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American Equity

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: American Equity

#501

Post by monort »

Matumio wrote: post #233
hamilyon2 wrote: post #139

Oh, no. We tried that in Russia one hundred years ago. At first it was good. More opportunities for the little men, yay! Second generation was like: why do I have to work this complicated job? Strive? Mathematicians live no better than janitors. Overcrowded not-so good resorts with bad attitude (remember, no one have incentive to be polite, servicing others, since there is little money to get from eath individual cus…

I think you are confusing "give everyone the same income" with "give everyone a basic income". Basic income is a floor, not a ceiling. It doesn't change much about the wealth distribution (except at the bottom).

USSR had more of the floor as well, it still had a large inequality. You could get much more resources (though not monies) if you chose to become a party bureaucrat.

Re: American Equity

#502

Post by avar »

kgwgk wrote: post #500
avar wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic income isn't like Negative Income Tax at all. The core idea of BI is that no matter how much money you make you always get the BI, it's "basic". NIT is just moving the progressive tax system into negative values, which means you subsidize the poor but once you make enough money you won't get subsidized.

Take the NIT situation, with a set of people i=1,..,N paying some amount X_i (maybe negative) of taxes. Now give all of them the same basic income BI, while changing the taxes paid [received if negative] by each of them to Y_i=X_i+BI. Do yo see the equivalence?

Yes, of course the rich are going to end up paying for BI no matter what. At some point the government is just taking $1000 out of your wallet and handing it back as BI, depending on your income.

But this is explicitly what the proponents of BI want. It's as much about the optics as who pays for it. I.e. the idea is to create a program that draws its political support from everyone getting paid a check, similar to how Roosevelt enacted social security to include all citizens, even those who were millionaires and had no need for it.

Which is what sets it apart from Negative Income Tax.

Re: American Equity

#503

Post by kgwgk »

avar wrote: post #502
kgwgk wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take the NIT situation, with a set of people i=1,..,N paying some amount X_i (maybe negative) of taxes. Now give all of them the same basic income BI, while changing the taxes paid [received if negative] by each of them to Y_i=X_i+BI. Do yo see the equivalence?

Yes, of course the rich are going to end up paying for BI no matter what. At some point the government is just taking $1000 out of your wallet and handing it back as BI, depending on your income. But this is explicitly what the proponents of BI want. It's as much about the optics as who pays for it. I.e. the idea is to create a program that draws its political support from everyone getting paid a check, similar to ho…

So it’s not like it at all, but it’s the same and it’s just that it looks different. Ok then. I can see why talking about receiving money is more popular than talking about taxes.

Re: American Equity

#504

Post by dragonwriter »

avar wrote: post #497
eksu wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to brand basic income in a way for conservatives, advocate for a Negative Income Tax (Friedman's idea) as an alternative to welfare bureaucracy.

Basic income isn't like Negative Income Tax at all. The core idea of BI is that no matter how much money you make you always get the BI, it's "basic". NIT is just moving the progressive tax system into negative values, which means you subsidize the poor but once you make enough money you won't get subsidized.

> Basic income isn't like Negative Income Tax at all.

UBI is identical to NIT. The names are different framings of the concept, but the policy is identical and widely recognized as such, which is why the experiments frequently referred to tests of UBI are also the ones characterized as tests of NIT.

> NIT is just moving the progressive tax system into negative values

“Progressive” refers to marginal rates, which remain non-negative in NIT; NIT just has a flat personal refundable credit (which is equivalent to a flag annual payment) included. Which is exactly what a UBI is, except the payment in some forms of UBI is outside of the tax system, but that implementation detail is irrelevant: whether it's called a tax credit or a non-tax payment is still the same thing.

Re: American Equity

#505

Post by avar »

kgwgk wrote: post #503
avar wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, of course the rich are going to end up paying for BI no matter what. At some point the government is just taking $1000 out of your wallet and handing it back as BI, depending on your income. But this is explicitly what the proponents of BI want. It's as much about the optics as who pays for it. I.e. the idea is to create a program that draws its political support from everyone getting paid a check, similar to ho…

So it’s not like it at all, but it’s the same and it’s just that it looks different. Ok then. I can see why talking about receiving money is more popular than talking about taxes.

I'm not an advocate for BI but I think I've given you an accurate summary of what BI proponents would say about a NIT. E.g. listen to this Econtalk episode[1] where the host / guest have a debate on this exact topic.

Your argument that BI would be revenue neutral for some taxpayers and therefore we should just use NIT to avoid the sillyness of the government taking $1 from you just to give $1 right back to you isn't wrong, but it's missing what BI proponents are trying to achieve.

It's mainly about achieving roughly the same ends with different optics, and the comparison to Social Security is often brought up. Enacting any system like this is going to be politically difficult, and BI proponents believe that "everyone gets the same" is an easier sell than "this is another subsidy for the poor".

1. http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/01/michael_munger_3.ht...

Re: American Equity

#506

Post by mastadon »

Handing out 15k a year to every person is just diluting the value of the money, especially if they aren't putting any effort into creating goods or 'doing' services. Buyer: "Why is this phone 1000 dollars?" Seller: "Well you make at least 15000 a year right, it's only a percentage..." Now apply this to bread, gas, cars, healthcare, etc.

Re: American Equity

#507

Post by avar »

dragonwriter wrote: post #504
avar wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic income isn't like Negative Income Tax at all. The core idea of BI is that no matter how much money you make you always get the BI, it's "basic". NIT is just moving the progressive tax system into negative values, which means you subsidize the poor but once you make enough money you won't get subsidized.

> Basic income isn't like Negative Income Tax at all. UBI is identical to NIT. The names are different framings of the concept, but the policy is identical and widely recognized as such, which is why the experiments frequently referred to tests of UBI are also the ones characterized as tests of NIT. > NIT is just moving the progressive tax system into negative values “Progressive” refers to marginal rates, which rema…

I replied to most of this in a side-thread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15795996

But I'd like to elaborate a bit here. UBI is not identical to NIT because the difference is marketing, not math. Most of the electorate's basis for evaluating a given policy is not to perform a mathematical comparison of two systems and checking whether they yield the same results. How something is done is as important in politics as what gets done.

Which is why, as I've pointed out, BI isn't like NIT at all. The difference is how the idea is going to get sold to the public, not what each taxpayer is going to end up contributing to the system as a function of their income.

Re: American Equity

#508

Post by pc86 »

gozur88 wrote: post #284
wu-ikkyu wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. However, fatal errors within the money system (i.e. climate change, cyclical poverty) must be addressed, which is what this whole thread is about.

Well, I would have to look at pc86's app first.

I thought it was pretty obvious I was being sarcastic. Anyone who thinks their todo app is as important as a multi billion dollar company employing about 125,000 people has serious mental issues.

Re: American Equity

#509

Post by eru »

dennis_jeeves wrote: post #438
eru wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please refrain from asking for upvotes. (You'll even receive more upvotes this way, if that's really what you are after.)

Eru - did you notice the sarcasm ? We I got what i was looking for - many down votes! Anyway you do seem to have some objective thinking going on with your views on Georgism - I checked some of your posts. Keep it up!

Sarcasm doesn't travel well over written communication.

(And I can understand the temptation of sarcasm, but it seldom feels as good to the reader as it did to the writer.)

Georgism would be great. I hope Singapore would show the world how to do it.

Re: American Equity

#510

Post by jerf »

robotresearcher wrote: post #454
jerf wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bwuh? Citation needed; I'm pretty sure it went the other way around in the previous downturn.

So I guess we didn't run out of money per jerf's scenario, then.

That's not even remotely a sensible argument, since we didn't have UBI then.

You are either not arguing in anything remotely resembling good faith or are not tall enough for this ride. You may have the reply to this unopposed; I'm done here.

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