra simple option, we can increase all tax brackets by 20% and give everyone a $12k credit, and it trivially balances. The median income increases, the low end of income drastically increases, and higher incomes drop. Such an o…

60k is the average working income, not average adult income or human income. You are also casually applying a 20% hike, which for many people is their entire budget after taxes and housing. My effective rate is already >40%, and you are proposing another 20%. That would mean others are getting more of my salary than I am. 12k seems an absurdity low number to provide universal shelter, Healthcare, food, security, and…

My effective rate is already >40%, and you are proposing another 20%. That would mean others are getting more of my salary than I am.

There’s nothing magical about exceeding a 50% marginal tax rate. (Hitting 100%, sure, that would be bad.)

There’s definitely a psychological threshold there for most people. I ran an informal survey a few years back about what tax rates people would consider fair, and there was a very strong clustering at 50%.

I have a hard time understanding it myself. The whole point of taxation is redistribution, so why would you care whether you’re “winning” versus the marginal tax rate?

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#432

Post by razakel »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #362
ssl-3 wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can afford it. It will cost me a lot of money because I'm barely on the tall end of that hypothetical situation right now, but I can put my part in. I can afford it because a healthy society is a productive society, and this will return to me because good economies are built largely upon productive societies, and healthy societies are more productive than unhealthy societies are. Productivity generates wealth. Are…

I dont think money and getting ones needs met without work is an incentive for health or productivity. I think it is an incentive for the exact opposite.

Have you ever met a working dog? They go mad if they're not given something to do.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#433

Post by azthecx »

sensanaty wrote: post #388
DemocracyFTW2 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem with welfare today is that its a disincentive to work No. The reason you say that is because you're young and you believe what you've heard. You will soon cease to be the former and then presumably, likely, stop to do the latter. People want to work, they want to be useful. And yes, if I support you but threaten to stop supporting you as soon as you get to work for money—suddenly working for money looks…

The only reason I work is because I have to. I hate nothing more than the daily bullshit meetings and sprint reviews and all that other useless life-sucking crap. And I have it good, most people don't have the privilege of complaining from an AC'd home office while they tap away at a keyboard. No, most people work because that's the only way they get food on the table and survive, not because of some hilariously out…

If that's your perspective it's easy to assume that it's the same for most people, but really reality is probably more gray. Outside of some genuinely horrible low class (paying) jobs when you talk to other people you will almost always find that there's always things they love and things they hate about their jobs, and they just sit on a spectrum. If you're really so disenfranchised from your job as to truly hate everything you do about it, what's stopping you from changing it? Like you mentioned, you have a previliegeld position you could find another far less corporate more immediate reward job that would make you happier at work. Or if you just accepted a worse fitting job for better pay, then it's not really your job's fault, you decided to sacrifice work happiness for other wealth, status or personal related happiness.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#434

Post by Majromax »

jewayne wrote: post #189
Majromax wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally, I'm a big fan of the "for every $2 you make, you get $1 less from UBI/Welfare" concept. This seems a very easy way to wean people off of welfare. That money is already tracked by the IRS (unless you're getting paid under the table). That's a more gradual phase-out, but it still is an effective marginal tax rate of 50%+ – a level that wealthy earners would complain about to no end. In light of this study…

> In light of this study, it seems to me that a cash-support system that wants to encourage work should have a starting region with a negative effective phase-out rate: "for every $1 you make up to $X, you get $0.25 more from UBI/Welfare." That would encourage labour-market attachment even if tenuous, and it would also have a side benefit of making the worker want to report the income, possibly uncovering under-the-t…

> Nobody tell this guy about the Earned Income Tax Credit. Let him think he discovered it.

I know about the EITC, but the ETIC net of benefit clawbacks still presents a high marginal rate. Then the EITC itself gets clawed back at its own threshold, imposing a small region of high marginal rates. (The EITC itself is also rather paltry for filers without children.)

Additionally, the US tax system is ill-structured to really implement this. If you're trying to operate on the "under-the-table cash payments for day labour" margin, a system that depends on filing one's taxes to receive a refund later is not exactly hassle-free.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#435

Post by Majromax »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #318
Majromax wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally, I'm a big fan of the "for every $2 you make, you get $1 less from UBI/Welfare" concept. This seems a very easy way to wean people off of welfare. That money is already tracked by the IRS (unless you're getting paid under the table). That's a more gradual phase-out, but it still is an effective marginal tax rate of 50%+ – a level that wealthy earners would complain about to no end. In light of this study…

> a negative effective phase-out rate: "for every $1 you make up to $X, you get $0.25 more from UBI/Welfare." The main problem with this is that the tax system is set up to prevent you from under-reporting your income. Over-reporting it is essentially trivial, e.g. two people who are in the relevant income range exchange favors (do each others' laundry etc.), or claim to have, and then actually report the transaction…

> Over-reporting it is essentially trivial, e.g. two people who are in the relevant income range exchange favors (do each others' laundry etc.), or claim to have, and then actually report the transactions as income and get the credit.

True, but this is less of a problem if the credit rate is comparable to the payroll tax rate. In that case, a worker who over-reports their income will create an obvious payroll-tax debt in the hands of the notional employer.

> Stop using a complicated progressive rate structure, and instead eliminate the phase out entirely.

From a welfare-cliff perspective, that's a fine idea. However, per the article here, the unconditional cash transfer seemed to lead to reduced labour income. That's an obviously worrisome sign, suggesting that integrated welfare system might need an even stronger pro-wage bias.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#436

Post by PoignardAzur »

laserlight wrote: post #354
s1artibartfast wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm saying that given the choice, those who are forced into spending their time in a way that is detrimental to themselves in any other term but economic would not do so You cant have the fruits of labor without the labor. People make this calculus every single day, and nearly unanimously decide that it would be more detrimental to go without the fruits of labor (especially those that must be incentivized). It is ob…

> A "do what you want" policy would not result in the tasks people want done getting done. That sounds weird to me. If people want it done, they would get it done, wouldn't they? Can you maybe expand with an example?

You want fresh produce in your supermarket, but you don't want to be the person who drives around to various farmers to get their produce, the person who stocks the shelves, the person who plants and harvests the produce, etc.

(Well, I guess if you're american you don't have fresh produce in your supermarket, but the point stands.)

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#437

Post by genrilz »

Kamq wrote: post #244
genrilz wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am certainly glad that you managed to escape. I don't think our society's response to the welfare cliff should be to tell people to break the law though. Surely we should redesign the law to lift everyone up instead instead?

> I don't think our society's response to the welfare cliff should be to tell people to break the law though. I think you could make an argument that it should be. Getting people to break the law in a lot of small ways seems like it would be a good way to stop them from following the law to really stupid conclusions. You should probably remove the welfare cliff to, but having a standing policy of "break stupid laws"…

It seems like you are getting down-voted, but I think you are probably right.

One concern I have is that publicly announcing ways to break the law might result in the government cracking down on those particular ways. You could make a case for telling people how to break laws which don't really matter either way, and let them figure out how to break laws that are stupid and matter though.

Another, less pressing, concern I have is that if taken to its limit, no laws will matter anymore. I would hope human kindness would keep people from murdering and stealing from each other for the fun of it, but I'd expect some Tragedies of The Commons to occur. This could still be worth it though. I'm in a fortunate enough position to not really understand how limiting the stupid laws are, but I do understand that laws are hard to repeal.

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