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And bumped wages means higher costs which are passed on to customers. The higher prices means having to raise UBI, and the only way to afford that is by increas

by wtdo 7y ago

And bumped wages means higher costs which are passed on to customers. The higher prices means having to raise UBI, and the only way to afford that is by increasing taxes, and so effective take home pay from those bumped wages isn't as high as everyone thought and now we're back to square one.

munk-a 7y ago
The first half of your statement is perfectly true, through implementing UBI we're raising the floor on income inequality so that the relative gap between the richest and poorest shrinks. But, we don't end up back at square one, we just haven't given as effective a UBI as we originally intended.
mikepurvis 7y ago
Maybe. These kinds of system-level effects are extremely hard to forecast with any kind of certainty. At best, the evidence we have is from studying the effects of things like raising minimum wage or giving away money to more niche groups such as families with children (eg Canada's CCTB), or people living in specific areas (Alaska Permanent Fund). As far as I can tell, none of these lesser programmes has had any effect above and beyond inflation on cost of living. Wasn't the sky supposed to fall when Washington State passed that ballot measure for a graduated minimum wage increase back in 2016? Meanwhile, there are plenty of examples of awfully expensive large scale "back to square one" experiments that have been undertaken by other political ideologies with little to no opposition—where is the economic growth that was supposed to have happened as a consequence of the Ryan/Trump tax cuts in 2017?
BlackCherry 7y ago
You're assuming the bump in costs due to higher wages would by default outpace that of UBI's tax revenue. This is a ridiculous assumption. The wage earners would be paying more taxes due to their higher wages. The wage earners would have more spending power in our real economy, which both means more businesses earning money, and more tax revenue collected. Is there a threshold we could hit where wage increases, increase cost to the point of outpacing tax revenues, sure. Is this even close to a default outcome. Absolutely not, and it's absurd to suggest it.

by wtdo 7y ago

munk-a 7y ago

The first half of your statement is perfectly true, through implementing UBI we're raising the floor on income inequality so that the relative gap between the richest and poorest shrinks. But, we don't end up back at square one, we just haven't given as effective a UBI as we originally intended.

mikepurvis 7y ago

Maybe. These kinds of system-level effects are extremely hard to forecast with any kind of certainty. At best, the evidence we have is from studying the effects of things like raising minimum wage or giving away money to more niche groups such as families with children (eg Canada's CCTB), or people living in specific areas (Alaska Permanent Fund). As far as I can tell, none of these lesser programmes has had any effect above and beyond inflation on cost of living. Wasn't the sky supposed to fall when Washington State passed that ballot measure for a graduated minimum wage increase back in 2016? Meanwhile, there are plenty of examples of awfully expensive large scale "back to square one" experiments that have been undertaken by other political ideologies with little to no opposition—where is the economic growth that was supposed to have happened as a consequence of the Ryan/Trump tax cuts in 2017?

BlackCherry 7y ago

You're assuming the bump in costs due to higher wages would by default outpace that of UBI's tax revenue. This is a ridiculous assumption. The wage earners would be paying more taxes due to their higher wages. The wage earners would have more spending power in our real economy, which both means more businesses earning money, and more tax revenue collected. Is there a threshold we could hit where wage increases, increase cost to the point of outpacing tax revenues, sure. Is this even close to a default outcome. Absolutely not, and it's absurd to suggest it.