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In The Netherlands there has been a form of UBI for decades, for anyone who wants it or needs it. It is called 'bijstand', is about € 1k a month and you are el

In The Netherlands there has been a form of UBI for decades, for anyone who wants it or needs it. It is called 'bijstand', is about € 1k a month and you are eligible for all kinds of other discounts and support. Just request it at your municipality and make sure not to find work.

swebs 7y ago
>and make sure not to find work That's just welfare, not UBI. The U stands for Universal, which means it goes to everyone. Not just the poor or unemployed.
- akvadrako 7y ago
  > The U stands for Universal The U is better understood as Unconditional. It doesn't go to everybody or everything, but it doesn't get taken away if you stop working. These were used pretty much equally until about 2011, when the less accurate one started taking hold: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2004-04-11%202015-05-11&q=%22Unconditional%20basic%20income%22,%22Universal%20Basic%20Income%22 https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2004-04-11%202...
  - goatinaboat 7y ago
    It doesn't go to everybody It has to, because one of the selling point of it is the minimal administrative overhead. In the U.K. we have armies of civil servants to administer our hideously complex welfare system. All of them and the costs of employing them have to go to make it affordable. The good news is that they too will get UBI...
    - notahacker 7y ago
      Administering the welfare system costs orders of magnitude less than paying unconditional living wage to the UK's 8 million economically inactive working age people.
      - goatinaboat 7y ago
        unconditional living wage Living wage is shifting the goalposts, anyway it’s a simple calculation, total welfare budget including benefits of all kinds divided by number of adult citizens.
        notahacker 7y ago
        Whilst there might be disagreements over the actual calculation, both the idea of a living wage and a UBI revolve around the idea of providing an adequate subsistence income for an adult. But if we're determining welfare budget by dividing non-pension benefit spend by number of working age adults, the problem becomes that you're dividing around 130 billion by ~36 million, and whilst that's a welcome top up for some people, there are a lot of people who have just lost their housing benefit and disability benefit that won't be able to live on £4k a year...
    - akvadrako 7y ago
      It is minimal overhead. All you need to check is someone is a living citizen and their age, because children likely get less.
- ajsnigrutin 7y ago
  The problem with "universal" is, that someone with an average paycheck doesn't get anything, because he pays back the same amount he gets in taxes. And the 'average' paycheck is not an 'average' in the term we use now (where we just look at the workers, add up their paychecks and divide by their number), but we also have to add up all the non workers (kids, pensioners, unemployed, studens,...) with "0 EUR" paychecks, and divide by the number of them too, because they'd get UBI too.
  - koonsolo 7y ago
    > The problem with "universal" is, that someone with an average paycheck doesn't get anything, because he pays back the same amount he gets in taxes. If it stays the same for this person, that means he has to pay an extra UBI to receive the UBI. If this person is making basic income right now, he might as wel stop working and still get the basic income, or at least lose less percentage wise when stop working.
JulianMorrison 7y ago
The ability to collect UBI while working - while, for example, starting a small business that isn't profitable yet - is one of its major positive features.
nabla9 7y ago
That's welfare. It's effects are not the same as UBI. Finland has welfare too. The special feature of schemes like UBI and NIT (Negative Income Tax) is that they remove the high effective marginal tax rate from poor people who work. The problem with conditional welfare payments is that they increase effective marginal tax rate for poor household. The rates are really high 70-100% depending on country and situation. For example, in Finland effective marginal tax rate for poor person is somewhere between 80-101%. (That 101% is for single parent for low income job). According to Greg Mankiv and others the effective marginal tax rate for the poor can be 70-90 percent in the US. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/business/economy/10view.html?_r=1&ref=business https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/business/economy/10view.h... https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/10/greg-mankiws-marginal-tax-rate.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/10/gr...
- notahacker 7y ago
  It is entirely possible to design welfare schemes with tapers which reduce marginal tax rate. The unique feature of UBI is that it is additionally designed to subsidise economic inactivity.
  - nabla9 7y ago
    It seems that you are confusing marginal tax rate and effective marginal tax rate. UBI and NIT (Negative Income Tax) are designed to increase incentives. That's why free market economists like Friedman fiercely supported it. Milton Friedman - The Negative Income Tax: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM
    - notahacker 7y ago
      You can insert the word 'effective' into my sentence above, and it remains true. It is entirely possible to design tapered benefit withdrawals without resorting to unconditional basic incomes. (It's also theoretically possible to design tax brackets for a UBI/NIT system which imply effective marginal rates at 80%+, though I'm not sure why anyone would actually want to do that)

swebs 7y ago

>and make sure not to find work That's just welfare, not UBI. The U stands for Universal, which means it goes to everyone. Not just the poor or unemployed.

akvadrako 7y ago
> The U stands for Universal The U is better understood as Unconditional. It doesn't go to everybody or everything, but it doesn't get taken away if you stop working. These were used pretty much equally until about 2011, when the less accurate one started taking hold: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2004-04-11%202015-05-11&q=%22Unconditional%20basic%20income%22,%22Universal%20Basic%20Income%22 https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2004-04-11%202...
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  It doesn't go to everybody It has to, because one of the selling point of it is the minimal administrative overhead. In the U.K. we have armies of civil servants to administer our hideously complex welfare system. All of them and the costs of employing them have to go to make it affordable. The good news is that they too will get UBI...
  - notahacker 7y ago
    Administering the welfare system costs orders of magnitude less than paying unconditional living wage to the UK's 8 million economically inactive working age people.
    - goatinaboat 7y ago
      unconditional living wage Living wage is shifting the goalposts, anyway it’s a simple calculation, total welfare budget including benefits of all kinds divided by number of adult citizens.
      - notahacker 7y ago
        Whilst there might be disagreements over the actual calculation, both the idea of a living wage and a UBI revolve around the idea of providing an adequate subsistence income for an adult. But if we're determining welfare budget by dividing non-pension benefit spend by number of working age adults, the problem becomes that you're dividing around 130 billion by ~36 million, and whilst that's a welcome top up for some people, there are a lot of people who have just lost their housing benefit and disability benefit that won't be able to live on £4k a year...
  - akvadrako 7y ago
    It is minimal overhead. All you need to check is someone is a living citizen and their age, because children likely get less.
ajsnigrutin 7y ago
The problem with "universal" is, that someone with an average paycheck doesn't get anything, because he pays back the same amount he gets in taxes. And the 'average' paycheck is not an 'average' in the term we use now (where we just look at the workers, add up their paychecks and divide by their number), but we also have to add up all the non workers (kids, pensioners, unemployed, studens,...) with "0 EUR" paychecks, and divide by the number of them too, because they'd get UBI too.
- koonsolo 7y ago
  > The problem with "universal" is, that someone with an average paycheck doesn't get anything, because he pays back the same amount he gets in taxes. If it stays the same for this person, that means he has to pay an extra UBI to receive the UBI. If this person is making basic income right now, he might as wel stop working and still get the basic income, or at least lose less percentage wise when stop working.

JulianMorrison 7y ago

The ability to collect UBI while working - while, for example, starting a small business that isn't profitable yet - is one of its major positive features.

nabla9 7y ago

That's welfare. It's effects are not the same as UBI. Finland has welfare too. The special feature of schemes like UBI and NIT (Negative Income Tax) is that they remove the high effective marginal tax rate from poor people who work. The problem with conditional welfare payments is that they increase effective marginal tax rate for poor household. The rates are really high 70-100% depending on country and situation. For example, in Finland effective marginal tax rate for poor person is somewhere between 80-101%. (That 101% is for single parent for low income job). According to Greg Mankiv and others the effective marginal tax rate for the poor can be 70-90 percent in the US. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/business/economy/10view.html?_r=1&ref=business https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/business/economy/10view.h... https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/10/greg-mankiws-marginal-tax-rate.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/10/gr...

notahacker 7y ago
It is entirely possible to design welfare schemes with tapers which reduce marginal tax rate. The unique feature of UBI is that it is additionally designed to subsidise economic inactivity.
- nabla9 7y ago
  It seems that you are confusing marginal tax rate and effective marginal tax rate. UBI and NIT (Negative Income Tax) are designed to increase incentives. That's why free market economists like Friedman fiercely supported it. Milton Friedman - The Negative Income Tax: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM
  - notahacker 7y ago
    You can insert the word 'effective' into my sentence above, and it remains true. It is entirely possible to design tapered benefit withdrawals without resorting to unconditional basic incomes. (It's also theoretically possible to design tax brackets for a UBI/NIT system which imply effective marginal rates at 80%+, though I'm not sure why anyone would actually want to do that)