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Would this eventually happen with UBI?

• maweki 4y ago
  Do you mean whether UBI would have such a cut-off? Then it's by definition not universal.
  • daenz 4y ago
    If UBI could logically evolve into non-universal basic income, that should be a concern, because if people are dependent on that money, they can't really oppose the change.
    • marcosdumay 4y ago
      You meant to ask if a government that does UBI can ever stop doing it and offering some other kind of assistance?
      • daenz 4y ago
        Not quite. I'm concerned that they would offer UBI, and then add conditions later. It's pedantic to think that officials would care that this is "not technically UBI anymore." It would be called UBI, but you would be required to comply with different standards to receive it.
        • marcosdumay 4y ago
          A government can always take assistance down, add rules, expand, shrink, do whatever with it. It can also use whatever name it wants.
          • daenz 4y ago
            Then it seems like a very bad idea to put the security of your home, food, and livelihood entirely on the whims of the government to such a degree.
            • marcosdumay 4y ago
              Hum... If you are saying that people shouldn't willingly depend on social assistance, I don't think you will find anybody to disagree with. If you are saying that people should be free from government's whims, congratulations, you've just discovered Democracy. Anyway, if your government has whims, the security of your home, food and livelihood is entirely dependent on them. It doesn't matter if you depend on social assistance.
  • notahacker 4y ago
    UBI is always going to have a de facto cutoff where some people pay more in tax than they receive in UBI (unless your government is funding it solely by money printing or having massive amounts of oil per head of population). The only question is what that level is at and how steeply the relevant taxes reduce turn its net benefit to a net cost, and that's something governments determine just like the tapering on any other form of benefit.
    • gpm 4y ago
      A smooth transition out is more or less by definition not a cutoff (a cutoff being a sudden thing). This is an important distinction, because it means it's never harmful to earn another dollar. Since we don't have a wealth tax, there isn't even a smooth transition out along the dimension that the article discusses.
      • notahacker 4y ago
        The article also discusses and criticises a 50% effective marginal tax on working which is absolutely how an UBI smoothly transitions if funded by an income tax, and in theory the taper could be steeper still. Not harmful to earn another dollar, but not especially lucrative either. Nothing about a UBI prevents it from being coupled with a wealth tax (possibly even a regressive one which kicks in at low levels so recipients are disincentivised to save) if the government wishes to fund it that way... and they'll need to find additional funds from somewhere. The only difference with UBI is the subsidy itself is a lot less targeted than "financial aid for registered disabled people", so the government has to find a lot more ways to claw it back from some sections of the population. That can be sneaky and regressive, just like a non-universal income only disabled people are entitled to can be completely without income and wealth qualifications if a government wants.
    • orangecat 4y ago
      UBI is always going to have a de facto cutoff where some people pay more in tax than they receive in UBI That's not a cutoff; it's a continuous function that crosses zero at some point. With a UBI funded by an income tax you're never worse off earning more.
• oconnor663 4y ago
  If you're referring to the issue with inflation over time making old policy numbers no longer make sense, it could definitely happen, though I think most UBI proponents prefer a design that automatically adjusts for inflation for exactly this reason. But if you're referring to the part where onerous means testing and other eligibility rules make life harder for the very people we want to help, then no, I think one of the fundamental benefits of a UBI is that it avoids all of that.
  • daenz 4y ago
    >I think one of the greatest features of UBI is that it gets rid of all of that by design. But you can't guarantee that "by design", only "by name." As we know with politics, the name of a program is not tightly coupled to its effect.
    • mgfist 4y ago
      UBI is a concept not a policy. Sure the government could create a policy called "UBI" and literally anything could be in it.
      • daenz 4y ago
        I'm not asking about the extreme mischaracterization of my position of "literally anything." I'm asking what safeguards are in place to keep UBI, as we know the term, from evolving into UBI-asterisk, with conditions on the recipients. So far the strongest counter argument I have seen is "well then it wouldn't technically be UBI", which doesn't fix anything.
        • paulmd 4y ago
          Without a constitutional amendment there’s no guarantee of anything, future congress being bound by past congress is a fundamentally terrible idea. Imagine what the slaveholders in the early 1800s would have tried to do if they could have passed a “slaves forever and nobody can ever change this law” bill (which indeed was what the confederacy tried to do with its constitution). Even then you are subject to future amendments and future courts that interpret that what you really meant by “universal” was only that the government had to pay at least $0.01 to everyone so actually policy X is still universal. There are no “forever guarantees” and indeed that would be awful, the living should never be irrevocably bound by the hand of the dead.