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This would not work.UBI would raise inflation to sky high level making basic utilities and products super expensive. UBI needs to be combined with taxes and ta

This would not work.UBI would raise inflation to sky high level making basic utilities and products super expensive. UBI needs to be combined with taxes and tax exemptions on things that are essential to life like housing and healthy food,healthcare and some other things I cant think of right now.Everything else can be treated as a luxury and can be achieved through conventional capitalist methods.

hedora 6y ago
UBI + a flat tax with no exemptions can be tuned so that the UBI covers everything welfare programs currently provide, the middle class pays about the same, and all of the wealthy pay their fair share. It would eliminate many classes of fraud, government spending on administration of social services, and also the tax preparation industry. I think those are the main reasons it doesn’t happen.
deleted 6y ago
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mnd999 6y ago
It sounds like you’re suggesting preemptively increasing sales taxes on luxuries to prevent richer people buying them with their UBI and thus pushing the prices up. The net is the same, prices including sales tax (which everyone pays anyway) go up. If this is an attempt to fund UBI with sales taxes on luxuries (and I’m speculating here) then this could be achieved with progressive taxation - cut income tax for the poor and increase it for those who would be buying the luxuries. I don’t subscribe to the view that this is necessary to support UBI though. Most of it, outside of the well off will get spend on basics anyway. More of a concern for me would be employers cutting wages.
- EdwinLarkin 6y ago
  My idea is not to tax luxuries to finance UBI.The point is to make UBI a sustainable thing not just a flat income that still plays according to the the market rules (inflation). UBI needs to be coupled with progressive thinking.Simply build more houses and tax NIMBY or find a way to build more houses quickly. The same applies to food.

hedora 6y ago

UBI + a flat tax with no exemptions can be tuned so that the UBI covers everything welfare programs currently provide, the middle class pays about the same, and all of the wealthy pay their fair share. It would eliminate many classes of fraud, government spending on administration of social services, and also the tax preparation industry. I think those are the main reasons it doesn’t happen.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

mnd999 6y ago

It sounds like you’re suggesting preemptively increasing sales taxes on luxuries to prevent richer people buying them with their UBI and thus pushing the prices up. The net is the same, prices including sales tax (which everyone pays anyway) go up. If this is an attempt to fund UBI with sales taxes on luxuries (and I’m speculating here) then this could be achieved with progressive taxation - cut income tax for the poor and increase it for those who would be buying the luxuries. I don’t subscribe to the view that this is necessary to support UBI though. Most of it, outside of the well off will get spend on basics anyway. More of a concern for me would be employers cutting wages.

EdwinLarkin 6y ago
My idea is not to tax luxuries to finance UBI.The point is to make UBI a sustainable thing not just a flat income that still plays according to the the market rules (inflation). UBI needs to be coupled with progressive thinking.Simply build more houses and tax NIMBY or find a way to build more houses quickly. The same applies to food.