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I don't think this fits the definition of basic income. > Whatever income participants earned was deducted from their basic income at 50 per cent That is equi
by winstonewert 7y ago
I don't think this fits the definition of basic income.
> Whatever income participants earned was deducted from their basic income at 50 per cent
That is equivalent to a massive 50% tax rate on every dollar earned. It seems to me the whole point of UBI is that its universal and not conditional on how much you earn otherwise.
- vzidex 7y agoYup, this combined with the difference in income for couples vs. individuals mentioned by another commented smells to me like the program had a lot of means testing built in. I wouldn't be surprised if this skewed the results of the experiment in ways that reflect badly on it.
- jonny_eh 7y agoThis would further disincentivize work.
- fenwick67 7y agoUBI proponents would say that having welfare taper is bad for work incentive, since you get less welfare money if you work.
- 52-6F-62 7y agoI don't believe the pilot program was ever deigned to be a universal basic income.
- syrrim 7y agoHow do you expect UBI to be funded? Either taxes or wars, and we haven't invested very much in our army.
- winstonewert 7y agoUBI would be funded by taxes, duh. But the funding mechanism isn't at issue here. The point is that for every dollar earned the participants lost 50 cents due to a decrease in support from the basic income. That's a massive disincentive to work.
- syrrim 7y agoAny practical UBI will require a large increase in taxes. If this isn't an income tax, it will be a payroll or sales tax, which both have a similar effect. A UBI pilot needs to model that tax just as much as the actual money transfer. If a practical UBI system contains a "massive disincentive to work", a model of such a system should contain this as well.
- winstonewert 7y agoYou make a good point, a good UBI pilot would incorporate the necessary tax increases. But that's not what this study did. Crucially, the disincentive to create only applies to low income earners. Under, UBI everyone pays the taxes and thus everyone gets that disincentive to work. If we want to see what UBI would do, we should actually do UBI.