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> That's why I like the idea of a negative income tax over basic income. The less you earn working the more you get in benefits, but as your income rises your b

> That's why I like the idea of a negative income tax over basic income. The less you earn working the more you get in benefits, but as your income rises your benefits decrease. I suspect you'll find that to be less effective at encouraging people to find jobs for the simple reason that it incentivizes people to work the bare minimum, if at all; when the income sources are mutually exclusive, there's no incentive to work unless the pay exceeds some threshold. Contrast with UBI, where the alternate income source is constant. Since UBI is by definition not conditional on whether or not someone is fully employed, that someone has no incentive to not work, whereas the compensation for voluntary work (i.e. wage/salary) remains. This ultimately means that - provided it's indeed a universal basic income - you no longer need minimum wage laws, since it's no longer the employer's job to ensure its employees have enough money to survive (and on the flip side, workers have a safety net while they find jobs that actually pay fairly - or else create their own jobs by founding startups). That is: > Your competition is a welfare cheque that's paying people to channel surf from a sofa. Only if it's actually competition, which would be the case for a negative income tax, but wouldn't be the case for UBI.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
In practice, negative income tax and UBI are the same thing. UBI funds would be paid out of the federal budget, which would be funded by taxes. Above a threshold, earners would receive UBI but their taxes would increase by more than their UBI. It would still be called "universal" but it would be erased (and then some) for anyone earning more than a relatively low amount. Negative income tax basically skips the distribution and collection and gets straight to the point. The money must come from somewhere.
- hackeraccount 5y ago
  The problem with unemployment right now that people are worrying about is that it's a BI without the U. It might effectively be a marginal tax on work that looks pretty high.
- yellowapple 5y ago
  > Above a threshold, earners would receive UBI but their taxes would increase by more than their UBI. This assumes the use of an income tax. That's currently the case now, but moving to a more economically-efficient tax (cough cough land value tax cough cough) would prevent that situation entirely.
simonh 5y ago
>when the income sources are mutually exclusive, there's no incentive to work unless the pay exceeds some threshold. They're not mutually exclusive. As I explained, with a negative income tax you are always better off earning more yourself. In fact you always keep most of every extra dollar you earn.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

In practice, negative income tax and UBI are the same thing. UBI funds would be paid out of the federal budget, which would be funded by taxes. Above a threshold, earners would receive UBI but their taxes would increase by more than their UBI. It would still be called "universal" but it would be erased (and then some) for anyone earning more than a relatively low amount. Negative income tax basically skips the distribution and collection and gets straight to the point. The money must come from somewhere.

hackeraccount 5y ago
The problem with unemployment right now that people are worrying about is that it's a BI without the U. It might effectively be a marginal tax on work that looks pretty high.
yellowapple 5y ago
> Above a threshold, earners would receive UBI but their taxes would increase by more than their UBI. This assumes the use of an income tax. That's currently the case now, but moving to a more economically-efficient tax (cough cough land value tax cough cough) would prevent that situation entirely.

simonh 5y ago

>when the income sources are mutually exclusive, there's no incentive to work unless the pay exceeds some threshold. They're not mutually exclusive. As I explained, with a negative income tax you are always better off earning more yourself. In fact you always keep most of every extra dollar you earn.