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Are the proponents for basic income willing to cut other social programs related to food, housing, child care, unemployment, etc and cut down costly bureaucrati

• aklemm 11y ago
  I would guess they'd be willing to do whichever one is most equitable and effective.
• seba_dos1 11y ago
  As far as I understand it, the whole point of basic income is replacing most of other social programs, especially those related to unemployment.
  • newjersey 11y ago
    Sadly, it will be difficult to explain why we will give Donald Trump and Warren Buffett a basic income of the same amount we will give to a homeless person. It seems we don't discuss the details of any plan and all the news outlets want sound bites that they can repeat every hour. Even NPR hourly news seems full of sound bites.
    • JonFish85 11y ago
      The explanation would go something like this (I think, but I'm not a proponent of the system): You'd give them the same payment, but you'd take back a much higher payment in taxes. Giving people $40k just to send a bill of $100k seems inefficient to me.
      • icebraining 11y ago
        It's just an accounting movement, you don't need to actually transfer them the money so that they can pay it back. You calculate their balance and just tell them to pay $60k.
      • newjersey 11y ago
        I support Universal Basic Income. In my opinion, the main problem a UBI would tackle is non-participation. We can get more people to take benefits if we show that everyone takes the benefits. Of course, other supporters will talk about the savings with decreased bureaucracy costs but those are like nice bonuses to me. Personally, I want everyone who is eligible for a program to enroll and benefit. Yes, this could mean increased taxes but I think it will be well worth it.
      • SolarNet 11y ago
        UBI is often described as a negative income tax for a reason. You don't send those people the money, you give them a tax credit for the money.
  • JonFish85 11y ago
    There's no way you'd be able to get rid of them all. What happens when people spend their entire income on lottery tickets? You can't let them starve, you'd need a way to divorce money from services in that case, which is part of what the US welfare system tries to do in part.
    • rbritton 11y ago
      At the risk of downvotes, why can't you? At some level, personal responsibility must come into play. There's a limit on how much you can protect people from themselves, though where that limit is can be a very political topic.
      • JonFish85 11y ago
        People aren't responsible though, especially not people who are needing social services like welfare. People think short term, and some need to be protected from themselves.
        • aninhumer 11y ago
          Poor people don't always make the best financial decisions, but I think the number of people who would waste all their money without buying any food is relatively small.
      • varelse 11y ago
        Because then the right lobbyists contact either FoxNews or MSNBC (depending on who's apparently to blame) and ignite a two-minute hate about how horrible this is by trotting out a few tragedies and the sheeple get their outrage on, no?
    • seba_dos1 11y ago
      Sure, there's also stuff regarding disabilities, health and probably way more that simply didn't slip into my mind right now. That's why I phrased it as I did. However, I suppose the existence of basic income could also change the character of those remaining social programs. If someone spends their entire income on lottery tickers, they probably need different kind of help than more money from welfare.
• joshuaheard 11y ago
  I haven't listened to the podcast yet, but it is my understanding from past discussions of this idea is that cutting all the other social welfare programs would pay for the basic income and bring conservatives on board. I like the idea of a national sales tax with a prebate. Everyone pays the national sales tax instead of income tax. A prebate is given to everyone to rebate them for taxes paid on necessities like food. The prebate is similar to a basic income. A tax on spending instead of income has many advantages like not penalizing production, encouraging savings, easier reporting requirements, etc.
• astazangasta 11y ago
  A UBI is very similar to an EITC in a lot of ways. To me, the benefit of a UBI is cleaning up a lot of the crap kludges in place that it can substitute better for. Similar to how single-payer lets us get rid of complex insurance subsidies and market places.
• dahart 11y ago
  "And a guaranteed income would be instead of a whole lot of existing welfare programs." It's a proposal to simplify the social support structure.
• raldi 11y ago
  Some want to do the first, some want to do the second.