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A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

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Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#651

Post by civilian »

throwaway420 wrote: post #568
caseysoftware wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, you can reduce the amount paid out by making it not a universal basic income scheme any more. But that rather misses the point. You are entirely correct.. but I think you're missing the point. Think of that first description as the marketing pitch to the general public. By saying it is universal and "free" to administer, it gets people behind it who don't think through the consequences.. which is a large chunk…

> But a "no-strings-attached" basic income would force politicians to give up the one thing they desire more than anything: power. I tend to think the exact opposite is true: a universal basic income is conceivably one of the most massive power grabs imaginable. If this comes to pass in America, you're going to have a large chunk of the population COMPLETELY dependent on the government's teat. And ultimately, a popul…

“Therefore a wise prince ought to adopt such a course that his citizens will always in every sort and kind of circumstance have need of the state and of him, and then he will always find them faithful.” -Machiavelli

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#652

Post by ww520 »

Cshelton wrote: post #536
ww520 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is not inflation. It happens already. The problem is the new money created causing the inflation is given to the asset holders and banks, not to everyone. Rent increases now, due to inflation. The general public have to give more despite not getting the created money. Landlords got the benefit of rising rent due to inflation and rising housing price due to lower interest rate to create more money. Basic i…

"new money" is not, or ever, given to anyone. Banks included. The U.S. gov basically sells promissory notes (treasuries) to an independent, non governmental organization (The Federal reserve...which is not "federal" in the least bit..) on behalf of the American people. Although the fed is more or less offering a note at x price and the U.S. Treasury just buys it... Anybody is allowed to buy bonds from the U.S. Treasu…

The Fed obviously creates inflation by injecting new money into the system. Who get the extra new money?

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#653

Post by civilian »

Unklejoe wrote: post #345
amelius wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't we just taper it "on" and see what the effects are? For instance, in the first year everybody gets 10% UBI, second year 20% UBI, etc. until 100% UBI. If by year 10 the economy still functions as desired, we keep UBI. Otherwise we taper it off again.

The only way for this approach to work would be to define the metrics of "success" before starting this taper process. Also, it would need to be implemented in such a way that makes the process unstoppable. Otherwise, it will be nearly impossible to taper "off" in the event of a failure. It's easy to start giving people money that they never had, but once they have a taste, it's going to be hard to take it away.

I also think there's never been a pattern of having "success metrics" tied to laws. Laws are LAW. The best we could get using current legal technology would be a built-in expiration of the law. And if the people think it's good, then we'd vote for representatives who will retain it.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#654

Post by ww520 »

MicroBerto wrote: post #409
ww520 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is not inflation. It happens already. The problem is the new money created causing the inflation is given to the asset holders and banks, not to everyone. Rent increases now, due to inflation. The general public have to give more despite not getting the created money. Landlords got the benefit of rising rent due to inflation and rising housing price due to lower interest rate to create more money. Basic i…

OK, so then when you give more to the lower class, and landlords increase rent.... guess who gets the majority of that newly printed income? The asset holders once again!! I don't see how basic income doesn't create more unforeseen problems than it solves unless there are some serious strings attached to that money.

At least the money has gone to encourage economic activities, i.e. housing service. Increased rent leads to more housing development as more people piled in to take advantage of the increased return, which can lower the rent as more housing capacity comes online.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#655

Post by dragonwriter »

PietdeVries wrote: post #357
goda90 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about children are included, then provide X% to parents for child care expenses, and X% to a fund that the child can't access until 18. That way we don't have to do free higher education. Public universities can expect each student to have close to XXXXX dollars saved away and set tuition accordingly.

Hmm... So with everyone getting free money, including the children, there is no need for a father to take care of the family when he decides to diforce, right? Afterall, the family gets a good deal of income even when daddy is gone. So marriage will no longer be a bond forever, it will be a bond until something nicer comes along since there is no financial penalty anymore: no pressure to stay together for the kids. M…

> So with everyone getting free money, including the children, there is no need for a father to take care of the family when he decides to diforce, right?

It certainly would mitigate the social harms caused by deadbeat abandoning parents, but since neither child support nor alimony are currently limited to the amount necessary to provide basic survival necessities, a UBI mature enough to provide basic necessities would not seem to be a basis for eliminating existing child support and alimony provisions.

Obviously, even with existing formulas, the fact that more of the family's income wouldn't be leaving with the prime breadwinner would reduce the amount of support and alimony orders.

> So marriage will no longer be a bond forever

Marriage, in the US, is only a "bond forever" now to the extent that the parties decide to make it one; divorce is readily available, and frequently chosen.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#656

Post by googletazer »

I'm for basic income, however looking beyond it - whats really necessary is to be able to let each person discover their (productive) passion to be able to contribute and exchange their time and labor for some unit of value. 99% of people will still be competing for the same thing - food, housing, transportation, low level luxuries. With demand getting stronger, UNLESS the people receiving basic income get creative and produce the things they need, expanding the pie, the prices for them will go up.

Overall, tastes are infinite, I'd love to drive a tesla and live in a (multi?)million dollar mansion, but I can't. They are too expensive for me - meaning my work and labor doesn't produce enough value (or may be not valued appropriately - but this a whole other topic) to exchange for those things I want. If we want more people to drive teslas and live in mansions, everybody who will be getting UBI needs to get productive to increase the amounts of teslas and mansions in existence.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#657

Post by aidenn0 »

> And they fear that a basic income would, in the end, be less than what many people get when all the federal government's cash and social-service programs are combined.

Note that the poor will obviously get fewer benefits if BI is only funded from cuts to programs the benefit the poor.

Example: lets say we eliminate program X that currently has a means test limiting it to the poorest 20% of the population. If we, as the article suggests, use that money to fond some fraction of BI for the poorest 80% of the population, then one can trivially see that we have distributed 3/4 of the money for program X away from the poorest 20%.

Now there are significant savings from reducing overhead, but unless program X is 75% overhead, it's still a net loss in realized benefits for the poor.

In order to make BI palatable to the US left, you will need to fund it at least partly through raising taxes.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#658

Post by khedoros »

morgante wrote: post #393
Unklejoe wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool idea. I'd advocate for an age of 25 though. An 18 year old these days is still a child. Give them a couple years into the drinking age to get their bad decisions out of the way.

That's offensive. I am 23 and have lived away from home since I was 17. I've been financially independent since I turned 18. Don't stereotype.

Some people are forced into an adult mindset earlier than others. I've known 14 and 16 year olds that could be trusted with more responsibility than most 30 year olds. I've also met 60 year olds with a child's mindset. Clearly, age doesn't cause maturity, but it's certainly correlated with it.

An outlier can't be treated like the center of a distribution. Your own experiences don't mean that most 18 year olds aren't still children. It's not like the government is going to start maturity-testing people to decide when to start dispensing a basic income. They're more likely to test a "representative population" and set the age to the point where 2/3 test as "adult", or use one of the traditional age-cutoffs like 18, 21, or 25.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#659

Post by AnthonyMouse »

notahacker wrote: post #371
brightball wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To make it work you'd have to take whatever the amount is and extract it from all other government benefit programs. You get $700 / month from the government for basic income. Your social security, welfare, unemployment, disability, etc is reduced by $700 / month. Reducing all of those programs by the first $700 would effectively gut each of them enough to finally make some reforms without inducing panic in everyone…

Why would you get bipartisan support for the FairTax? Redesigning the tax structure to favour millionaires ( massive net beneficiaries because their US consumption expenditure is usually a tiny fraction of their capital gains tax and/or income tax bills) over the middle classes (no matter how high the stipend is someone has to pay for the millionaires' tax cut) isn't exactly a popular proposal even on the right That…

> Redesigning the tax structure to favour millionaires (massive net beneficiaries because their US consumption expenditure is usually a tiny fraction of their capital gains tax and/or income tax bills)

This hasn't been true in decades. The people ("millionaires") who make ~150K/year pretty much spend all of it. It's the multi-millionaires and billionaires who make millions a year and don't spend that much, but those are the same people whose "income" is mostly unrealized capital gains. Switching to a consumption tax wouldn't materially reduce their taxes because they're not paying hardly any taxes as it is. (And getting rid of capital gains tax would increase economic efficiency because it currently prevents people from selling shares in order to buy better shares unless the advantage of the new shares can overcome the taxes due from selling the existing ones. Which would grow the economy and increase government revenue.) It's conceivable that a consumption tax would cause the super-rich to pay more taxes, because if you want the yacht you have to pay the tax, but there are currently a lot of tricks you can play to convert stock into stuff without paying tax, like selling only the shares that have decreased in value.

The best way to think of a basic income is as a fixed tax refund. A middle class person who pays $10,000/year more in taxes to fund a basic income and then gets the $10,000/year basic income it isn't actually any better or worse off than before.

Re: A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing

#660

Post by dragonwriter »

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #326
gjm11 wrote: post #99

This article says it's talking about a universal basic income, and makes the usual point that a completely universal, no-strings-attached income is simple to administer, doesn't have poverty traps, etc. And then, towards the end where it starts looking at numbers, it starts saying things like > But by excluding 45 million retirees who already receive a basic income through Social Security, the cost falls to $2.7 tril…

>This article says it's talking about a universal basic income, and makes the usual point that a completely universal, no-strings-attached income is simple to administer, doesn't have poverty traps, etc. Does anyone advocate giving it to everyone? What about children? Does a child get the same as an adult? What about non-citizens who are in the nation legally? What about non-citizens who are in the nation illegally?…

On the issue of children, non citizens, etc., my personal view of the best way for a UBI to work are:

> What about children? Does a child get the same as an adult?

Maybe; if so, the child's allotment goes to the legal guardian (and, like the guardian's own UBI, is treated as income for tax and other purposes), but you also eliminate child-care related tax deductions and credits.

> What about non-citizens who are in the nation legally? What about non-citizens who are in the nation illegally?

I would lean toward saying citizens and legal permanent residents (green card holders) get UBI. Others do not (note that this includes non-immigrant work visa holders, like H-1Bs), though in the odd case of a non-UBI-eligible (but legally present) parent with a UBI-eligible child, the parent would be eligible to draw the child's UBI, just as a parent with their own UBI eligibility with a UBI-eligible child would.

> What about citizen children of non-citizens who are in the nation illegally?

That's...trickier. My preference would be that the citizen child would get an allotment, but that the guardian would have to normalize status to draw that allotment. The details of that are more for a discussion of immigration policy than UBI policy though.

An even trickier question is non-resident citizens, and particularly non-resident U.S. citizen children of non-resident non-citizens.

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