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I broadly agree with you, I favor UBI for similar reasons, though I'd maybe frame it less as "very good vs. less good", vs. just acknowledging the enormous over

I broadly agree with you, I favor UBI for similar reasons, though I'd maybe frame it less as "very good vs. less good", vs. just acknowledging the enormous overhead costs of means-testing, to say nothing of the consequences when bureaucracy turns corrupt or Kafka-esque. But devil's advocate: is there any reason the same outcome couldn't be accomplished with a negative income tax instead, leveraging a bureaucratic infrastructure which already exists and isn't going anywhere?

zrail 3y ago
I don't really care how it's delivered, as long as it's a regular payment throughout the year that people can depend on. (US specific) The monthly advanced child tax credit, effectively a negative tax, lifted hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty for the short time it existed. Building that into a permanent, regular, universal cash transfer is not mechanically difficult but is intractable politically.
ajmurmann 3y ago
How would the negative income tax work in practice? Do I need to wait a full year for my tax return to get a lump sum payment?
- lukifer 3y ago
  That's a good point. It was famously the preferred policy of Milton Friedman (presumably as a cheaper alternative to the welfare state, back when the Overton window was still more FDR than Reagan). A negative income tax might need to be paid out weekly or monthly to make a meaningful difference to the homeless and the working poor (to say nothing of access to banking services; as long as we're waving policy magic wands, let's add postal banking to the mix.) Of course, I feel obliged to bring up the Georgist objection: that either negative tax or UBI would need to contend with the problem of ground rents, lest landlords simply jack up the rent by the $X additional income that they know for a fact that everyone has. Fun aside: Thomas Paine, the author of "Common Sense", made one of the earliest proposals for a citizen's dividend [0] (funded by ground rents), but going the other direction: a one-time lump sum during young adulthood, as a means to bootstrap a homestead or small business. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrarian_Justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrarian_Justice
  - ajmurmann 3y ago
    LVT and just giving people money fixes everything! Ezra Klein recently had a guest who talked about baby bonds which matches Thomas Paine's goals: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6NhjzbFvy2B8C7y0O6zhMh?si=NNBdZi37R0Osok_537Y8aA https://open.spotify.com/episode/6NhjzbFvy2B8C7y0O6zhMh?si=N...
    - lukifer 3y ago
      100%, thanks for the link!

zrail 3y ago

I don't really care how it's delivered, as long as it's a regular payment throughout the year that people can depend on. (US specific) The monthly advanced child tax credit, effectively a negative tax, lifted hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty for the short time it existed. Building that into a permanent, regular, universal cash transfer is not mechanically difficult but is intractable politically.

ajmurmann 3y ago

How would the negative income tax work in practice? Do I need to wait a full year for my tax return to get a lump sum payment?

lukifer 3y ago
That's a good point. It was famously the preferred policy of Milton Friedman (presumably as a cheaper alternative to the welfare state, back when the Overton window was still more FDR than Reagan). A negative income tax might need to be paid out weekly or monthly to make a meaningful difference to the homeless and the working poor (to say nothing of access to banking services; as long as we're waving policy magic wands, let's add postal banking to the mix.) Of course, I feel obliged to bring up the Georgist objection: that either negative tax or UBI would need to contend with the problem of ground rents, lest landlords simply jack up the rent by the $X additional income that they know for a fact that everyone has. Fun aside: Thomas Paine, the author of "Common Sense", made one of the earliest proposals for a citizen's dividend [0] (funded by ground rents), but going the other direction: a one-time lump sum during young adulthood, as a means to bootstrap a homestead or small business. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrarian_Justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrarian_Justice
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  LVT and just giving people money fixes everything! Ezra Klein recently had a guest who talked about baby bonds which matches Thomas Paine's goals: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6NhjzbFvy2B8C7y0O6zhMh?si=NNBdZi37R0Osok_537Y8aA https://open.spotify.com/episode/6NhjzbFvy2B8C7y0O6zhMh?si=N...
  - lukifer 3y ago
    100%, thanks for the link!