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Ok, that's fair - I still see a few problems though. First, if you're right and the wealthy keep making more in absolute dollars and therefore paying more in ta
by grahamburger 10y ago
Ok, that's fair - I still see a few problems though. First, if you're right and the wealthy keep making more in absolute dollars and therefore paying more in taxes (IE UBI doesn't make them poorer) then we still have to index the UBI against inflation. And every time UBI goes up, it will be an upstream battle against people who had the same common mistake that you suggest that I made. In other words, in this case at least, perception is reality.
Second, what if UBI does make the wealthy less wealthy? Isn't that kind of the point of wealth redistribution? To reduce income inequality?
- Grishnakh 10y agoI don't understand what you're getting at here. Yes, the point of wealth distribution is to reduce income inequality. The UBI achieves that, by taxing high-income people and redistributing it to everyone (in effect redistributing it to the poorer people, because the wealthier people will be paying it all back in taxes). With tax rates fixed, revenue collected will be greater if wealthy peoples' incomes rise, and this will allow the UBI to be indexed up. Why would there be an "upstream battle"? Nothing has to change when the tax rate is the same. What's the problem?