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UBI should cover government-regulated and government-provided essentials to living. Ex.: * Government housing: $500 * Government basic food package - daily (

by d0100 6y ago

UBI should cover government-regulated and government-provided essentials to living. Ex.: * Government housing: $500 * Government basic food package - daily (1500kcal): $300 * x kJ electricity, x m3 water, x m3 gas, x bps internet connection: $500 * Clothing, hygiene, cleaning supplies: $50 * Universal healthcare: free (and free condoms) * Free education (from abc to PHD) This is not a comprehensive list, or even the right values, however you can guarantee a base-level of what is "living with dignity" and apt to participate in the democracy. I doubt you'd have too many people deciding to live without a job. It's not the best life, but you can survive with some human dignity. Many around the world live with much less. UBI isn't the American Dream, it's the safety net.

somethoughts 6y ago
I tend to agree - it should be Universal Basic Stuff (UBS). Particularly if housing is in a low cost of living area, then everything should get cheaper through automation. High End Manufactured housing [1], MOOCs, Telemedicine, Consumer Products will all get cheaper. Entrepreneurs in SV can create robots to automate the production of these things so even more UBS categories can be added. UBS assurances will avoid the inflationary effects of UBI. [1] Factory OS is revolutionizing home construction. https://factoryos.com https://factoryos.com
- foolinaround 6y ago
  who gets to live in more attractive areas? How different will it be from the current 'projects' living which subsidizes as well?
  - Czarcasm 6y ago
    Nobody is advocating for the removal of free markets in the existing housing market. They are advocating for the increase in the supply through removal in the artificial scarcity created by bad policy.
  - somethoughts 6y ago
    The idea would be to spread people out and build new attractive areas.
- woah 6y ago
  Housing has been made artificially scarce by the small property owners (homeowners) who have the most to gain from the situation. The government could make housing 3x-5x cheaper in the space of a decade by greatly curtailing the authority of local zoning boards.
  - aww_dang 6y ago
    Fannie Mae could auction off all of the foreclosed homes on their books. This would decrease the cost of housing immediately.
  - somethoughts 6y ago
    I think the hope would be to avoid trying to build Universal Basic Stuff housing in areas of the high cost of living areas. Encourage everyone to not cram into the most expensive cities.
hotgoldminer 6y ago
UBI needs to be framed more as a dividend. It isn't the safety net. It is profit sharing.
- jm4 6y ago
  What profit sharing when we run a deficit every year?
  - jerrysievert 6y ago
    and when we're not running a deficit, we're suddenly running a deficit. I'm in favor of basic income, but tying it to "profit sharing" is just silly.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - istorical 6y ago
    who is? the human race or national governments? those two are not the same. wealth and GDP is growing faster than the cost of living in absolute terms.
  - sthomas1618 6y ago
    As long as the GDP grows faster then the deficit/interest, we’re good.
    - keeganpoppen 6y ago
      has that been happening? i guess so, in some sense, because the interest rate is "0"...
- Reedx 6y ago
  Andrew Yang had the right idea with the Freedom Dividend. That's a smart way to frame it, and Alaska is an example of it working with an annual payout to residents ("Permanent Fund Dividend"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund#Permanent_Fund_Dividend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund#Permanen...
sneak 6y ago
I think the idea here is that UBI replaces all of the other government welfare programs, no? What happens when someone spends all their UBI on whiskey or oxy and consumes it all and is then hungry? Should we keep food stamps around? Why can't we do that part (universal food stamps) by itself? I don't think the all-or-nothing approach of UBI makes a ton of sense. We can do things today like more free or subsidized food that would work exactly the same way as it would under UBI, with potentially more buy-in.
- L-four 6y ago
  Food stamps have similar problems to money. Food stamps are sold or the items purchased with food stamps are. The resulting money is used to buy oxy and whiskey. Food stamps are just another currency with a terrible exchange rate.
- gwillz 6y ago
  > "What happens when someone spends all their UBI" I think that's the most important question. I believe the story is that one will abuse whatever welfare they get. Whether it's stamps, credits, services or money. Here in Australia they've been trialing a cashless debit card to control what people spend their welfare money on. Somehow, it's still costing _more_ than just giving people money and the recipients aren't happier either. Some are using the card to buy things like batteries and re-selling them to then buy their drugs and alcohol. So there's money spent to restrict the money, but the money is still abused. So why not just give them the money? In the end - money is money. Poverty is literally only solved with money. Surprisingly, the cheapest and easiest way to solve someone's poverty is to just give them money. If they abuse it? Fine. They were going to do that anyway.
  - donw 6y ago
    > Poverty is literally only solved with money. That's a big statement, with a lot of evidence against it. I recall an experiment where a homeless man was given $100,000, and was back on the streets in no time. The idea that you "solve problems with money" seems to be an American disease. That we just haven't pumped enough money into the machine to make it work. Homelessness and poverty are big, complex problems. Money is likely part of the solution, but so is education, and we aren't going to fix that with Yet More Money -- seriously, the US spends an insane amount on education to receive incredibly poor results. > Surprisingly, the cheapest and easiest way to solve someone's poverty is to just give them money. If they abuse it? Fine. They were going to do that anyway. I agree with you there. All the efforts to curb "abuse" have been an absolute waste of time.
demadog 6y ago
I'd be curious to see it play out in a smaller country for a few years. The U.S. is a big place to gamble on it. No one is saying flip the switch for 328.2 million, I know that, but at the same time it would be best to do an MVP on a smaller scale with, say, a population of 5 million and then learn and iterate from there. Even when testing with 5 million though, you often have countries of that size having more of a shared culture that's tighter knit, such as the Nordic countries. Perhaps somewhere like Singapore or Hong Kong could be a test. But there's so many variables again between so many countries. Perhaps a test case could be the whole state of Colorado, but then you have border permeability issues...
- devonkim 6y ago
  One of the problems with UBI on a small scale in the US is that it’s difficult to study the macroeconomic effects that people are so worried about. The studies on direct cash assistance in terms of social science are rather strong evidence in favor of what left leaning proponents claim. The reservations typically come from the American right which is more of a Social Darwinist party these days than a conservative one, which is closer to the Reagan Republican era GOP. We probably need tens of billions of dollars to pilot UBI properly in the US across borders and to help setup the infrastructure to distribute the funds. But compared to another missile program, the social good of such a program is undeniable. Which is probably why it’ll be rejected in today’s hell world US politics.
  - metrokoi 6y ago
    One point to consider is that once UBI is rolled out, it can never be taken back, even if it is disastrous from a bureaucratic, economic, or social standpoint. I think the success of UBI is heavily dependant on the details of how it is funded and paid out, and getting people to decide on what the best method is will be more difficult than getting it accepted.
- rch 6y ago
  One (edit: another) problem with that thinking is that the U.S. is a uniquely capable financial entity with an associated population, while your other examples are merely political entities. To a certain extent we have an opportunity to experiment now. Might as well learn what we can.
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> UBI should cover government-regulated and government-provided essentials to living. The reason you don't do this is that the government is not better at making diapers and laundry detergent than Procter & Gamble nor better at manufacturing Tylenol than Johnson & Johnson nor better at growing tomatoes than local farmers. If you give people $300 then they can buy $300 worth of food. if you give people $300 worth of "government food" then they'll have $150 worth of actual food because half of the money will go to the agriculture companies with the best lobbyists, and the same lobbyists will get to choose what kind of food it is. Government cheese is not an ideal. Meanwhile if you have $300 then if you want to you can grow your own tomatoes in your back yard, eat those, and use some of the money for something else entirely. Also, special fail for these: > * Universal healthcare: free (and free condoms) > * Free education (from abc to PHD) Suppose the government could provide healthcare for $10,000/year. Okay, let them do that while giving everyone $10,000/year to buy it with. But don't force them to. Suppose a private health insurance company could provide coverage for $5000/year with a $10,000 deductible, instead of $10,000/year with no deductible. You're taking more risk, but not that much more (best case you gain $5000/year, worst case you lose $5000/year). And overall you would expect it to be a gain because you're paying the first $10,000 out of pocket, which makes you price sensitive, which causes you to not waste money on unnecessary care, which lowers average costs. It's the same thing for education. Give parents money and let them choose a school. Solves the entire mess with school quality being tied to home prices. Doesn't screw over parents who home school, because they still get the money. And if the government can provide the best schools for the best price, parents will choose them anyway. But if not, they shouldn't be forced to.
- perseusprime11 6y ago
  This feels like BS. Sorry! K12 is free. There should be no problem expanding to college and beyond. Also, see no reason to not have a good universal healthcare that is detached from your employer. These are smart ideas worth pursuing.
- chii 6y ago
  > provide coverage for $5000/year with a $10,000 deductible, instead of $10,000/year with no deductible. that's the wrong way to think about it. The above makes an implicit assumption that by doing this you "save" $5000/yr because the insurance company is "more efficient". That's wrong - you actually cost $5000 (this being the "profit" the insurance company makes if you _didn't_ need the medical treatment that year). Under the gov't version, if you were healthy, you're "free". You only cost when you actually need the medical treatment. Healthcare should not be done under a private insurance model. Any profit made by the private insurer is a cost to providing medical treatment, and does not contribute to the outcome. By making medical treatment a tax payer funded scheme, the cost of an unhealthy society is spread out amongst all. Not only does this give the gov't buying pressure to lower the margins of all medical treatments, it also makes a policy pressure for gov't to give preventative measures for good health outcomes (like legislating low sugar foods, or incentivize exercise and good diet etc).
danans 6y ago
> * Government basic food package - daily (1500kcal): $300 I agree with UBI, but basing it on only 1500kcal will give a slight advantage to smaller people over those of us who are a bit more, er... calorically expensive. Maybe at least make it 2000kcal to hit the median calorie requirement.
sytelus 6y ago
Even at $1500/mo, this will cost at least $150B/mo. That’s almost additional $2T/yr. This is still not taking in to account free medical care and education. How do you think govt will pay for this? I think UBI is possible sometime in future when US GDP grows by another 50% and if somehow not all gains gets concentrated to top 1000 richest people which ironically UBI proponents like Dorsey, Altman etc are part of.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  Remember that you get the money back. You're sitting there in the middle saying, $150B/mo? I don't want to have to pay that in taxes. I'd have to pay like $1500/mo more in taxes! But then you'd receive $1500/mo. It cancels out, so it doesn't matter. You're really only making net transfers to the bottom half, and even most of those aren't for the entire amount. Someone at the 25th percentile gets $1500 but would be paying $750 in tax themselves. Meanwhile it replaces what the people at the bottom were already getting in food/housing/other assistance. So it really "costs" almost nothing. It may even reduce costs, because now you don't need a wasteful means testing bureaucracy to process and determine eligibility for dozens of separate government benefits that no longer exist.
  - sytelus 6y ago
    That looks like very bad math. If you are paying $1500/mo in taxes, you are not in majority. And if you get back that money then who is really paying government bills? The UBI is additional expense and needs to come from extra income to government. I can see the argument that top 1% should pay for it by taxing the hell out of them. Unfortunately that back fires as we have seen in heavily taxed countries and still I don’t think even those extra taxes would be enough to cover it.
    - bhupy 6y ago
      A weird nit pick, the GP commenter was just using an easy-to-conceptualize number. Let's use real numbers: In 2018, the household income quintiles were as follows[1]: Lowest quintile mean: $13,775 Second quintile mean: $37,923 Third quintile mean: $63,572 Fourth quintile mean: $101,570 Highest quintile mean: $233,895 There were about 159M employed persons in the US in the most recent high[2], about 50% of the US population. We want our UBI to cover everybody. To make this simple, because quintiles comprise an equally populated group of people, let's imagine that instead of there being ~32M people per quintile, that our nation has 10 people, where 5 people don't work, and each of the remaining 5 falls into one of the quintiles. If we wanted to define a UBI of $18,000 per person, we need to somehow come up with $18,000 * 10 == $180,000 to distribute to everyone equally. If we fund this progressively, each individual would have to pay: Unemployed #1: 0 Unemployed #2: 0 Unemployed #3: 0 Unemployed #4: 0 Unemployed #5: 0 Lowest: $8,000 Second: $12,000 Third: $18,000 Fourth: $33,000 Highest: $103,000 Total revenue: $180,000 Then consider that everyone here is receiving back 18,000 under the UBI. The highest quintile earner’s net take-home is, thus 233,895-103,000+18,000 == $148,895, which effectively renders their net tax rate approx 36%. If you run this breakdown across all quintiles: Lowest: $13,775 - $8,000 + $18,000 == $23,775 (effective tax -73%) Second: $37,923 - $12,000 + $18,000 == $43,923 (effective tax -16%) Third: $63,572 - $18,000 + $18,000 == $63,572 (effective tax 0%) Fourth: $101,570 - $33,000 + $18,000 == $86,570 (effective tax 15%) Highest: $233,895 - $103,000 + $18,000 == $148,895 (effective tax 36%) You'll notice that the median worker pays nothing, net-net. They pay about $1,500/month, and get back $1,500/mo. The bottom 2 will get back more than they pay. The top 2 pay a tax rate that’s comparable to today’s. The 5 unemployed persons all get $18,000, and because the lowest quintile still ends up with more than that after their taxes, there isn’t a disincentive to work. We can play with different levels of progressivity and generosity, but the idea is the same. We can scale up from single-person quintiles to million-person quintiles, but the percentages don't change. [1] https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/household-income-quintiles https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/household-income-... [2] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employed-persons https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employed-persons
ramblerman 6y ago
No, you are describing a European social state like France (or where they would like to get to). This is anything but UBI. 1) UBI should be cash, the consumer chooses how to spend his dollar, giving him/her control, and keeping markets somewhat efficient. 2) It should be more like a dividend. We are all shareholders in USA inc. and get a percentage of it's GDP handed back to us. Not more bureaucrats and policies to decide what to funnel where.
0xferruccio 6y ago
Everybody should also have a computer and a fast internet connection to access knowledge. People should also get free books. People should also get free fitness coaches, so they can be healthy. People should also be entitled to a job, so they can have a sense of purpose. We can spend days thinking about what should be a right that everyone should have for free. The only problem is figuring out who should pay for these things and what’s the correct price of things without a market I wrote some thoughts on why I think free healthcare is just bad: https://ferrucc.io/posts/healthcare/ https://ferrucc.io/posts/healthcare/
turowicz 6y ago
We had this in Eastern Europe for about 50 years. I don't recommend getting so dependent on a government.

by d0100 6y ago

somethoughts 6y ago

I tend to agree - it should be Universal Basic Stuff (UBS). Particularly if housing is in a low cost of living area, then everything should get cheaper through automation. High End Manufactured housing [1], MOOCs, Telemedicine, Consumer Products will all get cheaper. Entrepreneurs in SV can create robots to automate the production of these things so even more UBS categories can be added. UBS assurances will avoid the inflationary effects of UBI. [1] Factory OS is revolutionizing home construction. https://factoryos.com https://factoryos.com

foolinaround 6y ago
who gets to live in more attractive areas? How different will it be from the current 'projects' living which subsidizes as well?
- Czarcasm 6y ago
  Nobody is advocating for the removal of free markets in the existing housing market. They are advocating for the increase in the supply through removal in the artificial scarcity created by bad policy.
- somethoughts 6y ago
  The idea would be to spread people out and build new attractive areas.
woah 6y ago
Housing has been made artificially scarce by the small property owners (homeowners) who have the most to gain from the situation. The government could make housing 3x-5x cheaper in the space of a decade by greatly curtailing the authority of local zoning boards.
- aww_dang 6y ago
  Fannie Mae could auction off all of the foreclosed homes on their books. This would decrease the cost of housing immediately.
- somethoughts 6y ago
  I think the hope would be to avoid trying to build Universal Basic Stuff housing in areas of the high cost of living areas. Encourage everyone to not cram into the most expensive cities.

hotgoldminer 6y ago

UBI needs to be framed more as a dividend. It isn't the safety net. It is profit sharing.

jm4 6y ago
What profit sharing when we run a deficit every year?
- jerrysievert 6y ago
  and when we're not running a deficit, we're suddenly running a deficit. I'm in favor of basic income, but tying it to "profit sharing" is just silly.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- istorical 6y ago
  who is? the human race or national governments? those two are not the same. wealth and GDP is growing faster than the cost of living in absolute terms.
- sthomas1618 6y ago
  As long as the GDP grows faster then the deficit/interest, we’re good.
  - keeganpoppen 6y ago
    has that been happening? i guess so, in some sense, because the interest rate is "0"...
Reedx 6y ago
Andrew Yang had the right idea with the Freedom Dividend. That's a smart way to frame it, and Alaska is an example of it working with an annual payout to residents ("Permanent Fund Dividend"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund#Permanent_Fund_Dividend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund#Permanen...

sneak 6y ago

I think the idea here is that UBI replaces all of the other government welfare programs, no? What happens when someone spends all their UBI on whiskey or oxy and consumes it all and is then hungry? Should we keep food stamps around? Why can't we do that part (universal food stamps) by itself? I don't think the all-or-nothing approach of UBI makes a ton of sense. We can do things today like more free or subsidized food that would work exactly the same way as it would under UBI, with potentially more buy-in.

L-four 6y ago
Food stamps have similar problems to money. Food stamps are sold or the items purchased with food stamps are. The resulting money is used to buy oxy and whiskey. Food stamps are just another currency with a terrible exchange rate.
gwillz 6y ago
> "What happens when someone spends all their UBI" I think that's the most important question. I believe the story is that one will abuse whatever welfare they get. Whether it's stamps, credits, services or money. Here in Australia they've been trialing a cashless debit card to control what people spend their welfare money on. Somehow, it's still costing _more_ than just giving people money and the recipients aren't happier either. Some are using the card to buy things like batteries and re-selling them to then buy their drugs and alcohol. So there's money spent to restrict the money, but the money is still abused. So why not just give them the money? In the end - money is money. Poverty is literally only solved with money. Surprisingly, the cheapest and easiest way to solve someone's poverty is to just give them money. If they abuse it? Fine. They were going to do that anyway.
- donw 6y ago
  > Poverty is literally only solved with money. That's a big statement, with a lot of evidence against it. I recall an experiment where a homeless man was given $100,000, and was back on the streets in no time. The idea that you "solve problems with money" seems to be an American disease. That we just haven't pumped enough money into the machine to make it work. Homelessness and poverty are big, complex problems. Money is likely part of the solution, but so is education, and we aren't going to fix that with Yet More Money -- seriously, the US spends an insane amount on education to receive incredibly poor results. > Surprisingly, the cheapest and easiest way to solve someone's poverty is to just give them money. If they abuse it? Fine. They were going to do that anyway. I agree with you there. All the efforts to curb "abuse" have been an absolute waste of time.

demadog 6y ago

I'd be curious to see it play out in a smaller country for a few years. The U.S. is a big place to gamble on it. No one is saying flip the switch for 328.2 million, I know that, but at the same time it would be best to do an MVP on a smaller scale with, say, a population of 5 million and then learn and iterate from there. Even when testing with 5 million though, you often have countries of that size having more of a shared culture that's tighter knit, such as the Nordic countries. Perhaps somewhere like Singapore or Hong Kong could be a test. But there's so many variables again between so many countries. Perhaps a test case could be the whole state of Colorado, but then you have border permeability issues...

devonkim 6y ago
One of the problems with UBI on a small scale in the US is that it’s difficult to study the macroeconomic effects that people are so worried about. The studies on direct cash assistance in terms of social science are rather strong evidence in favor of what left leaning proponents claim. The reservations typically come from the American right which is more of a Social Darwinist party these days than a conservative one, which is closer to the Reagan Republican era GOP. We probably need tens of billions of dollars to pilot UBI properly in the US across borders and to help setup the infrastructure to distribute the funds. But compared to another missile program, the social good of such a program is undeniable. Which is probably why it’ll be rejected in today’s hell world US politics.
- metrokoi 6y ago
  One point to consider is that once UBI is rolled out, it can never be taken back, even if it is disastrous from a bureaucratic, economic, or social standpoint. I think the success of UBI is heavily dependant on the details of how it is funded and paid out, and getting people to decide on what the best method is will be more difficult than getting it accepted.
rch 6y ago
One (edit: another) problem with that thinking is that the U.S. is a uniquely capable financial entity with an associated population, while your other examples are merely political entities. To a certain extent we have an opportunity to experiment now. Might as well learn what we can.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

> UBI should cover government-regulated and government-provided essentials to living. The reason you don't do this is that the government is not better at making diapers and laundry detergent than Procter & Gamble nor better at manufacturing Tylenol than Johnson & Johnson nor better at growing tomatoes than local farmers. If you give people $300 then they can buy $300 worth of food. if you give people $300 worth of "government food" then they'll have $150 worth of actual food because half of the money will go to the agriculture companies with the best lobbyists, and the same lobbyists will get to choose what kind of food it is. Government cheese is not an ideal. Meanwhile if you have $300 then if you want to you can grow your own tomatoes in your back yard, eat those, and use some of the money for something else entirely. Also, special fail for these: > * Universal healthcare: free (and free condoms) > * Free education (from abc to PHD) Suppose the government could provide healthcare for $10,000/year. Okay, let them do that while giving everyone $10,000/year to buy it with. But don't force them to. Suppose a private health insurance company could provide coverage for $5000/year with a $10,000 deductible, instead of $10,000/year with no deductible. You're taking more risk, but not that much more (best case you gain $5000/year, worst case you lose $5000/year). And overall you would expect it to be a gain because you're paying the first $10,000 out of pocket, which makes you price sensitive, which causes you to not waste money on unnecessary care, which lowers average costs. It's the same thing for education. Give parents money and let them choose a school. Solves the entire mess with school quality being tied to home prices. Doesn't screw over parents who home school, because they still get the money. And if the government can provide the best schools for the best price, parents will choose them anyway. But if not, they shouldn't be forced to.

perseusprime11 6y ago
This feels like BS. Sorry! K12 is free. There should be no problem expanding to college and beyond. Also, see no reason to not have a good universal healthcare that is detached from your employer. These are smart ideas worth pursuing.
chii 6y ago
> provide coverage for $5000/year with a $10,000 deductible, instead of $10,000/year with no deductible. that's the wrong way to think about it. The above makes an implicit assumption that by doing this you "save" $5000/yr because the insurance company is "more efficient". That's wrong - you actually cost $5000 (this being the "profit" the insurance company makes if you _didn't_ need the medical treatment that year). Under the gov't version, if you were healthy, you're "free". You only cost when you actually need the medical treatment. Healthcare should not be done under a private insurance model. Any profit made by the private insurer is a cost to providing medical treatment, and does not contribute to the outcome. By making medical treatment a tax payer funded scheme, the cost of an unhealthy society is spread out amongst all. Not only does this give the gov't buying pressure to lower the margins of all medical treatments, it also makes a policy pressure for gov't to give preventative measures for good health outcomes (like legislating low sugar foods, or incentivize exercise and good diet etc).

danans 6y ago

> * Government basic food package - daily (1500kcal): $300 I agree with UBI, but basing it on only 1500kcal will give a slight advantage to smaller people over those of us who are a bit more, er... calorically expensive. Maybe at least make it 2000kcal to hit the median calorie requirement.

sytelus 6y ago

Even at $1500/mo, this will cost at least $150B/mo. That’s almost additional $2T/yr. This is still not taking in to account free medical care and education. How do you think govt will pay for this? I think UBI is possible sometime in future when US GDP grows by another 50% and if somehow not all gains gets concentrated to top 1000 richest people which ironically UBI proponents like Dorsey, Altman etc are part of.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
Remember that you get the money back. You're sitting there in the middle saying, $150B/mo? I don't want to have to pay that in taxes. I'd have to pay like $1500/mo more in taxes! But then you'd receive $1500/mo. It cancels out, so it doesn't matter. You're really only making net transfers to the bottom half, and even most of those aren't for the entire amount. Someone at the 25th percentile gets $1500 but would be paying $750 in tax themselves. Meanwhile it replaces what the people at the bottom were already getting in food/housing/other assistance. So it really "costs" almost nothing. It may even reduce costs, because now you don't need a wasteful means testing bureaucracy to process and determine eligibility for dozens of separate government benefits that no longer exist.
- sytelus 6y ago
  That looks like very bad math. If you are paying $1500/mo in taxes, you are not in majority. And if you get back that money then who is really paying government bills? The UBI is additional expense and needs to come from extra income to government. I can see the argument that top 1% should pay for it by taxing the hell out of them. Unfortunately that back fires as we have seen in heavily taxed countries and still I don’t think even those extra taxes would be enough to cover it.
  - bhupy 6y ago
    A weird nit pick, the GP commenter was just using an easy-to-conceptualize number. Let's use real numbers: In 2018, the household income quintiles were as follows[1]: Lowest quintile mean: $13,775 Second quintile mean: $37,923 Third quintile mean: $63,572 Fourth quintile mean: $101,570 Highest quintile mean: $233,895 There were about 159M employed persons in the US in the most recent high[2], about 50% of the US population. We want our UBI to cover everybody. To make this simple, because quintiles comprise an equally populated group of people, let's imagine that instead of there being ~32M people per quintile, that our nation has 10 people, where 5 people don't work, and each of the remaining 5 falls into one of the quintiles. If we wanted to define a UBI of $18,000 per person, we need to somehow come up with $18,000 * 10 == $180,000 to distribute to everyone equally. If we fund this progressively, each individual would have to pay: Unemployed #1: 0 Unemployed #2: 0 Unemployed #3: 0 Unemployed #4: 0 Unemployed #5: 0 Lowest: $8,000 Second: $12,000 Third: $18,000 Fourth: $33,000 Highest: $103,000 Total revenue: $180,000 Then consider that everyone here is receiving back 18,000 under the UBI. The highest quintile earner’s net take-home is, thus 233,895-103,000+18,000 == $148,895, which effectively renders their net tax rate approx 36%. If you run this breakdown across all quintiles: Lowest: $13,775 - $8,000 + $18,000 == $23,775 (effective tax -73%) Second: $37,923 - $12,000 + $18,000 == $43,923 (effective tax -16%) Third: $63,572 - $18,000 + $18,000 == $63,572 (effective tax 0%) Fourth: $101,570 - $33,000 + $18,000 == $86,570 (effective tax 15%) Highest: $233,895 - $103,000 + $18,000 == $148,895 (effective tax 36%) You'll notice that the median worker pays nothing, net-net. They pay about $1,500/month, and get back $1,500/mo. The bottom 2 will get back more than they pay. The top 2 pay a tax rate that’s comparable to today’s. The 5 unemployed persons all get $18,000, and because the lowest quintile still ends up with more than that after their taxes, there isn’t a disincentive to work. We can play with different levels of progressivity and generosity, but the idea is the same. We can scale up from single-person quintiles to million-person quintiles, but the percentages don't change. [1] https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/household-income-quintiles https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/household-income-... [2] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employed-persons https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employed-persons

ramblerman 6y ago

No, you are describing a European social state like France (or where they would like to get to). This is anything but UBI. 1) UBI should be cash, the consumer chooses how to spend his dollar, giving him/her control, and keeping markets somewhat efficient. 2) It should be more like a dividend. We are all shareholders in USA inc. and get a percentage of it's GDP handed back to us. Not more bureaucrats and policies to decide what to funnel where.

0xferruccio 6y ago

Everybody should also have a computer and a fast internet connection to access knowledge. People should also get free books. People should also get free fitness coaches, so they can be healthy. People should also be entitled to a job, so they can have a sense of purpose. We can spend days thinking about what should be a right that everyone should have for free. The only problem is figuring out who should pay for these things and what’s the correct price of things without a market I wrote some thoughts on why I think free healthcare is just bad: https://ferrucc.io/posts/healthcare/ https://ferrucc.io/posts/healthcare/

turowicz 6y ago

We had this in Eastern Europe for about 50 years. I don't recommend getting so dependent on a government.