71–80 of 292 posts
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UBI not tried yet... Alaska? Social Security? Pensions? The idle rich?
The Alaska Permanent Fund is the only one of those that even hits both of the U and I points of UBI (the rest are just I); it doesn't even target the B, though.
And they're a segment of the population. To study the result of a population receiving a BI, there's plenty of data.
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I think you could get away with a UBI which is substantially less than that. $12,000/person/year seems like it should be easily sufficient - since I live on that much excepting tuition in downtown Toronto (not cheap), in CAD (so really a lot less), just fine. Keep in mind that when you are counting per person that means you are allocating that much for people not in the workforce like children too. A 4 person househo…
Except your suggestions here ignore that the surplus given by UBI will be amortized into rent and staples costs. It's all well and good until you get into the weeds and realize that a lot of price fixing or pseudo price fixing needs to happen before UBI becomes realistic. If the argument is getting rid of legislative and bureaucratic bloat, it's definitely not quite so easy or quite so effective, choose one.
As long as UBI is payed for via taxes and not deficit spending than the money supply isn't changing. And as economists say, inflation is a monetary phenomenon.
Supply & demand aren't radically changing either. America's poor eat too much, not too little. And while there are homeless people in America, most sleep in shelters.
If anything, you might expect the price of the cheapest staples and crappiest housing to go down as UBI enables the poor to upgrade their food and housing.
Here's my best argument for why UBI can't work in the USA. Let me know where i went wrong: My TV told me a "living wage" is at least $15 (but probably higher in liberal controlled areas like NYC / most CA cities / etc due to high cost of living & taxation), but we'll start with $15 to make it easy. $15/hr at 40hr/week = $31,200 per year. $31,200 * 328,300,000 population of USA = $10,242,960,000,000 Written out (for e…
There are two main differences of this system from true UBI: First, it's only paid to people who don't have any money at all (beyond a couple thousand euros). Any car, flat, house, expensive TV, etc. that you own is subject to that rule and if you possess those, you are required to first sell them.
Second, it's not additional. Once you do make money, your income will only rise if you make more than what you'd have gotten from the social services. This locks in quite many people into this system because even if they would seek employment, maybe what they get in the end is only €100 more than without the social services, but they gotta get up every day at 6 am.
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I don't know if moving is an option for you. But there are plenty of countries that offer free healthcare. Sweden, UK, Norway... the list goes on.
About that "free" healthcare in Sweden, etc... If you make $60,000 here in the USA, you can expect to pay about 22% in taxes ( https://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/tax-brackets.aspx ) so ~$12,600. You move to Sweden and make that same $60K USD equivalent. Their tax rate is 61.85 percent ( https://tradingeconomics.com/sweden/personal-income-tax-rate ) so ~$37,110. I bet you can stay here and buy some pretty great he…
If you actually wanted to make a factual argument about high taxes in Sweden the tax you're better off looking at payroll taxes.
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I'd just like to point out that your figures don't add up. First of all, you're not taking into account that Sweden has a progressive tax rate, like the US. The figure you quoted in your second link is for the highest marginal tax rate. If you were to be consistent, you could use the figure for America's marginal tax rate listed in your second article, which is 37%. So apples to apples comparison would be that the US…
Sweden also has a 25% VAT (sales) tax on just about everything you buy there. After they rake hard from your paycheck they rake hard again when you spend what's left.
Here's my best argument for why UBI can't work in the USA. Let me know where i went wrong: My TV told me a "living wage" is at least $15 (but probably higher in liberal controlled areas like NYC / most CA cities / etc due to high cost of living & taxation), but we'll start with $15 to make it easy. $15/hr at 40hr/week = $31,200 per year. $31,200 * 328,300,000 population of USA = $10,242,960,000,000 Written out (for e…
In Germany we already have an UBI-like system where people without a job are being paid social security. It's far away from those $30k you mention, and they need to live very frugally, but you are fed, clothed, and won't freeze in winter as you have a place to live. There are two main differences of this system from true UBI: First, it's only paid to people who don't have any money at all (beyond a couple thousand eu…
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> because then you can't get rid of the rest of the social services. Some you can get rid of, others you shouldn't. Even if you have UBI, some medical procedure might cost an individual more than they are getting in 10 years. So a proper healthcare system is still important.
Agreed. Even the most zealous socialists aren't suggesting UBI handouts could replace healthcare insurance.
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But people aren't paid to do nothing under UBI. They don't lose the pay if they do things. Most people probably won't do nothing because that's boring. And Counting money is a bit harder than that. When I tip waitstaff, that income for them was my income before that and my employer's income before that and hospitals' income before that and, just maybe, that same waiter's income before that. But if instead it was medi…
> Most people probably won't do nothing because that's boring. I think you underestimate the amount of people that are content with not doing anything.
I wish America had universal health care. If i do this, I can afford to pay for rent and food in a low cost of living area but not health insurance. Anyone know of a nonprofit that pays for health insurance for ppl working on OSS?
I don't know if moving is an option for you. But there are plenty of countries that offer free healthcare. Sweden, UK, Norway... the list goes on.