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53 million people are over 18 in the UK, so an unconditional £1,600 a month paid by the State to everyone would cost a staggering £85 billion a month. UBI as a

53 million people are over 18 in the UK, so an unconditional £1,600 a month paid by the State to everyone would cost a staggering £85 billion a month. UBI as an unconditional, liveable, income paid to everyone is not a realistic option unless or until we get to a fully post-work society in which all people no longer work, which is Sci-Fi at the moment. It's much more realistic to organise the welfare state so that benefits kick in and guarantee that someone's income will not fall below a minimum, which more or less already exists in many European countries. That's a guaranteed basic income but only paid by the State when someone's income falls below it, e.g. because of unemployment.

mjburgess 3y ago
which is more than the current total expenditure of the entire government: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/image_data/file/156752/PSS_July_2022_Image_4.jpg https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
partiallypro 3y ago
We could just do a negative income tax, which achieves the same thing and is substantially cheaper in terms of bureaucratic costs than traditional welfare programs and is also much cheaper than UBI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax
- notahacker 3y ago
  A "negative income tax" is UBI (minus the presumption the amount needs to be enough to live on, in some formulations..) The "bureaucratic costs" argument is not something anyone that's paid any attention whatsoever to the actual numbers can make. The number of working age people who currently receive a livable income or equivalent in services from welfare programmes is a very small proportion of the total number of working age people who don't work enough to pay [non-trivial amounts of] income tax. If you're suddenly paying many more millions a livable income, you're not funding that through making a few thousand Jobcentre staff redundant.
  - partiallypro 3y ago
    NIT is not UBI, they are different concepts. UBI must go to -everyone-, NIT only kicks in below a certain income threshold and is more and more progressive, in terms of payout, as the income level falls to 0. Decreasing bureaucratic and administrative costs is one of the core tenets of NIT, it's meant to replace current welfare programs entirely and streamline everything, it wasn't dreamed up to supplement existing programs.
    - notahacker 3y ago
      A UBI funded by income tax and a NIT are entirely equivalent in outcomes. The NIT "prebate" is universal and an income: paid directly to people whose income taxes are low/zero and a credit against the tax bill of those whose income tax bill comes to more than the "prebate" in income tax And decreasing bureaucratic costs whilst increasing total programme spend by at least two orders of magnitude more (or slashing all current benefit recipients' incomes to below subsistence levels) is a ridiculous priority.
      - partiallypro 3y ago
        > A UBI funded by income tax and a NIT are entirely equivalent in outcomes. This is just simply not true. NIT still has work incentivizes, UBI does not. UBI is also much more expensive and could have less inflationary effects. They are not the same. The Wikipedia article even had an entire section devoted to this. > And decreasing bureaucratic costs whilst increasing total programme spend by at least two orders of magnitude more (or slashing all current benefit recipients' incomes to below subsistence levels) is a ridiculous priority. It's not a "priority" it's one of the tenets of the proposal. NIT could actually be cheaper than traditional welfare programs and wasn't intended to be supplemental policy, but a replacement.
        notahacker 3y ago
        The Wikipedia article also acknowledges that Friedman's NIT is equivalent in operation to a UBI [funded by income tax]. A UBI can theoretically be funded in ways other than income tax, and in theory the payment timing can be different, but the net effect of an NIT and an equivalent size income tax funded UBI on a government budget is identical (The fact the same page contains incorrect arguments about differences illustrates why Wikipedia is not a good place to learn anything about economics...) Neither have "work incentives". Both provide a modest work disincentive firstly by reducing an individuals' need for income, and secondly by increasing the tax burden on earned income (in the case of the UBI this work disincentive might be less if the payments were funded by something other than income tax, though this is unlikely). NIT can only be "cheaper than existing programs" if the majority of current program recipients receive considerably less money than they currently do (in order to pay for NIT "prebates" paid out to the large number of people who are not entitled to existing welfare payments but dont pay much or any income tax either). In many cases, this would leave them homeless. As I said, a questionable priority.
jameshart 3y ago
Another way to frame it rather than ‘costs $85bn a month’ is ‘stimulates $85bn of economic activity a month’. Or at least that’s the intent. UBI changes the economic model so that the minimum amount of economic participation a person can have in a month is greater than zero. Cash you can spend is equivalent to votes in how the market allocates capital, and UBI just makes sure everyone gets at least one vote (people with more money still get more votes, but nobody gets completely excluded). Once you have that mechanism in place, the idea goes, the invisible hand of the market will do a better job of solving all the other problems. The challenge is preventing it all getting swallowed up by rentiers - landlords, lenders, basic services like healthcare and education, etc. - so it actually gives that market feedback.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  If UBI is paid for without printing money, then it will make people more equal even without price controls. Yes, the low end will rise a bit, the high end will fall a bit (assuming they are taxing the rich), the middle should stay the same. It just puts people in more even ground when bidding for a fixed amount of resources. Universal healthcare would also contribute to equity, probably more effectively than UBI. We should definitely do that first.
  - M2Ys4U 3y ago
    >Universal healthcare would also contribute to equity, probably more effectively than UBI. We should definitely do that first. We already have universal healthcare
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      No, we have some bastardization of the Swiss system.
      - M2Ys4U 3y ago
        I'm absolutely certain that the NHS is a universal healthcare system, free at the point of use and funded by the state.

mjburgess 3y ago

which is more than the current total expenditure of the entire government: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/image_data/file/156752/PSS_July_2022_Image_4.jpg https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

partiallypro 3y ago

We could just do a negative income tax, which achieves the same thing and is substantially cheaper in terms of bureaucratic costs than traditional welfare programs and is also much cheaper than UBI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax

notahacker 3y ago
A "negative income tax" is UBI (minus the presumption the amount needs to be enough to live on, in some formulations..) The "bureaucratic costs" argument is not something anyone that's paid any attention whatsoever to the actual numbers can make. The number of working age people who currently receive a livable income or equivalent in services from welfare programmes is a very small proportion of the total number of working age people who don't work enough to pay [non-trivial amounts of] income tax. If you're suddenly paying many more millions a livable income, you're not funding that through making a few thousand Jobcentre staff redundant.
- partiallypro 3y ago
  NIT is not UBI, they are different concepts. UBI must go to -everyone-, NIT only kicks in below a certain income threshold and is more and more progressive, in terms of payout, as the income level falls to 0. Decreasing bureaucratic and administrative costs is one of the core tenets of NIT, it's meant to replace current welfare programs entirely and streamline everything, it wasn't dreamed up to supplement existing programs.
  - notahacker 3y ago
    A UBI funded by income tax and a NIT are entirely equivalent in outcomes. The NIT "prebate" is universal and an income: paid directly to people whose income taxes are low/zero and a credit against the tax bill of those whose income tax bill comes to more than the "prebate" in income tax And decreasing bureaucratic costs whilst increasing total programme spend by at least two orders of magnitude more (or slashing all current benefit recipients' incomes to below subsistence levels) is a ridiculous priority.
    - partiallypro 3y ago
      > A UBI funded by income tax and a NIT are entirely equivalent in outcomes. This is just simply not true. NIT still has work incentivizes, UBI does not. UBI is also much more expensive and could have less inflationary effects. They are not the same. The Wikipedia article even had an entire section devoted to this. > And decreasing bureaucratic costs whilst increasing total programme spend by at least two orders of magnitude more (or slashing all current benefit recipients' incomes to below subsistence levels) is a ridiculous priority. It's not a "priority" it's one of the tenets of the proposal. NIT could actually be cheaper than traditional welfare programs and wasn't intended to be supplemental policy, but a replacement.
      - notahacker 3y ago
        The Wikipedia article also acknowledges that Friedman's NIT is equivalent in operation to a UBI [funded by income tax]. A UBI can theoretically be funded in ways other than income tax, and in theory the payment timing can be different, but the net effect of an NIT and an equivalent size income tax funded UBI on a government budget is identical (The fact the same page contains incorrect arguments about differences illustrates why Wikipedia is not a good place to learn anything about economics...) Neither have "work incentives". Both provide a modest work disincentive firstly by reducing an individuals' need for income, and secondly by increasing the tax burden on earned income (in the case of the UBI this work disincentive might be less if the payments were funded by something other than income tax, though this is unlikely). NIT can only be "cheaper than existing programs" if the majority of current program recipients receive considerably less money than they currently do (in order to pay for NIT "prebates" paid out to the large number of people who are not entitled to existing welfare payments but dont pay much or any income tax either). In many cases, this would leave them homeless. As I said, a questionable priority.

jameshart 3y ago

Another way to frame it rather than ‘costs $85bn a month’ is ‘stimulates $85bn of economic activity a month’. Or at least that’s the intent. UBI changes the economic model so that the minimum amount of economic participation a person can have in a month is greater than zero. Cash you can spend is equivalent to votes in how the market allocates capital, and UBI just makes sure everyone gets at least one vote (people with more money still get more votes, but nobody gets completely excluded). Once you have that mechanism in place, the idea goes, the invisible hand of the market will do a better job of solving all the other problems. The challenge is preventing it all getting swallowed up by rentiers - landlords, lenders, basic services like healthcare and education, etc. - so it actually gives that market feedback.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago
If UBI is paid for without printing money, then it will make people more equal even without price controls. Yes, the low end will rise a bit, the high end will fall a bit (assuming they are taxing the rich), the middle should stay the same. It just puts people in more even ground when bidding for a fixed amount of resources. Universal healthcare would also contribute to equity, probably more effectively than UBI. We should definitely do that first.
- M2Ys4U 3y ago
  >Universal healthcare would also contribute to equity, probably more effectively than UBI. We should definitely do that first. We already have universal healthcare
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    No, we have some bastardization of the Swiss system.
    - M2Ys4U 3y ago
      I'm absolutely certain that the NHS is a universal healthcare system, free at the point of use and funded by the state.