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I’m in favor of UBI, but let’s draw it from each congressman’s personal bank accounts. It’s easy to be generous with someone else’s money.
by 0x8BADF00D 6y ago
I’m in favor of UBI, but let’s draw it from each congressman’s personal bank accounts. It’s easy to be generous with someone else’s money.
- kazagistar 6y agoBase assumption, we just print the money. It's how we pay for everything else like wars and subsidies and whatnot. Then, as a courtesy to those people who benefit from a society without excessive inflation (mostly, people with lots of money who are clearly benefiting the most) we take and burn that money, to remove it from circulation.
- mistermann 6y agoI was thinking about this idea, if we print money and distribute it "wisely" among the lower income classes, this would debase the currency proportional to the amount printed, harming primarily those who are wealthy, proportional to their wealth, and the money will eventually flow upwards through the financial system, primarily through consumer spending, but ultimately back into the pockets of the wealthy. Of course, inflation in certain categories would need to be taken into consideration, and other factors, but is this idea a non-starter for some reasons I'm overlooking? Excluding politics of course, for the purposes of this mental experiment. There was also an article posted here in the last two weeks or so about a massive global short situation with the USD, I have it in my mind that the particulars of that situation were conveniently complementary to this idea, although I may have that aspect completely backwards.
- kazagistar 6y agoOf course. You don't even have to be all that wise about it: just a flat handout disproportionately affects the wealthy. To get around capital flight (people reinvesting in non inflatory currency, sinking the international buying power of said currency), though, it probably needs to be able to economically isolate, or be universal enough that there is nowhere to flee. And when you do that, you might realize just how much everything is built on the ongoing suffering of the global poor.
- CuriousSkeptic 6y agoYou might enjoy this proposal https://www.stjornarradid.is/media/forsaetisraduneyti-media/media/skyrslur/monetary-reform.pdf https://www.stjornarradid.is/media/forsaetisraduneyti-media/... It’s not directly about UBI but rather money as such. But the analysis do touch on some of your ideas
- mistermann 6y agoI will, thank you!
- jedberg 6y agoMost reasonable UBI proposals draw the funding primarily from a VAT and a reduction of benefits that it replaces (like food stamps and welfare). The beauty of a VAT is that while normally regressive, by redistributing the funds as a UBI, you essentially make it a tax on only upper-middle-class/rich people. For example if the VAT is 10% and you give people $1,000 a month, they would have to spend over $10,000 a month on VAT taxed items (ie. not rent and probably not a lot of food) before they were paying more than they were getting back. Generally people who can afford to spend $10,000 a month on non rent items are usually making over $180,000 a year.
- karpierz 6y agoVAT+UBI is still regressive, you're just subtracting a constant factor. So instead of hitting the poor the hardest, you're hitting the middle class the hardest and creating a valley around where the break-even point is. In addition, since VAT taxes don't apply to capital transactions (as there's nothing added when you buy or sell a stock), the vast majority of transactions conducted by the upper class won't be hit by this.
- akvadrako 6y agoWhich is add it should be. VAT is a tax on consumption which is how resources get used up. Capital transactions just move money around.