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A basic income could boost the US economy by $2.5 trillion

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Re: A basic income could boost the US economy by $2.5 trillion

#51

Post by murph-almighty »

arcticbull wrote: post #34
nickthemagicman wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's been studies that found the rich don't leave a place due to taxes. I.E. California has one of the biggest economies in the world... http://minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2011/02/documents/...

Makes sense, if you’re already wealthy then you pick where to live based on where you want to live. Optimizing based on taxes seems cheap, I’d imagine they’d rather solve that by making more money. Plus it’s not like US citizens have much choice, they have to pay the IRS no matter where you live in the world forever. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide haha.

The way I like to think about it is this:

Kansas has low taxes, but no one's dying to move there.

Re: A basic income could boost the US economy by $2.5 trillion

#52

Post by chrishacken »

mattmanser wrote: post #26
craftyguy wrote: post #4

At a cost of $24 trillion? Ha! 250m[1] * $1000 * 8 * 12 = $24,000,000,000,000 1. http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/99-total-populat...

If everyone's being paid $1000 per month more, you'd expect all jobs to pay less, and the profits from companies used to pay for it.

So then essentially everyone would make the same they are now; thus resulting in little to no-change.

When it's all said and done, having a $1000/m basic income would be little different than increasing the minimum wage by the same amount.

Re: A basic income could boost the US economy by $2.5 trillion

#53

Post by Fraterkes »

draugadrotten wrote: post #42
llamataboot wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not. There's no such thing as individually made profits that don't rely on a ton of collective factors. It s not stealing if it wasn't yours in the first place. It's ours.

> There's no such thing as individually made profits that don't rely on a ton of collective factors. You're confused. Depending on a factor does not mean that this factor owns what you produced. Example: To make ice-cream, you depend on cows. Cows do not own your profits.

Bad example, because we don't acknowledge the concept of animals owning things in the first place. The above argument is a moral one; arguing that closing the wealth gap is stealing (often) ignores that most "self-made" people depend on the labor of others and the recources we all use in society.

Re: A basic income could boost the US economy by $2.5 trillion

#54

Post by sliverstorm »

brookside wrote: post #36

I'm currently on an Amtrak train between Philadelphia and NYC. Especially in leafless winter, the sheer uglyness of this swath of in-disrepair America is almost shocking. Abandoned factories and houses. Lifeless downtowns. Trash along the tracks. Non-sweet graffiti. Paying people to do nothing when there is so much to be done seems crazy to me. It's not like we have figured out how to solve these problems with AI or…

Great point; a lot of the infrastructure we are so proud of on both sides of the aisle, was built back then. We generally agree we need to invest in infrastructure, too.

Re: A basic income could boost the US economy by $2.5 trillion

#56

Post by bunderbunder »

brookside wrote: post #36

I'm currently on an Amtrak train between Philadelphia and NYC. Especially in leafless winter, the sheer uglyness of this swath of in-disrepair America is almost shocking. Abandoned factories and houses. Lifeless downtowns. Trash along the tracks. Non-sweet graffiti. Paying people to do nothing when there is so much to be done seems crazy to me. It's not like we have figured out how to solve these problems with AI or…

It's possible that a basic income would help with the rest of these, by taking the edge off the (currently very high) opportunity cost of spending time on community improvement for working class Americans.

It would also move money back into these economies in a way that support some of the kinds of industrial district revitalization that you see in more urban areas nowadays.

All in all, the capitalist in me wants to say that you'll get better results if you just give people money and let them figure out how to dispose of it, rather than letting some government bureaucrat off in the state capital or wherever try to figure out how best to use the money. The latter option is worryingly similar to the root causes of the worst of the prosperity-destroying waste that went on in places like the Soviet Union. And I do think you'll see people (mostly) put the money they'd get from a basic income to good use. It's not like anyone enjoys living in a blighted town; it's just that they're living under economic conditions that leave them with little other choice, aside from maybe doing like I did and contributing to the blight by moving out of town.

Re: A basic income could boost the US economy by $2.5 trillion

#57

Post by dynofuz »

And it would cost 3.6 Trillion (300M adults x 12k), so where does that come from? I'm all for basic income, but id love to see a way this to actually be funded. Ideally from the corporations that are gaming the tax laws. Or is it reducing social security / medicare / other welfare etc?

Re: A basic income could boost the US economy by $2.5 trillion

#58

Post by sliverstorm »

tomjen3 wrote: post #47
brookside wrote: post #36

I'm currently on an Amtrak train between Philadelphia and NYC. Especially in leafless winter, the sheer uglyness of this swath of in-disrepair America is almost shocking. Abandoned factories and houses. Lifeless downtowns. Trash along the tracks. Non-sweet graffiti. Paying people to do nothing when there is so much to be done seems crazy to me. It's not like we have figured out how to solve these problems with AI or…

I always though that as long as the US has a social program, it should be CC style (although there is also an argument for something like Teach for America, a 6'4 50 year old lumberjack might help prevent unruly classes), because (and here I cannot help but sound insanely old) making something gives you a certain amount of pride that helps you in many ways - you can be an ex drug addict who is trying to get permissio…

Making something that objectively makes your country a better place, beyond just building a little cabin, might given you some sense of pride & stake/ownership in your country, as well.

Re: A basic income could boost the US economy by $2.5 trillion

#60

Post by jackmott »

asherwebb wrote: post #50

For the most part the poor in the USA already can get access to food stamps, medicaid, section 8 and a number of other programs that provide a safety net - especially if there are dependents in the household. For the middle class a reduced income tax rate would be much more effective than a UBI when it comes to saving money and having more for personal spending. The idea of giving a UBI to the rich strikes me as a bi…

middle class here.

what would help me more is to have my taxes raised, use that to disassociate health care from my job choice, to reduce inequity in schools systems so as to disassociate school quality from home price, and to improve infrastructure.

This would help me, and the country in much more profound ways than tossing me a few grand.

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