8 ms·

> Maybe that's a good example of how to get right-wing politicians to agree to some left-wing ideals: prove that it will save money and let them lower taxes. I

> Maybe that's a good example of how to get right-wing politicians to agree to some left-wing ideals: prove that it will save money and let them lower taxes. I've certainly heard this argument from the (few) libertarian sources that are considering basic income. They are opposed to "entitlement" programs, but see a (theoretically) cheaper entitlement program as better than an expensive one. (Perhaps they also think that a flat-sum basic income is easier to lower or hold flat than a complex web of social programs. Or I may be being cynical) OTOH, it can still be a hard sell to constituents. The US has known for at least a decade that spending more on IRS agents would earn more money than it would cost. No new rules, no new regulations, just enforcement of the rules we have. Seems like an easy decision to me, but few politicians, left or right, want to be caught saying we should have more tax enforcers. Pity.

MangentBrioche 10y ago
UBI is being pushed by a subset of the wealthy primarily because it will be a juicy source of rent, in both the economic and colloquial senses. Every cent of UBI will be absorbed by housing costs absent the sort of regulation that would itself make UBI politically untenable (i.e. because it would not benefit the wealthy.)
- noonespecial 10y ago
  >Every cent of UBI will be absorbed by housing cost I think you're wrong about that because UBI frees people to go and live anywhere. They won't be trapped in lousy housing one bus-ride from their McJob anymore. The only way housing would suck up the entire UBI is if everyone were trapped in a California situation where new housing was impossible.
  - NewCathargo 10y ago
    That's the best argument for UBI I've heard yet. It gives people an option to "exit" shitty societies. Unfortunately you'll find a good portion being spent on 20th century drugs, which suck immensely. But if the people in power are willing to take that risk, then it might be a positive thing. One glaring flaw is that humans are a social species and calculate rank and favors and grudges almost autonomously. Receiving your "life" from a government stooge is something of an embarrassment to men who've survived cold winters and starvation and dehydration. We like to be "equal" or "respectful" to a gift giver by having the possibility of giving back an equivalent gift. So in a sense, you have to teach the homeless person abilities which, eventually, allow him/her to reciprocate a gift. Even if the gift was from the government.
    - noonespecial 10y ago
      >Unfortunately you'll find a good portion being spent on 20th century drugs, which suck immensely. There's the hardest part about UBI. Its the same thing that makes our welfare systems so awful right now as well. The terrible fear that if we give people money... they might spend it on stuff we don't think they should.
      - Jach 10y ago
        It's not even a fear: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/our-miserable-21st-century/ https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/our-miserable-21... (and https://www.bostonfed.org/-/media/Documents/economic/conf/great-recovery-2016/Alan-B-Krueger.pdf https://www.bostonfed.org/-/media/Documents/economic/conf/gr...) The overwhelming majority of prime-age men on welfare spend most of their time on consuming multimedia, doped up on pain medication like Oxycontin. As beautiful as I personally find the ideal of letting people be free from economic concern beyond their basics (if they want more they can get a job) and free to pursue inexpensive but time-consuming creative passions and work on bettering themselves (it's my own dream I aim to achieve by becoming effectively retired in my early 30s), it's not a realistic outcome for most and can't be used as the basis of argument for why the working class should thus support people whose first complaint against work is simply lack of desire.
        ergothus 10y ago
        ...and yet when there was mandatory drug testing it showed a drug use rate lower than the general population. How do you reconcile those contrasting data points? (honest question, not a troll)
        toast0 10y ago
        Devils advocate: If you're getting paid to do drugs and watch movies, don't you think you can find someone's clean pee?
        10y ago
  - rhizome 10y ago
    The only way housing would suck up the entire UBI is if everyone were trapped in a California situation where new housing was impossible. Provided there are no location/COL adjustments.
    - telchar 10y ago
      I think providing location/COL adjustments would be a big mistake for a UBI system. Providing a flat rate encourages people to move to lower-COL places which would reduce the amount of economic activity tied up in rent. It seems to me that adjusting for COL would just reward those who choose to prop up rents and worsen the rent <-> COL cycle.
      - goodcanadian 10y ago
        Indeed, by encouraging people to move to lower cost of living areas, they may actually help prop up the local economy by spending their UBI cheques in otherwise depressed areas.
      - tracker1 10y ago
        Agreed.. the main benefit to such a system would be simple rules that apply to everyone, that you can't cheat (other than potentially non-citizens getting benefits). It there's any complexity, including COL, that makes it easier to cheat said system.
  - Shivetya 10y ago
    I seriously doubt it. While I don't doubt it will aid in some mobility it will not be significant enough to let people simply pull up stakes and move. Plus with dual income families someone always gets the shaft when it comes to commutes. I think a more likely scenario is companies will pop up who cater to providing the needs of UBI dependents. Think about it, if UBI is enough to cover home and food then you could package these together. Welcome to extended stay from hell. Lets be real, UBI might protect you from going homeless but that ain't the same as having mobility and choice. With more people participating in the market for housing its going to get tight for awhile and you could end up with more sprawl.
    - tracker1 10y ago
      That assumes the homeless is a significant portion of the population.
- douche 10y ago
  In a a UBI situation, I would find the cheapest living conditions around home, then hope the Ubi would cover out-of state schools
danielweber 10y ago
The politicians likely remember the scandal from the 1980s of Regular Joes being torn apart by aggressive IRS agents. Saying "hiring more IRS agents brings in more money than they cost" is incredibly gauche to anyone who remembers it.
- ergothus 10y ago
  But bankrupting your govt because some people aren't paying their share is self-defeating. I'm all for oversight to limit the corruption of power, but trying NOT to give power to anyone will just accept that power falls to those that are ruthless and abusive to take it regardless. In this case, those same Regular Joes are getting the short end of the stick because the govt cuts programs to benefit them because wealthy individuals and corporations have found ways to pay dramatically less in overall tax rate that those Joes are. (and those ways don't even have to be legal if the govt doesn't have the agents to enforce the rules) And targeting "regular joes" is a terrible way to make money. The vast majority of govt income comes from the wealthy, in particular because wealth distribution is so unbalanced.
  - grasshopperpurp 10y ago
    ". . . but trying NOT to give power to anyone will just accept that power falls to those that are ruthless and abusive to take it regardless." This is the crux, and I've never seen a good Libertarian defense against this. Someone will always fill the power void.
    - Consultant32452 10y ago
      I'm a libertarian that supports unions. If you can get enough of the labor force together to demand higher wages or better benefits, more power to you. I don't think the government should be involved in that. I'm even happy to support socialist style businesses where the workers share ownership. If someone can make that work and be successful/competitive? Awesome. Again, I just don't think the government has any business meddling in it.
douche 10y ago
Any tax code that, should you be capable of lifting it, requires both hands and a top 5 player to develop, is suspect
tn13 10y ago
> . The US has known for at least a decade that spending more on IRS agents would earn more money than it would cost. Isn't that proven to be a mostly false notion? Lower taxes tend to bring in more revenue and create more employment.
- ashark 10y ago
  > Lower taxes tend to bring in more revenue and create more employment. Got some examples where this actually worked?
  - vacri 10y ago
    Tax haven countries that have no other economic drivers, but these are essentially parasitic economies and it wouldn't work in large countries.
- ergothus 10y ago
  > Lower taxes tend to bring in more revenue and create more employment. Two responses: 1) A bit of an irrelevant point, since we're not talking about RAISING taxes, we're talking about collecting taxes that are due under current rules. (You can argue that's an effective tax increase, but I doubt people/companies that aren't following the rules are a good basis for policy - with lower taxes they'll still cheat) 2) But if we do consider your point...I don't know that your point has been shown at all. Sure, if you're on the far side of the Laffer curve, which is 50-70% tax rate (depending on whose numbers you trust), but we're at 20-38% tax rate in the US (and that's marginal rate, not overall rate). I'd also look to the efforts of politicians like Brownback in Kansas, where a massive tax cut led to...a tanking of the local economy. I don't recall of hearing of a single supply-side success in post-WWII America, but I'll admit to non-perfect knowledge. Also, as a liberal, I support taxes because I support many govt programs. Taxes themselves are NOT exciting - if we could really raise more govt revenue by cutting taxes, I'd be all for it, but I've not seen any reliable evidence for that (again, unless you're on the other side of the Laffer curve) and I've seen at least limited evidence against it.
  - 10y ago
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
"Hmmm... My spreadsheet says you earned a bit more than your neighbor down the road last year. I'm going to have to take that, mmmkay?"
- ergothus 10y ago
  Funny sarcasm, but...what is the point you are trying to make?
sf_rob 10y ago
>the (few) libertarian sources that are considering basic income While it's not necessarily popular in libertarian circles today, the negative income tax (which is closely related to UBI but not identical) has a long history among libertarian thought leaders. Milton Friedman was a proponent of these policies. The US already has the Earned Income Tax Credit, so the basic idea of a negative income tax is already in place though highly constrained. I think expanding/modifying that program would be a path of least resistance rather than pushing for independent UBI legislation.
- isleyaardvark 10y ago
  Hayek as well.
differentView 10y ago
I suspect many people who claim to be libertarians just haven't discovered classical liberalism.
tracker1 10y ago
As a pragmatic libertarian, that's where I stand.. it likely wouldn't cost much more, but would eliminate a LOT of other programs and agencies, and reduce/eliminate classes of subsidies and complex legislation for a simple, universal system that people aren't able to abuse (short of non-citizens, arguably claiming benefits) We definitely don't need more tax enforcers, or more taxes... better spending, and simpler tax structures are needed much more.
- douche 10y ago
  Judt think of all the useless civil servants you would be putting out of work! That woul take a serious chunk out of the budget though.

MangentBrioche 10y ago

UBI is being pushed by a subset of the wealthy primarily because it will be a juicy source of rent, in both the economic and colloquial senses. Every cent of UBI will be absorbed by housing costs absent the sort of regulation that would itself make UBI politically untenable (i.e. because it would not benefit the wealthy.)

noonespecial 10y ago
>Every cent of UBI will be absorbed by housing cost I think you're wrong about that because UBI frees people to go and live anywhere. They won't be trapped in lousy housing one bus-ride from their McJob anymore. The only way housing would suck up the entire UBI is if everyone were trapped in a California situation where new housing was impossible.
- NewCathargo 10y ago
  That's the best argument for UBI I've heard yet. It gives people an option to "exit" shitty societies. Unfortunately you'll find a good portion being spent on 20th century drugs, which suck immensely. But if the people in power are willing to take that risk, then it might be a positive thing. One glaring flaw is that humans are a social species and calculate rank and favors and grudges almost autonomously. Receiving your "life" from a government stooge is something of an embarrassment to men who've survived cold winters and starvation and dehydration. We like to be "equal" or "respectful" to a gift giver by having the possibility of giving back an equivalent gift. So in a sense, you have to teach the homeless person abilities which, eventually, allow him/her to reciprocate a gift. Even if the gift was from the government.
  - noonespecial 10y ago
    >Unfortunately you'll find a good portion being spent on 20th century drugs, which suck immensely. There's the hardest part about UBI. Its the same thing that makes our welfare systems so awful right now as well. The terrible fear that if we give people money... they might spend it on stuff we don't think they should.
    - Jach 10y ago
      It's not even a fear: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/our-miserable-21st-century/ https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/our-miserable-21... (and https://www.bostonfed.org/-/media/Documents/economic/conf/great-recovery-2016/Alan-B-Krueger.pdf https://www.bostonfed.org/-/media/Documents/economic/conf/gr...) The overwhelming majority of prime-age men on welfare spend most of their time on consuming multimedia, doped up on pain medication like Oxycontin. As beautiful as I personally find the ideal of letting people be free from economic concern beyond their basics (if they want more they can get a job) and free to pursue inexpensive but time-consuming creative passions and work on bettering themselves (it's my own dream I aim to achieve by becoming effectively retired in my early 30s), it's not a realistic outcome for most and can't be used as the basis of argument for why the working class should thus support people whose first complaint against work is simply lack of desire.
      - ergothus 10y ago
        ...and yet when there was mandatory drug testing it showed a drug use rate lower than the general population. How do you reconcile those contrasting data points? (honest question, not a troll)
        toast0 10y ago
        Devils advocate: If you're getting paid to do drugs and watch movies, don't you think you can find someone's clean pee?
        10y ago
- rhizome 10y ago
  The only way housing would suck up the entire UBI is if everyone were trapped in a California situation where new housing was impossible. Provided there are no location/COL adjustments.
  - telchar 10y ago
    I think providing location/COL adjustments would be a big mistake for a UBI system. Providing a flat rate encourages people to move to lower-COL places which would reduce the amount of economic activity tied up in rent. It seems to me that adjusting for COL would just reward those who choose to prop up rents and worsen the rent <-> COL cycle.
    - goodcanadian 10y ago
      Indeed, by encouraging people to move to lower cost of living areas, they may actually help prop up the local economy by spending their UBI cheques in otherwise depressed areas.
    - tracker1 10y ago
      Agreed.. the main benefit to such a system would be simple rules that apply to everyone, that you can't cheat (other than potentially non-citizens getting benefits). It there's any complexity, including COL, that makes it easier to cheat said system.
- Shivetya 10y ago
  I seriously doubt it. While I don't doubt it will aid in some mobility it will not be significant enough to let people simply pull up stakes and move. Plus with dual income families someone always gets the shaft when it comes to commutes. I think a more likely scenario is companies will pop up who cater to providing the needs of UBI dependents. Think about it, if UBI is enough to cover home and food then you could package these together. Welcome to extended stay from hell. Lets be real, UBI might protect you from going homeless but that ain't the same as having mobility and choice. With more people participating in the market for housing its going to get tight for awhile and you could end up with more sprawl.
  - tracker1 10y ago
    That assumes the homeless is a significant portion of the population.
douche 10y ago
In a a UBI situation, I would find the cheapest living conditions around home, then hope the Ubi would cover out-of state schools

danielweber 10y ago

The politicians likely remember the scandal from the 1980s of Regular Joes being torn apart by aggressive IRS agents. Saying "hiring more IRS agents brings in more money than they cost" is incredibly gauche to anyone who remembers it.

ergothus 10y ago
But bankrupting your govt because some people aren't paying their share is self-defeating. I'm all for oversight to limit the corruption of power, but trying NOT to give power to anyone will just accept that power falls to those that are ruthless and abusive to take it regardless. In this case, those same Regular Joes are getting the short end of the stick because the govt cuts programs to benefit them because wealthy individuals and corporations have found ways to pay dramatically less in overall tax rate that those Joes are. (and those ways don't even have to be legal if the govt doesn't have the agents to enforce the rules) And targeting "regular joes" is a terrible way to make money. The vast majority of govt income comes from the wealthy, in particular because wealth distribution is so unbalanced.
- grasshopperpurp 10y ago
  ". . . but trying NOT to give power to anyone will just accept that power falls to those that are ruthless and abusive to take it regardless." This is the crux, and I've never seen a good Libertarian defense against this. Someone will always fill the power void.
  - Consultant32452 10y ago
    I'm a libertarian that supports unions. If you can get enough of the labor force together to demand higher wages or better benefits, more power to you. I don't think the government should be involved in that. I'm even happy to support socialist style businesses where the workers share ownership. If someone can make that work and be successful/competitive? Awesome. Again, I just don't think the government has any business meddling in it.

douche 10y ago

Any tax code that, should you be capable of lifting it, requires both hands and a top 5 player to develop, is suspect

tn13 10y ago

> . The US has known for at least a decade that spending more on IRS agents would earn more money than it would cost. Isn't that proven to be a mostly false notion? Lower taxes tend to bring in more revenue and create more employment.

ashark 10y ago
> Lower taxes tend to bring in more revenue and create more employment. Got some examples where this actually worked?
- vacri 10y ago
  Tax haven countries that have no other economic drivers, but these are essentially parasitic economies and it wouldn't work in large countries.
ergothus 10y ago
> Lower taxes tend to bring in more revenue and create more employment. Two responses: 1) A bit of an irrelevant point, since we're not talking about RAISING taxes, we're talking about collecting taxes that are due under current rules. (You can argue that's an effective tax increase, but I doubt people/companies that aren't following the rules are a good basis for policy - with lower taxes they'll still cheat) 2) But if we do consider your point...I don't know that your point has been shown at all. Sure, if you're on the far side of the Laffer curve, which is 50-70% tax rate (depending on whose numbers you trust), but we're at 20-38% tax rate in the US (and that's marginal rate, not overall rate). I'd also look to the efforts of politicians like Brownback in Kansas, where a massive tax cut led to...a tanking of the local economy. I don't recall of hearing of a single supply-side success in post-WWII America, but I'll admit to non-perfect knowledge. Also, as a liberal, I support taxes because I support many govt programs. Taxes themselves are NOT exciting - if we could really raise more govt revenue by cutting taxes, I'd be all for it, but I've not seen any reliable evidence for that (again, unless you're on the other side of the Laffer curve) and I've seen at least limited evidence against it.
- 10y ago

JustSomeNobody 10y ago

"Hmmm... My spreadsheet says you earned a bit more than your neighbor down the road last year. I'm going to have to take that, mmmkay?"

ergothus 10y ago
Funny sarcasm, but...what is the point you are trying to make?

sf_rob 10y ago

>the (few) libertarian sources that are considering basic income While it's not necessarily popular in libertarian circles today, the negative income tax (which is closely related to UBI but not identical) has a long history among libertarian thought leaders. Milton Friedman was a proponent of these policies. The US already has the Earned Income Tax Credit, so the basic idea of a negative income tax is already in place though highly constrained. I think expanding/modifying that program would be a path of least resistance rather than pushing for independent UBI legislation.

isleyaardvark 10y ago
Hayek as well.

differentView 10y ago

I suspect many people who claim to be libertarians just haven't discovered classical liberalism.

tracker1 10y ago

As a pragmatic libertarian, that's where I stand.. it likely wouldn't cost much more, but would eliminate a LOT of other programs and agencies, and reduce/eliminate classes of subsidies and complex legislation for a simple, universal system that people aren't able to abuse (short of non-citizens, arguably claiming benefits) We definitely don't need more tax enforcers, or more taxes... better spending, and simpler tax structures are needed much more.

douche 10y ago
Judt think of all the useless civil servants you would be putting out of work! That woul take a serious chunk out of the budget though.