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I cannot find a "white paper" or policy outline on UBI. I have read OpEds on the subject in the NYT and WSJ and watched Milton Friedman explaining his "negative

I cannot find a "white paper" or policy outline on UBI. I have read OpEds on the subject in the NYT and WSJ and watched Milton Friedman explaining his "negative income tax" on YouTube and that has been the most detailed plan of all.* Therein Friedman explains how welfare would be erased and a cash payout of $3,000 (circa 1968 mind you) to those making no income whatsoever. In todays dollars that figure would be $20,806.29 If the recipient made only $2,000 that year they would receive of a check of $1,000. Is that workable today? The UBI enthusiasts never point to how it is going to get paid. * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=3000.00&year1=1968&year2=2016 https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=3000.00&year1=...

464192002d7fe1c 10y ago
> welfare would be erased and a cash payout I'm basically fine with that concept behind that. I even think we can figure out how to pay for it. But, I think a lot of people aren't behind the first half of that statement. Since "welfare" isn't exactly a thing, we need to specifically define what programs UBI would be replacing. TANF? SNAP? Unemployment? SSI? SSDI? Medicare/Medicaid? Social Security in general? Section 8? Depending on your answers to those questions, 20000/year can either be a lot or a little.
lend000 10y ago
Unfortunately, we haven't even figured out how we're paying for our existing budget. The nice thing about an adult UBI is that it doesn't distort the market as much as our other social programs, and if its introduction means the elimination of medicare, medicaid, social security, TANF, student loans, unemployment benefits, etc. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_programs_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_programs_in_the_United_...), then that's a win in and of itself. Some of the distortions I'm referring to: TANF incentivizes having more children to get a higher payout, unemployment benefits incentivize staying unemployed longer, student loans increase demand for expensive tuition (and hence each increase in loans/aid results in a relative 60% increase in tuition), etc. To work, UBI has to be truly basic (i.e. most people would not be satisfied living on it and seek some form of supplemental income), which is difficult because people will vote for the Bernie Sanders' of the world who want to raise it -- especially retired folks. I would prefer a negative income tax that has inherent balance. I don't know of any good white papers, but I've given it a fair amount of thought. Consider a negative 'flat' income tax such that the rate above a certain point is X% (say 15% tax rate on income above 40K) and (100-2X)% refund (e.g. 100-2*15=70% refund on income below 40K, so if you make 30K you get a 7K refund). If the formula is constitutionally locked in, and only the rate is subject to change, then voters have less incentive to raise taxes because it decreases refunds. The only incentive I haven't figured out is how to avoid getting people to vote to raise the cutoff point for paying taxes/getting a refund. Perhaps it should be locked at the (100-4X)% percentile, so with the above numbers the poorest 40% of the population would not pay taxes, which would probably put the cutoff closer to 30K. All of these numbers are arbitrary, and for the examples I've given it would basically lock in rates of 10-20%.
dllthomas 10y ago
> If the recipient made only $2,000 that year they would receive of a check of $1,000. A marginal tax rate of 100% up to the NIT stipend? That doesn't sound like anything I've heard Friedman advocate. I'm not in a position to listen to audio right now, so I can't check the video...

464192002d7fe1c 10y ago

> welfare would be erased and a cash payout I'm basically fine with that concept behind that. I even think we can figure out how to pay for it. But, I think a lot of people aren't behind the first half of that statement. Since "welfare" isn't exactly a thing, we need to specifically define what programs UBI would be replacing. TANF? SNAP? Unemployment? SSI? SSDI? Medicare/Medicaid? Social Security in general? Section 8? Depending on your answers to those questions, 20000/year can either be a lot or a little.

lend000 10y ago

Unfortunately, we haven't even figured out how we're paying for our existing budget. The nice thing about an adult UBI is that it doesn't distort the market as much as our other social programs, and if its introduction means the elimination of medicare, medicaid, social security, TANF, student loans, unemployment benefits, etc. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_programs_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_programs_in_the_United_...), then that's a win in and of itself. Some of the distortions I'm referring to: TANF incentivizes having more children to get a higher payout, unemployment benefits incentivize staying unemployed longer, student loans increase demand for expensive tuition (and hence each increase in loans/aid results in a relative 60% increase in tuition), etc. To work, UBI has to be truly basic (i.e. most people would not be satisfied living on it and seek some form of supplemental income), which is difficult because people will vote for the Bernie Sanders' of the world who want to raise it -- especially retired folks. I would prefer a negative income tax that has inherent balance. I don't know of any good white papers, but I've given it a fair amount of thought. Consider a negative 'flat' income tax such that the rate above a certain point is X% (say 15% tax rate on income above 40K) and (100-2X)% refund (e.g. 100-2*15=70% refund on income below 40K, so if you make 30K you get a 7K refund). If the formula is constitutionally locked in, and only the rate is subject to change, then voters have less incentive to raise taxes because it decreases refunds. The only incentive I haven't figured out is how to avoid getting people to vote to raise the cutoff point for paying taxes/getting a refund. Perhaps it should be locked at the (100-4X)% percentile, so with the above numbers the poorest 40% of the population would not pay taxes, which would probably put the cutoff closer to 30K. All of these numbers are arbitrary, and for the examples I've given it would basically lock in rates of 10-20%.

dllthomas 10y ago

> If the recipient made only $2,000 that year they would receive of a check of $1,000. A marginal tax rate of 100% up to the NIT stipend? That doesn't sound like anything I've heard Friedman advocate. I'm not in a position to listen to audio right now, so I can't check the video...