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Setting aside whether or not redistribution is ever justified, I do respect the pragmatism of the UBI granted it replaces all other forms of welfare. Faced wit
by djschnei 10y ago
Setting aside whether or not redistribution is ever justified, I do respect the pragmatism of the UBI granted it replaces all other forms of welfare. Faced with a choice between the current welfare state and a UBI, the latter is a no brainer.
While not specifically a UBI, the negative income tax seeks to accomplish the creation of a similar safety net while still maintaining a strong profit motive for the people benefiting from it. A negative income tax is something I would definitely get behind.
- mattkrisiloff 10y agoI think it's important to some degree to be agnostic about what we mean by 'basic income'. We're planning to test the version coloquially closest to 'universal basic income', but something along negative income tax could make sense -- we need to find the answers (hence doing the study!), not just prescribe what we think is right.
- nostrebored 10y agoBut the study doesn't actually study UBI. The problems with UBI are heavily rooted in the U -- what happens when an entire society is now making (X + Income)? Using any reasonable economics we'd assume that the price of goods would scale accordingly, especially at the bottom of the curve.
- djschnei 10y agoThe specifics obviously matter.
- balfirevic 10y agoUBI is barely distinguishable from negative income tax when you have a single tax bracket with fixed tax rate and a fixed amount of nontaxable income. Difference is in how you do accounting and usually frequency of the payouts. When you have multiple tax brackets it's a little more complicated but I think still mostly the same.