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>Because the article proposes a scenario where welfare and public assistance would readily apply to newcomers too. FTA: “If the worry is that future migrants m

>Because the article proposes a scenario where welfare and public assistance would readily apply to newcomers too. FTA: “If the worry is that future migrants might not pay their way, why not charge them more for visas, or make them pay extra taxes, or restrict their access to welfare benefits? Such levies could also be used to regulate the flow of migrants, thus avoiding big, sudden surges.”

smsm42 8y ago
> why not charge them more for visas, Because illegal immigrants do not use visas. So you would be hurting law-abiding people and encouraging circumventing the law - if you can't afford the visa anyway, the question of "should I just through the hoops to get legal visa or try illegal immigration" becomes moot. > make them pay extra taxes Why would they pay those taxes? They'd just work on black market and report zero income and apply for welfare. High tax burdens reliably breeds avoidance and lack of compliance, especially in population that is kinda on the sidelines of the law as it is, as it often happens with migrants. And of course it would also sell awfully in the press - imagine an article of how a migrant from Guatemala pays a higher tax rate taxes than a billionaire born in New Jersey - how that would look in next congressional debate? > restrict their access to welfare benefits You can do it, but then you'd get exactly what welfare benefits are created to remove - a large population of people who do not have access to basic services, and thus have high level of disease, crime, misery and human suffering. If you accept the idea that welfare benefits are necessary because we should not have too many people like that in our society, then denying people in the country these benefits because they were born in wrong place contradicts this idea. Gating the access to this system on immigration status contradicts the whole premise of having the welfare system. I don't think there's a logically consistent model of welfare state with open borders at all - unless we somehow postulate that welfare spending has a reasonably low upper bound, which I haven't seen proven anywhere. > Such levies could also be used to regulate the flow of migrants, Of course you could, but why charging lots of money for visa would be more effective in solving problems we have now than any other method that's been used? > thus avoiding big, sudden surges.” Big, sudden surges usually happen due to wars, famines, economic collapses and other such events, in which case I seriously doubt visa prices are going to change anything.
- gremlinsinc 8y ago
  Easy solution to all this. End income taxes. Make consumption tax + national id system. With id you pay 4%, without you pay 15-20%. Make the consumption tax be on everything : Wages, Rent, Mortgage, Food, etc... if you spend money on something it's taxed at the point of payment. - By wages - I mean the company pays the tax. If a person or company pays money or exchanges money it's taxed. Shareholder dividends, CEO bonuses, all taxed. You could then fund a guaranteed basic income (for citizens only), and just adjust the sales/tax yearly to balance the budget-- everyone pays taxes, no deductions are given, but GBI would guarantee people wouldn't live in poverty at all. It'd be easier to manage technically so we could dismantle welfare and handout programs as well as the IRS.
  - smsm42 8y ago
    > Easy solution to all this. End income taxes. With current political and budget system, I don't see any path to this ever happening. Maybe in theory that could be a better solution (I don't know, it would need thorough analysis) but I don't see how it could happen in reality. > You could then fund a guaranteed basic income (for citizens only), Again, same argument applies. If GBU is a benefit for society, there's no reason to gate it on citizenship - we'd be just limiting the benefit on irrelevant metric, it's like demanding to lower your own salary if your boss' last name begins with certain letter - it'd be irrational. If, however, it is not beneficial to society but is a wealth transfer which benefits one group while hurting another, because the former has more political clout - one should argue this should never be done at all, citizen or not.
    - gremlinsinc 8y ago
      I'd be for a universal gbi -- if it's built on blockchain, w/ tax system builtin via transaction fee, perhaps it's tied to an identity coin, and each identity has a 'score' on how unique that person 'appears' to the algorithm, and using a combination of biometrics (like iris scan), and social graph. The more 'unique' or seemlingly unique/trusted the person is as an individual the less transaction fee they pay per transaction. Something like this could then be adopted as a global currency and have gbi paid out to all members monthly. Perhaps we could create a not-for-profit corp that creates small businesses where 100% of left over income goes back to consumers who use the store (think grocery) and workers who work in the store as a bonus.
furgooswft13 8y ago
> restrict their access to welfare benefits This is a libertarian pipe-dream that will never happen in the current political climate. They envision free movement and no welfare/safety-net (for at least alien immigrants). Even if that is federal policy, states and cities will pick up the slack. The rest? Just another way to end up with millions of undocumented/illegal immigrants (like we have currently with impossible standards to meet for legal immigration). Can't force someone to pay "extra taxes" if they are working under the table for slave wages. No doubt The Economist could care less if migrants pay taxes, for them they pay their way solely by providing cheap labor to businesses.
- simplecomplex 8y ago
  Estimates show undocumented immigrants are net contributors to welfare, they pay taxes but they can’t apply for most benefits that they’re paying into. Half of undocumented immigrants pay taxes. Source: https://itep.org/wp-content/uploads/undocumentedtaxes.pdf https://itep.org/wp-content/uploads/undocumentedtaxes.pdf
  - patrickg_zill 8y ago
    Yeah, that is total BS. BTW they are not "undocumented" as if their dog ate their passport: they are illegal immigrants. The total local, state, federal burden of all the benefits they receive, greatly outweighs the pitiful amount they pay in taxes. 2017 stats indicate $19B paid into the system, $135B in services taken out: a net $116B loss to America. https://www.scribd.com/document/359997156/Cost-Study-2017-Web#from_embed https://www.scribd.com/document/359997156/Cost-Study-2017-We... Even if you say that "FAIR is biased", and discount the numbers by 50%, you still have a negative impact of over $50B a year. California, ALONE, spends over $30 billion a year on services for illegals. $10.6 billion in paid taxes: according to your link "overall effective tax rate of 6.4 percent". Explain how that is fair, please...
    - simplecomplex 8y ago
      Most citizens are not net contributors to welfare. It sounds like you dislike welfare, not immigrants. People who come here legally and illegally are just like you and me, wanting the same things, to work, live, and provide a better future for their children. They are human beings. But I get it... freedom and markets when it benefits you and exclusion and socialism when it doesn’t.
gremlinsinc 8y ago
I've thought about that a lot (I'm pro open-borders). I think we should get rid of income taxes, instead move to consumption taxes (money out is taxed) examples: Paying for anything: Rent, Food, Wages, Shareholders/Dividends, Estate transfer, Boats, Trains, Planes, etc... If you exchange money for ANYTHING it's taxed on the payers' side of the transaction. -- Then create a fair-id system so every citizen has an id, if you go to the store and forget your id you pay 15% sales tax, if you have your id you pay 4%. This would immediately make non-documented people and visitors with greencards pay a lot of taxes. It's their choice if they want to stay/pay or go and not-pay their share, but the republicans can stop whining about immigrants not paying their fair share if they pay 3 times the sales tax.
- candiodari 8y ago
  So go back to 99% of just taxing the poor (progressive taxes make taxes very low for very low incomes) ? And in the process create an almost absurdly large incentive for the black market to go back to the levels it last existed at centuries ago. Without deductions, owning a house is back to utterly impossible for anyone who doesn't currently own one. At those levels all other laws become ineffective too, as at that point sausages in the supermarket will have the same quality control as illegal drugs have today. Illegal production, dumping, ... all comes with enormous incentives under such a scheme. Maybe do some research before suggesting something like this.
  - gremlinsinc 8y ago
    There is a deduction of sorts.. It's guaranteed basic income. Give everyone 3000 a month per household + 500 per dependent. Those who own homes/land/property will pay more because they're expenditures are more. Example: You earn 70k per year, you get 30k for gbi. That's 100k. Of that, you spend 80% on housing, school, food, clothes, toys, w/e, and invest 20% for retirement. Of that 80% you spend 5% on taxes via sales tax. So roughly $4,000 a year in taxes. If you earned 30k, and didn't work at all i.e. 30k from gbi alone, and spent all of it, you'd have spent 1500 on taxes, but still be able to feed/clothe/house a family in at least some comfort. I don't see how that makes life unbearable for everyone? If you're an immigrant who isn't a citizen yet, you'd pay a bit more, but that's the price of coming to America, deal w/ it. At least you'll never be deported, or have your family ripped away from you, etc...

smsm42 8y ago

> why not charge them more for visas, Because illegal immigrants do not use visas. So you would be hurting law-abiding people and encouraging circumventing the law - if you can't afford the visa anyway, the question of "should I just through the hoops to get legal visa or try illegal immigration" becomes moot. > make them pay extra taxes Why would they pay those taxes? They'd just work on black market and report zero income and apply for welfare. High tax burdens reliably breeds avoidance and lack of compliance, especially in population that is kinda on the sidelines of the law as it is, as it often happens with migrants. And of course it would also sell awfully in the press - imagine an article of how a migrant from Guatemala pays a higher tax rate taxes than a billionaire born in New Jersey - how that would look in next congressional debate? > restrict their access to welfare benefits You can do it, but then you'd get exactly what welfare benefits are created to remove - a large population of people who do not have access to basic services, and thus have high level of disease, crime, misery and human suffering. If you accept the idea that welfare benefits are necessary because we should not have too many people like that in our society, then denying people in the country these benefits because they were born in wrong place contradicts this idea. Gating the access to this system on immigration status contradicts the whole premise of having the welfare system. I don't think there's a logically consistent model of welfare state with open borders at all - unless we somehow postulate that welfare spending has a reasonably low upper bound, which I haven't seen proven anywhere. > Such levies could also be used to regulate the flow of migrants, Of course you could, but why charging lots of money for visa would be more effective in solving problems we have now than any other method that's been used? > thus avoiding big, sudden surges.” Big, sudden surges usually happen due to wars, famines, economic collapses and other such events, in which case I seriously doubt visa prices are going to change anything.

gremlinsinc 8y ago
Easy solution to all this. End income taxes. Make consumption tax + national id system. With id you pay 4%, without you pay 15-20%. Make the consumption tax be on everything : Wages, Rent, Mortgage, Food, etc... if you spend money on something it's taxed at the point of payment. - By wages - I mean the company pays the tax. If a person or company pays money or exchanges money it's taxed. Shareholder dividends, CEO bonuses, all taxed. You could then fund a guaranteed basic income (for citizens only), and just adjust the sales/tax yearly to balance the budget-- everyone pays taxes, no deductions are given, but GBI would guarantee people wouldn't live in poverty at all. It'd be easier to manage technically so we could dismantle welfare and handout programs as well as the IRS.
- smsm42 8y ago
  > Easy solution to all this. End income taxes. With current political and budget system, I don't see any path to this ever happening. Maybe in theory that could be a better solution (I don't know, it would need thorough analysis) but I don't see how it could happen in reality. > You could then fund a guaranteed basic income (for citizens only), Again, same argument applies. If GBU is a benefit for society, there's no reason to gate it on citizenship - we'd be just limiting the benefit on irrelevant metric, it's like demanding to lower your own salary if your boss' last name begins with certain letter - it'd be irrational. If, however, it is not beneficial to society but is a wealth transfer which benefits one group while hurting another, because the former has more political clout - one should argue this should never be done at all, citizen or not.
  - gremlinsinc 8y ago
    I'd be for a universal gbi -- if it's built on blockchain, w/ tax system builtin via transaction fee, perhaps it's tied to an identity coin, and each identity has a 'score' on how unique that person 'appears' to the algorithm, and using a combination of biometrics (like iris scan), and social graph. The more 'unique' or seemlingly unique/trusted the person is as an individual the less transaction fee they pay per transaction. Something like this could then be adopted as a global currency and have gbi paid out to all members monthly. Perhaps we could create a not-for-profit corp that creates small businesses where 100% of left over income goes back to consumers who use the store (think grocery) and workers who work in the store as a bonus.

furgooswft13 8y ago

> restrict their access to welfare benefits This is a libertarian pipe-dream that will never happen in the current political climate. They envision free movement and no welfare/safety-net (for at least alien immigrants). Even if that is federal policy, states and cities will pick up the slack. The rest? Just another way to end up with millions of undocumented/illegal immigrants (like we have currently with impossible standards to meet for legal immigration). Can't force someone to pay "extra taxes" if they are working under the table for slave wages. No doubt The Economist could care less if migrants pay taxes, for them they pay their way solely by providing cheap labor to businesses.

simplecomplex 8y ago
Estimates show undocumented immigrants are net contributors to welfare, they pay taxes but they can’t apply for most benefits that they’re paying into. Half of undocumented immigrants pay taxes. Source: https://itep.org/wp-content/uploads/undocumentedtaxes.pdf https://itep.org/wp-content/uploads/undocumentedtaxes.pdf
- patrickg_zill 8y ago
  Yeah, that is total BS. BTW they are not "undocumented" as if their dog ate their passport: they are illegal immigrants. The total local, state, federal burden of all the benefits they receive, greatly outweighs the pitiful amount they pay in taxes. 2017 stats indicate $19B paid into the system, $135B in services taken out: a net $116B loss to America. https://www.scribd.com/document/359997156/Cost-Study-2017-Web#from_embed https://www.scribd.com/document/359997156/Cost-Study-2017-We... Even if you say that "FAIR is biased", and discount the numbers by 50%, you still have a negative impact of over $50B a year. California, ALONE, spends over $30 billion a year on services for illegals. $10.6 billion in paid taxes: according to your link "overall effective tax rate of 6.4 percent". Explain how that is fair, please...
  - simplecomplex 8y ago
    Most citizens are not net contributors to welfare. It sounds like you dislike welfare, not immigrants. People who come here legally and illegally are just like you and me, wanting the same things, to work, live, and provide a better future for their children. They are human beings. But I get it... freedom and markets when it benefits you and exclusion and socialism when it doesn’t.

gremlinsinc 8y ago

I've thought about that a lot (I'm pro open-borders). I think we should get rid of income taxes, instead move to consumption taxes (money out is taxed) examples: Paying for anything: Rent, Food, Wages, Shareholders/Dividends, Estate transfer, Boats, Trains, Planes, etc... If you exchange money for ANYTHING it's taxed on the payers' side of the transaction. -- Then create a fair-id system so every citizen has an id, if you go to the store and forget your id you pay 15% sales tax, if you have your id you pay 4%. This would immediately make non-documented people and visitors with greencards pay a lot of taxes. It's their choice if they want to stay/pay or go and not-pay their share, but the republicans can stop whining about immigrants not paying their fair share if they pay 3 times the sales tax.

candiodari 8y ago
So go back to 99% of just taxing the poor (progressive taxes make taxes very low for very low incomes) ? And in the process create an almost absurdly large incentive for the black market to go back to the levels it last existed at centuries ago. Without deductions, owning a house is back to utterly impossible for anyone who doesn't currently own one. At those levels all other laws become ineffective too, as at that point sausages in the supermarket will have the same quality control as illegal drugs have today. Illegal production, dumping, ... all comes with enormous incentives under such a scheme. Maybe do some research before suggesting something like this.
- gremlinsinc 8y ago
  There is a deduction of sorts.. It's guaranteed basic income. Give everyone 3000 a month per household + 500 per dependent. Those who own homes/land/property will pay more because they're expenditures are more. Example: You earn 70k per year, you get 30k for gbi. That's 100k. Of that, you spend 80% on housing, school, food, clothes, toys, w/e, and invest 20% for retirement. Of that 80% you spend 5% on taxes via sales tax. So roughly $4,000 a year in taxes. If you earned 30k, and didn't work at all i.e. 30k from gbi alone, and spent all of it, you'd have spent 1500 on taxes, but still be able to feed/clothe/house a family in at least some comfort. I don't see how that makes life unbearable for everyone? If you're an immigrant who isn't a citizen yet, you'd pay a bit more, but that's the price of coming to America, deal w/ it. At least you'll never be deported, or have your family ripped away from you, etc...