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Who said anything about “printing” money!? In all serious contexts — not kids arguing on Reddit — the concept of UBI is just an adjustment of tax brackets such

Who said anything about “printing” money!? In all serious contexts — not kids arguing on Reddit — the concept of UBI is just an adjustment of tax brackets such that people below a certain threshold pay negative tax. This is offset by higher taxes in the super rich. It’s basically saying that Bezos does not work one million times harder than the staff working in his warehouses. Staff that are literally starving in many cases.

drekipus 3y ago
> just an adjustment of tax brackets such that people below a certain threshold pay negative tax This makes sense, and I am totally for this, as a current "total naysayer" against UBI. Infact, I wish that "negative tax" was the flag bearing. I am totally 100% for that idea. I am against the notion of UBI because it is too all encompassing and I am not confident that a singular system can handle all of the variables. In my view (and from my discussions) it's framed as: - "everyone gets an extra $X amount a week." - "even the rich people so why are you complaining." - "studies have shown that worker engagement has actually risen or remained steady, hasn't dropped at all" - " it was shown that it made everyone way happier and productive" But where does the money come from? "Small trials in Finland shows that they didn't need to get extra money it just happened and it's easy as that so why are you against it????"
- jiggawatts 3y ago
  The most common UBI variant is to simply give everyone the equivalent of a tax refund, no questions asked. Then, to pay for that, the tax rates at the higher income brackets go up. Very low or zero income: the government pays you a basic income. Low income: they still pay you, and you have to pay a negligible amount of tax on your extra income from work. Crucially, your benefits don’t disappear instantly if you get a job, unlike with many welfare programs now. Mid-low income: you pay the same in taxes as the basic income, for a net tax rate of zero. Higher incomes: your net tax after UBI increases proportionately to your income from work, steeper than before UBI.
  - dantheman 3y ago
    Taxes are already too high.
  - drekipus 3y ago
    >you pay the same in taxes as the basic income, for a net tax rate of zero I think this is the make believe part. In Australia, we have a goods and services tax of 10% on every purchase, plus an income tax of around 19% for amounts from 18-45k (thats low/mid-low). All in all, about 9k in tax for this low bracket. If we're paying that for all 26 million people here.. hey I guess that's probably pretty doable. Damn
    - jiggawatts 3y ago
      There is always some point with UBI where the effective tax rate is zero — because the negative tax and the positive tax cancel out. The specifics (GST/VAT) don’t matter.
bequanna 3y ago
Except that isn’t what will happen. We are already plagued by spending that is funded by deficits and not new taxes. Why? Because one of those things is MUCH easier than the other. Easy to agree to spend money, difficult or impossible to add new taxes. This is exactly why MMT has stopped being a thing. The pandemic Federal spending deficit ballooned, contributed greatly to inflation and was not met with increased taxation like MMT said would happen. Whoops… Academic arguments always sound great then reality hits them hard.
- neilwilson 3y ago
  That has nothing to do with MMT. You can’t give free money to people and say that has anything to do with MMT. Which is why MMT rejects the concept of UBI
  - bequanna 3y ago
    Free money via UBI won’t cause inflation because we’ll just create more taxes! Increased government spending via MMT won’t increase inflation because we’ll just create more taxes! Both ideas rooted in the same academic nonsense that is divorced from reality.
thegrim000 3y ago
If you forcefully confiscated every single penny of net worth every single billionaire citizen has, every single last penny, and distributed it across the population, it would amount to a one time payment of something like 2,000 to everyone else. Simply pushing your "just tax the rich" line just doesn't remotely match up with reality. It requires an elementary level of math to see that taxing the rich more will not fund UBI. (And ignores all the negative consequences of doing so).
- jiggawatts 3y ago
  It's obviously not just billionaires that would be taxed at a higher rate. The increased taxes (as a percentage) would start at the zero income level. Everyone would get taxed more for their income. The offset of the fixed income part of UBI is constant, which cancels this out to a point, but the curve is always steeper. Another compensating factor is that UBI replaces a huge swath of pre-existing social welfare programs. Similarly, UBI is so much easier to manage that it would allow huge numbers of government staff to be made redundant. We would no longer have to have a bunch of bureaucrats tracking and allocating welfare, because everyone would be on welfare. This compensates for the cost also. Generally speaking, pretty much everyone that would benefit from UBI is already getting roughly equivalent welfare anyway, something all western countries can already afford. Most citizens in most developed countries have a roof over their heads and aren't starving to death, even if they're unemployed. PS: Australia went through a similar thing were a ludicrously complex set of tax codes were put into the shredder and replaced with a flat 10% VAT. Everybody screeched about prices going up 10% in the exact same way as the people arguing against UBI. Turns out some prices went down because previously the taxes were "randomly" anywhere between 0% and 30% on a product-by-product basis. It took armies of accountants and tax officials to track all that, and that had a real cost to it also. That cost was wiped out by the new, simpler, flat tax code.
  - prepend 3y ago
    But your idea of working harder falls apart though with taxing the middle class for UBI. Bezos doesn’t work 1M harder than the average worker. But a doctor making $250k definitely works 2-5x harder (education, life and death, training, etc etc). You’ll find lots of people for taxing Billionnaires but you’re not going to find many takers to tax the 50M people making $125k+ to fund UBI. There’s no arithmetic model that I’ve seen shows UBI as being feasible without some level of magic.
neilwilson 3y ago
The super rich doesn’t consume, they just have a lot of money. If you move money from a low consumer to a set of people at full consumption then you get inflation. To move consumption you have to tax consumers not hoarders
- hyperadvanced 3y ago
  I unfortunately agree - I would way rather see the “hoard” allocated toward real growth and investment than allocated toward weird pet projects or shareholder-attraction. The USA doesn’t have a shortage of consumption, it has resource allocation issues.

drekipus 3y ago

> just an adjustment of tax brackets such that people below a certain threshold pay negative tax This makes sense, and I am totally for this, as a current "total naysayer" against UBI. Infact, I wish that "negative tax" was the flag bearing. I am totally 100% for that idea. I am against the notion of UBI because it is too all encompassing and I am not confident that a singular system can handle all of the variables. In my view (and from my discussions) it's framed as: - "everyone gets an extra $X amount a week." - "even the rich people so why are you complaining." - "studies have shown that worker engagement has actually risen or remained steady, hasn't dropped at all" - " it was shown that it made everyone way happier and productive" But where does the money come from? "Small trials in Finland shows that they didn't need to get extra money it just happened and it's easy as that so why are you against it????"

jiggawatts 3y ago
The most common UBI variant is to simply give everyone the equivalent of a tax refund, no questions asked. Then, to pay for that, the tax rates at the higher income brackets go up. Very low or zero income: the government pays you a basic income. Low income: they still pay you, and you have to pay a negligible amount of tax on your extra income from work. Crucially, your benefits don’t disappear instantly if you get a job, unlike with many welfare programs now. Mid-low income: you pay the same in taxes as the basic income, for a net tax rate of zero. Higher incomes: your net tax after UBI increases proportionately to your income from work, steeper than before UBI.
- dantheman 3y ago
  Taxes are already too high.
- drekipus 3y ago
  >you pay the same in taxes as the basic income, for a net tax rate of zero I think this is the make believe part. In Australia, we have a goods and services tax of 10% on every purchase, plus an income tax of around 19% for amounts from 18-45k (thats low/mid-low). All in all, about 9k in tax for this low bracket. If we're paying that for all 26 million people here.. hey I guess that's probably pretty doable. Damn
  - jiggawatts 3y ago
    There is always some point with UBI where the effective tax rate is zero — because the negative tax and the positive tax cancel out. The specifics (GST/VAT) don’t matter.

bequanna 3y ago

Except that isn’t what will happen. We are already plagued by spending that is funded by deficits and not new taxes. Why? Because one of those things is MUCH easier than the other. Easy to agree to spend money, difficult or impossible to add new taxes. This is exactly why MMT has stopped being a thing. The pandemic Federal spending deficit ballooned, contributed greatly to inflation and was not met with increased taxation like MMT said would happen. Whoops… Academic arguments always sound great then reality hits them hard.

neilwilson 3y ago
That has nothing to do with MMT. You can’t give free money to people and say that has anything to do with MMT. Which is why MMT rejects the concept of UBI
- bequanna 3y ago
  Free money via UBI won’t cause inflation because we’ll just create more taxes! Increased government spending via MMT won’t increase inflation because we’ll just create more taxes! Both ideas rooted in the same academic nonsense that is divorced from reality.

thegrim000 3y ago

If you forcefully confiscated every single penny of net worth every single billionaire citizen has, every single last penny, and distributed it across the population, it would amount to a one time payment of something like 2,000 to everyone else. Simply pushing your "just tax the rich" line just doesn't remotely match up with reality. It requires an elementary level of math to see that taxing the rich more will not fund UBI. (And ignores all the negative consequences of doing so).

jiggawatts 3y ago
It's obviously not just billionaires that would be taxed at a higher rate. The increased taxes (as a percentage) would start at the zero income level. Everyone would get taxed more for their income. The offset of the fixed income part of UBI is constant, which cancels this out to a point, but the curve is always steeper. Another compensating factor is that UBI replaces a huge swath of pre-existing social welfare programs. Similarly, UBI is so much easier to manage that it would allow huge numbers of government staff to be made redundant. We would no longer have to have a bunch of bureaucrats tracking and allocating welfare, because everyone would be on welfare. This compensates for the cost also. Generally speaking, pretty much everyone that would benefit from UBI is already getting roughly equivalent welfare anyway, something all western countries can already afford. Most citizens in most developed countries have a roof over their heads and aren't starving to death, even if they're unemployed. PS: Australia went through a similar thing were a ludicrously complex set of tax codes were put into the shredder and replaced with a flat 10% VAT. Everybody screeched about prices going up 10% in the exact same way as the people arguing against UBI. Turns out some prices went down because previously the taxes were "randomly" anywhere between 0% and 30% on a product-by-product basis. It took armies of accountants and tax officials to track all that, and that had a real cost to it also. That cost was wiped out by the new, simpler, flat tax code.
- prepend 3y ago
  But your idea of working harder falls apart though with taxing the middle class for UBI. Bezos doesn’t work 1M harder than the average worker. But a doctor making $250k definitely works 2-5x harder (education, life and death, training, etc etc). You’ll find lots of people for taxing Billionnaires but you’re not going to find many takers to tax the 50M people making $125k+ to fund UBI. There’s no arithmetic model that I’ve seen shows UBI as being feasible without some level of magic.

neilwilson 3y ago

The super rich doesn’t consume, they just have a lot of money. If you move money from a low consumer to a set of people at full consumption then you get inflation. To move consumption you have to tax consumers not hoarders

hyperadvanced 3y ago
I unfortunately agree - I would way rather see the “hoard” allocated toward real growth and investment than allocated toward weird pet projects or shareholder-attraction. The USA doesn’t have a shortage of consumption, it has resource allocation issues.