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Having one third of the value created by everyone pooled together to distribute to everyone sounds completely fine to me. I'd say the society as a whole plays a

Having one third of the value created by everyone pooled together to distribute to everyone sounds completely fine to me. I'd say the society as a whole plays a role that is on average greater than 1/3 on your success.

sokoloff 7y ago
Would that be on top of the over 1/3rd that I already pay to the US Treasury?
- wjmao88 7y ago
  It would overlap with a lot of what you are already paying. It completely overlaps with social security and partially overlaps with the taxes that goes to social welfare. For the rest of your tax money, there are concrete places that those are going to and if you don't like them, we can altogether as a society do something about it. And guess what, with UBI people will have a lot more time and freedom to spend on actually participating in politics. Sure, in the end it might bumps it up from 1/3 to 1/2 maybe, but you are getting a lot of that back anyway as UBI to yourself. Even at 1/2 I don't think its unfair.
gridlockd 7y ago
First of all, GDP is a bad measure for "value created". It's more of a measure for "money spent" and that generally includes a lot of long-term and debt, especially in the US. Secondly, you can't actually redistribute GDP. You could (in theory) take 100% of the profits of all businesses, that would add up to about 12% of GDP: https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2018/8/30/saupload_Blog_2018_08_29.jpg https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2018/8/30/saupload_B... Notice the drop around 2008? That's what happens when a lot of debt can't be serviced anymore. Lastly, "society as a whole" doesn't contribute to anyone's success. Just because you are a member of society doesn't automatically imply you have done anything for anyone. If I was offered a UBI on an Amazon's worker's salary, I would just retire, or at least drastically reduce my workload. A lot of my money goes towards my retirement anyway, so why bother? This is entirely different from a "subsistence UBI", which I do support in principle.

sokoloff 7y ago

Would that be on top of the over 1/3rd that I already pay to the US Treasury?

wjmao88 7y ago
It would overlap with a lot of what you are already paying. It completely overlaps with social security and partially overlaps with the taxes that goes to social welfare. For the rest of your tax money, there are concrete places that those are going to and if you don't like them, we can altogether as a society do something about it. And guess what, with UBI people will have a lot more time and freedom to spend on actually participating in politics. Sure, in the end it might bumps it up from 1/3 to 1/2 maybe, but you are getting a lot of that back anyway as UBI to yourself. Even at 1/2 I don't think its unfair.

gridlockd 7y ago

First of all, GDP is a bad measure for "value created". It's more of a measure for "money spent" and that generally includes a lot of long-term and debt, especially in the US. Secondly, you can't actually redistribute GDP. You could (in theory) take 100% of the profits of all businesses, that would add up to about 12% of GDP: https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2018/8/30/saupload_Blog_2018_08_29.jpg https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2018/8/30/saupload_B... Notice the drop around 2008? That's what happens when a lot of debt can't be serviced anymore. Lastly, "society as a whole" doesn't contribute to anyone's success. Just because you are a member of society doesn't automatically imply you have done anything for anyone. If I was offered a UBI on an Amazon's worker's salary, I would just retire, or at least drastically reduce my workload. A lot of my money goes towards my retirement anyway, so why bother? This is entirely different from a "subsistence UBI", which I do support in principle.