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Why do you rule out raising taxes on people who do work? Does that lead to a logical impossibility of some sort?

californical 4y ago
I mean, do you really have an incentive to work if 90% of the money is going to taxes which pay for the other people not working? Obviously not, that’s a terrible deal. And if it’s that hard to find employees, companies will just have to pay a LOT for labor, most of which still goes to taxes, but also causes prices to go up because the company’s costs are so high. Which causes COL to increase because all products have higher costs. Which means “basic” income needs increases, driving up costs, etc etc.
- dataflow 4y ago
  > I mean, do you really have an incentive to work if 90% of the money is going to taxes which pay for the other people not working? Obviously not, that’s a terrible deal. It's not obvious at all; in fact the tax percentage is meaningless on its own. People get too hung up on tax rates instead of focusing on purchasing power and quality of life. It's almost like adding zeros to the currency. The only thing that matters is your purchasing power (which comes from your net income), not your gross income or what percentage tax that corresponded to. Like if (in today's economy) you pay me $10M/year and I have to pay 90% of that in taxes, I would happily work for you. If you pay me $10k/year, I wouldn't even work for you if my "tax" rate was -100%. Is there a way to make the math work out? Honestly, I don't know. Maybe it's impossible, maybe it's practical, or maybe it would come with so much baggage that we'll prefer the status quo. What I do know is that the people who declare the answer is obvious consistently arrive at that conclusion by artificially constraining the problem in some way that is not implied by the premises, like "you can't raise taxes significantly", or "you can't touch defense spending", or "we won't decrease healthcare costs", or numerous other things.
  - gruez 4y ago
    >It's not obvious at all; in fact the tax percentage is meaningless on its own. People get too hung up on tax rates instead of focusing on purchasing power and quality of life. 1. in an economy where 30% (or whatever) of people aren't working and the remaining are getting taxed higher % of their income to fund the people who are not working, how is the living standard of the people who are working go up? 2. A sense of "fairness" factors into this as well. People are known to reject "unfair" deals, even though the said unfair deal would still give them strictly positive values.
    - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
      Isn't this why states like California have higher tax rates than the rest of the nation? How is this any different from other social programs like Social Security or Welfare?
    - dataflow 4y ago
      1. They try to find higher paying jobs to earn more money to raise their living standards. Which is exactly what people who want higher living standards would do right now. I'm not sure I understand your question. 2. The "fairness" that's relevant here is a function of (say) "net income/expended effort", not "tax rate". People get mad that others who put similar effort earn a lot more net income than them, not a lot more gross income.
      - MoreSEMI 4y ago
        I think the issue though is that one can not look at money in this situation. A higher paying job means you are more productive, at least to whoever is employing you. It maybe, imo will be, the case that the few people who remain cannot increase the amount of goods and services they produce to provide for the rest of the population. For example, if before UBI a worker on average was producing one car, and assuming that after UBI half the working population quits their job, that worker now needs to produce two cars for everyone to maintain their standard of living. Except since that additional car must go to the UBI recipient, in other words his income was taxed, his quality of life does not go up despite becoming more productive. So either he needs to become more productive through than one more car so that he can raise his own standard of living, or he just won’t do it.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  > do you really have an incentive to work if 90% of the money is going to taxes There's no reason the tax rate would have to hit that number, or anywhere close to that number. I'd like to see math that supports it. Most math I've seen suggests a far more modest increase in taxes.
cercatrova 4y ago
UBI is generally thought of as a solution to rising AI. The taxes would come from the corporations generating income from AI and redistributed towards the people, in a sort of "fake" market economy, because the alternative is that the rich own all assets and their economy grinds to a halt because consumers don't have money to buy the corporations' goods anymore, which also causes the corporations to fail too.
- WHYLEE1991 4y ago
  lol yeah the guy up there who uses the example of a worker now needing to make "two cars" is very short-sighted and kinda misses the point overall, I can't think of an industry that is a better example of human beings regularly being replaced by machines than manufacturing.
prepend 4y ago
I think the reason youd want to rule this out is because of democracy and the unwillingness of workers to pay UBI to non-workers. I don’t see a situation where people would be comfortable where workers pay more taxes so people can choose not to work. There’s not enough billionaires (yet) to tax at 90% to cover this. I think a more reasonable approach to UBI is to reduce costs for staple goods to such a low rate that it doesn’t cost as much and the need to work is reduced without raising taxes or introducing a freeloader problem. This is positive outcome of AI and cheap energy (think Star Trek).

I mean, do you really have an incentive to work if 90% of the money is going to taxes which pay for the other people not working? Obviously not, that’s a terrible deal. And if it’s that hard to find employees, companies will just have to pay a LOT for labor, most of which still goes to taxes, but also causes prices to go up because the company’s costs are so high. Which causes COL to increase because all products have higher costs. Which means “basic” income needs increases, driving up costs, etc etc.

dataflow 4y ago
> I mean, do you really have an incentive to work if 90% of the money is going to taxes which pay for the other people not working? Obviously not, that’s a terrible deal. It's not obvious at all; in fact the tax percentage is meaningless on its own. People get too hung up on tax rates instead of focusing on purchasing power and quality of life. It's almost like adding zeros to the currency. The only thing that matters is your purchasing power (which comes from your net income), not your gross income or what percentage tax that corresponded to. Like if (in today's economy) you pay me $10M/year and I have to pay 90% of that in taxes, I would happily work for you. If you pay me $10k/year, I wouldn't even work for you if my "tax" rate was -100%. Is there a way to make the math work out? Honestly, I don't know. Maybe it's impossible, maybe it's practical, or maybe it would come with so much baggage that we'll prefer the status quo. What I do know is that the people who declare the answer is obvious consistently arrive at that conclusion by artificially constraining the problem in some way that is not implied by the premises, like "you can't raise taxes significantly", or "you can't touch defense spending", or "we won't decrease healthcare costs", or numerous other things.
- gruez 4y ago
  >It's not obvious at all; in fact the tax percentage is meaningless on its own. People get too hung up on tax rates instead of focusing on purchasing power and quality of life. 1. in an economy where 30% (or whatever) of people aren't working and the remaining are getting taxed higher % of their income to fund the people who are not working, how is the living standard of the people who are working go up? 2. A sense of "fairness" factors into this as well. People are known to reject "unfair" deals, even though the said unfair deal would still give them strictly positive values.
  - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
    Isn't this why states like California have higher tax rates than the rest of the nation? How is this any different from other social programs like Social Security or Welfare?
  - dataflow 4y ago
    1. They try to find higher paying jobs to earn more money to raise their living standards. Which is exactly what people who want higher living standards would do right now. I'm not sure I understand your question. 2. The "fairness" that's relevant here is a function of (say) "net income/expended effort", not "tax rate". People get mad that others who put similar effort earn a lot more net income than them, not a lot more gross income.
    - MoreSEMI 4y ago
      I think the issue though is that one can not look at money in this situation. A higher paying job means you are more productive, at least to whoever is employing you. It maybe, imo will be, the case that the few people who remain cannot increase the amount of goods and services they produce to provide for the rest of the population. For example, if before UBI a worker on average was producing one car, and assuming that after UBI half the working population quits their job, that worker now needs to produce two cars for everyone to maintain their standard of living. Except since that additional car must go to the UBI recipient, in other words his income was taxed, his quality of life does not go up despite becoming more productive. So either he needs to become more productive through than one more car so that he can raise his own standard of living, or he just won’t do it.
HWR_14 4y ago
> do you really have an incentive to work if 90% of the money is going to taxes There's no reason the tax rate would have to hit that number, or anywhere close to that number. I'd like to see math that supports it. Most math I've seen suggests a far more modest increase in taxes.

cercatrova 4y ago

UBI is generally thought of as a solution to rising AI. The taxes would come from the corporations generating income from AI and redistributed towards the people, in a sort of "fake" market economy, because the alternative is that the rich own all assets and their economy grinds to a halt because consumers don't have money to buy the corporations' goods anymore, which also causes the corporations to fail too.

WHYLEE1991 4y ago
lol yeah the guy up there who uses the example of a worker now needing to make "two cars" is very short-sighted and kinda misses the point overall, I can't think of an industry that is a better example of human beings regularly being replaced by machines than manufacturing.

prepend 4y ago

I think the reason youd want to rule this out is because of democracy and the unwillingness of workers to pay UBI to non-workers. I don’t see a situation where people would be comfortable where workers pay more taxes so people can choose not to work. There’s not enough billionaires (yet) to tax at 90% to cover this. I think a more reasonable approach to UBI is to reduce costs for staple goods to such a low rate that it doesn’t cost as much and the need to work is reduced without raising taxes or introducing a freeloader problem. This is positive outcome of AI and cheap energy (think Star Trek).