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I think the best thing to try is universal basic income for those making less than X and then slowly getting phased out once you hit middle to upper class is be
by marricks 9y ago
I think the best thing to try is universal basic income for those making less than X and then slowly getting phased out once you hit middle to upper class is best. People want to work but if the end up not getting enough to live while looking for work and not much more when the work you have a recipe for trouble.
Getting everyone onboard with taxing the rich to pay for it would be tough in US with its penchant for doing the exact opposite, cutting welfare and giving wealthy tax breaks... how trials like this go will be very interesting. I look forward toy the results even if it’s just targeting unemployed persons.
- andrewchambers 9y agoThen it is not "universal" or "basic" anymore, how is that different to just more benefits.
- freeloop10 9y agoIt depends on how you look at it. A phase out of UBI could also be viewed as an additional tax. In fact, you could consider the current system of benefits only if you are not working a form of UBI, if you just treat the UBI not received by the working as a tax against the benefits they would have received. All in all, UBI isn't much of a departure to what we already have, except that people are expecting the benefits given would be much moar.
- adrusi 9y agoWhat you're describing is more like a negative income tax. As long as the tax brackets are narrow enough (or better yet: tax rate is a continuous increasing function of income!) so that at no point does increasing youre before-benefit income reduce your total after-benefit income. With negative income tax, you have the problem of people cheating on their taxes to get free money, so it's often assumed that implementing it would require the abolition of cash.