3 ms·

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

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

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