4 ms·

Oh? I won't claim to be an expert (or even close), but it seems to me that remove the vast majority of the overhead of the current web of social programs with

Oh? I won't claim to be an expert (or even close), but it seems to me that remove the vast majority of the overhead of the current web of social programs with a far more simple "Has this person gotten their $X" would free up a bunch of money, even if $X is given to vastly more people. (And I believe that most social programs are relatively efficiently run - those that disagree would consider the benefit of closing the programs to be greater) That said, theorycrafting isn't numbers. Today the US population is roughly 350 million, and we spend 927 billion on social programs between state and federal. That works out to $2800 and change spent per person. (assuming my numbers are correct) That's, as you say, not nearly enough. Okay, perhaps we can say some large portion of that population is children that would cost less. also families can benefit from shared housing. So let's switch to a theoretical family of four model. For ease of calculations, let's assume large families and small families balance out: $11,200 per (theoretical) family of 4...which isn't the individual poverty line. So....yeah, you seem to be totally correct. Which makes me wonder what numbers those libertarians in favor of UBI are using?

goodcanadian 10y ago
It doesn't seem particularly hard to me. You raise taxes slightly to claw back the UBI from people making significantly larger amounts of money. Actually, how I would implement it is as a refundable tax credit in place of the basic deduction. In other words, if you have no income you receive your full UBI. However, you are taxed on your first dollar of income (rather than getting a tax free threshold as you do today). There is still an incentive to work as you still get to keep 75% (or whatever) of every dollar you earn on top of the basic income, but at some point the amount of tax paid exceeds the amount of UBI received, and you become a net tax payer. EDIT: The point is that by working the numbers, you can have everyone wind up in roughly the same financial position as today except without the overhead of the various social programs.
- Domenic_S 10y ago
  You receive your full UBI for the year all at once at tax time? That seems like a recipe for disaster.
  - goodcanadian 10y ago
    Details to be worked out. :) No, of course, I would not propose that. There are many ways to handle it that effectively amount to the same thing. The UBI could be paid out monthly or fortnightly or whatever seemed good with the tax situation otherwise being the same. Your employer would have to withhold a bit more tax to compensate, but the end result would be the same. The point is not to argue specific implementation details; it is to offer another way of thinking about it.
    - tracker1 10y ago
      Income tax would need to be 40-60% flat to cover such a system.
  - tracker1 10y ago
    Lets say you get $500/month to every adult citizen... and $100-300/month (varies by number/age of children) for every dependent child., for a family of four, that winds up being lets say $1500/month. For a year, that would be $18,000/year. The average U.S. income is $52k.. meaning that a flat tax rate of at least 40% would be needed to cover such a system, as well as what's left of the govt. I might be persuaded to do that, if it meant that pretty much all social programs go away, and that a lot of laws, agencies, regulation, subsidies and even military spending were cut. With a target of cutting the federal budget by 70%. If course it feels like I have that much coming out of my paycheck already.
    - goodcanadian 10y ago
      Two things to keep in mind: 1) Even if the marginal tax rate is fairly high, your average income earner will be getting that $18000 back in UBI which makes the effective rate in your scenario more like 5%. 2) The majority of tax revenue comes from the highest earners. A quick google gave me this (from https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2015-update/ https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-...): The top 1 percent (1.3 million filers) paid a greater share of income taxes (37.8 percent) than the bottom 90 percent (124.5 million filers) combined (30.2 percent). In other words, I don't believe your math is a reasonable approximation of how the budget would work out. If everyone pays the same effective rate as today (including welfare and other social program recipients who can be treated as having a negative effective rate), nothing changes. Also, there is no need to presume a flat tax rate; the U.S. does not have a flat tax rate, now. EDIT: Also the average household size in the U.S. is 2.53 people, not 4. A naive calculation would suggest that a household of 4 should therefore expect a mean income around $83K.

goodcanadian 10y ago

It doesn't seem particularly hard to me. You raise taxes slightly to claw back the UBI from people making significantly larger amounts of money. Actually, how I would implement it is as a refundable tax credit in place of the basic deduction. In other words, if you have no income you receive your full UBI. However, you are taxed on your first dollar of income (rather than getting a tax free threshold as you do today). There is still an incentive to work as you still get to keep 75% (or whatever) of every dollar you earn on top of the basic income, but at some point the amount of tax paid exceeds the amount of UBI received, and you become a net tax payer. EDIT: The point is that by working the numbers, you can have everyone wind up in roughly the same financial position as today except without the overhead of the various social programs.

Domenic_S 10y ago
You receive your full UBI for the year all at once at tax time? That seems like a recipe for disaster.
- goodcanadian 10y ago
  Details to be worked out. :) No, of course, I would not propose that. There are many ways to handle it that effectively amount to the same thing. The UBI could be paid out monthly or fortnightly or whatever seemed good with the tax situation otherwise being the same. Your employer would have to withhold a bit more tax to compensate, but the end result would be the same. The point is not to argue specific implementation details; it is to offer another way of thinking about it.
  - tracker1 10y ago
    Income tax would need to be 40-60% flat to cover such a system.
- tracker1 10y ago
  Lets say you get $500/month to every adult citizen... and $100-300/month (varies by number/age of children) for every dependent child., for a family of four, that winds up being lets say $1500/month. For a year, that would be $18,000/year. The average U.S. income is $52k.. meaning that a flat tax rate of at least 40% would be needed to cover such a system, as well as what's left of the govt. I might be persuaded to do that, if it meant that pretty much all social programs go away, and that a lot of laws, agencies, regulation, subsidies and even military spending were cut. With a target of cutting the federal budget by 70%. If course it feels like I have that much coming out of my paycheck already.
  - goodcanadian 10y ago
    Two things to keep in mind: 1) Even if the marginal tax rate is fairly high, your average income earner will be getting that $18000 back in UBI which makes the effective rate in your scenario more like 5%. 2) The majority of tax revenue comes from the highest earners. A quick google gave me this (from https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2015-update/ https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-...): The top 1 percent (1.3 million filers) paid a greater share of income taxes (37.8 percent) than the bottom 90 percent (124.5 million filers) combined (30.2 percent). In other words, I don't believe your math is a reasonable approximation of how the budget would work out. If everyone pays the same effective rate as today (including welfare and other social program recipients who can be treated as having a negative effective rate), nothing changes. Also, there is no need to presume a flat tax rate; the U.S. does not have a flat tax rate, now. EDIT: Also the average household size in the U.S. is 2.53 people, not 4. A naive calculation would suggest that a household of 4 should therefore expect a mean income around $83K.