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How's this sound for a UBI scheme: Companies - including banks - with more than $2 million in annual profits will be taxed 90%. Individuals with more than $5 mi

How's this sound for a UBI scheme: Companies - including banks - with more than $2 million in annual profits will be taxed 90%. Individuals with more than $5 million in assets, cash, stock, bonds, and other investments, will be taxed at 85%. This would adequately pay for such a system that Messirs Altman, Musk, and Zuckerburg desire. Facebook 2016 net income was $1.56 billion. Their tax bill would have been $1.404 billion. Until corporations and the super wealthy are willing to give up their own fortunes to fund a universal basic income they should have zero say in such a policy decision. It MZ wants everyone to have a UBI then why doesn't he personally put up the money to do so?

candiodari 9y ago
Here's the basic problem with such a scheme: If you do that, you kill 99%+ of the value of those companies. Those profits pay first and foremost for the pension of mostly ordinary Americans. Worse: those people who's pensions your proposal would take away worked for those pensions for decades. Because of excessive government debt issuance, these pensions are already somewhere between in trouble and bankrupt, with a massive pension bankruptcy wave coming in 2018 unless radical changes are implemented. This action would make them fail tomorrow. So what will you do about that ? Answer: nobody will risk touching that, and they're right. The issue is that money represents economic incentive. What it boils down to, massively simplified, is this. In order to have a minimal basic income (say $200 per month), you need to create 60 billion in economic value, and that means first and foremost more work by ordinary people. Given average hours pay ($23/hour) that comes to 13 million extra days that need to be worked, by normal people, or about 20% more than we're currently working. So something so trivial as $200/month, extremely inaccurately calculated, would mean no more saturdays. Getting out of bed at 9am and working till 5pm like mondays to fridays. That's, simplified, what a trivial and completely insufficient basic income would take. Oh and before you say "let's eliminate other programs", please keep in mind that that, of course, represents a massive wealth transfer from the poor to the rich.
- aianus 9y ago
  You don't need to work more hours you just need better machines to make the average hour worked more productive. If the productivity went up 10% you could give everyone a UBI of 10% of GDP without any additional hours worked.
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  - candiodari 9y ago
    Sorry - wrong answer. The machines were mostly moved to China because of climate policy (and lower wages, and despite QE credit being easier in China) (TLDR: we moved all factories to be coal powered regions (~20x more polluting than oil, ~2e12 times more polluting than nuclear), because our nuclear and oil powered power plants were too polluting). So this argument might have worked 10 years ago, but today too much of the economy has nothing to do with machines (other than laptops running excel spreadsheets). Try again ?
skybrian 9y ago
If you're rich and pushing UBI, that probably means that you'd be willing to pay significantly higher taxes, or why would you do it? That doesn't mean you have to be a sucker and do it unilaterally when nobody has to do it. It's a collective action problem.
- Overtonwindow 9y ago
  You would do it because you assume and have a reasonable ability to believe in the assumption, that the money for such a program won't come from your pocket.
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mempko 9y ago
UBI won't require tax increases. The government can just deficit spend. I'm more in favor of a guaranteed job program. Also UBI is really a market solution which raises prices. I would rather see more welfare and non market oriented help.
- Overtonwindow 9y ago
  But wouldn't a guaranteed job program incite corruption?

candiodari 9y ago

Here's the basic problem with such a scheme: If you do that, you kill 99%+ of the value of those companies. Those profits pay first and foremost for the pension of mostly ordinary Americans. Worse: those people who's pensions your proposal would take away worked for those pensions for decades. Because of excessive government debt issuance, these pensions are already somewhere between in trouble and bankrupt, with a massive pension bankruptcy wave coming in 2018 unless radical changes are implemented. This action would make them fail tomorrow. So what will you do about that ? Answer: nobody will risk touching that, and they're right. The issue is that money represents economic incentive. What it boils down to, massively simplified, is this. In order to have a minimal basic income (say $200 per month), you need to create 60 billion in economic value, and that means first and foremost more work by ordinary people. Given average hours pay ($23/hour) that comes to 13 million extra days that need to be worked, by normal people, or about 20% more than we're currently working. So something so trivial as $200/month, extremely inaccurately calculated, would mean no more saturdays. Getting out of bed at 9am and working till 5pm like mondays to fridays. That's, simplified, what a trivial and completely insufficient basic income would take. Oh and before you say "let's eliminate other programs", please keep in mind that that, of course, represents a massive wealth transfer from the poor to the rich.

aianus 9y ago
You don't need to work more hours you just need better machines to make the average hour worked more productive. If the productivity went up 10% you could give everyone a UBI of 10% of GDP without any additional hours worked.
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- candiodari 9y ago
  Sorry - wrong answer. The machines were mostly moved to China because of climate policy (and lower wages, and despite QE credit being easier in China) (TLDR: we moved all factories to be coal powered regions (~20x more polluting than oil, ~2e12 times more polluting than nuclear), because our nuclear and oil powered power plants were too polluting). So this argument might have worked 10 years ago, but today too much of the economy has nothing to do with machines (other than laptops running excel spreadsheets). Try again ?

skybrian 9y ago

If you're rich and pushing UBI, that probably means that you'd be willing to pay significantly higher taxes, or why would you do it? That doesn't mean you have to be a sucker and do it unilaterally when nobody has to do it. It's a collective action problem.

Overtonwindow 9y ago
You would do it because you assume and have a reasonable ability to believe in the assumption, that the money for such a program won't come from your pocket.
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mempko 9y ago

UBI won't require tax increases. The government can just deficit spend. I'm more in favor of a guaranteed job program. Also UBI is really a market solution which raises prices. I would rather see more welfare and non market oriented help.

Overtonwindow 9y ago
But wouldn't a guaranteed job program incite corruption?