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UBI would never be truly 'universal'. If someone takes money from me and then gives some of it back, I don't consider that a free gift. The only way the number

UBI would never be truly 'universal'. If someone takes money from me and then gives some of it back, I don't consider that a free gift. The only way the numbers would ever balance would be for most income earners to end up being taxed >100% of their UBI payment.

karmajunkie 2y ago
or for the ridiculously wealthy to be taxed at a very high rate. which is why they reject the notion of UBI so fervently.
- Kamq 2y ago
  The numbers don't line up for that. The sum total of the wealth of all the billionaires in the US in 2021 was ~$4.1 Trillion [0]. That's about the same as the government budget in a normal year pre-pandemic, or about 2/3 of the government budget post-pandemic. Assuming a $1000/month and a population of ~350 million, you're looking at $4.2 Trillion per year. You could almost fund it for the first year by taxing all of the wealth of the billionaires at 100%. But what are you going to do the second year? That's total wealth, not yearly income. [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2021/01/26/report-american-billionaires-have-added-more-than-1-trillion-in-wealth-during-pandemic/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2021/01/26/report-ame...
  - karmajunkie 2y ago
    just curious, but why is there always an implicit assumption in this debate that we only tax the wealth of billionaires? is the money of a half billionaire somehow less green than a full billionaire?
    - briHass 2y ago
      Keep going until you're taxing everyone that makes over $80K/year or so, and you pretty much have it being balanced. I never understood the UBI argument. 30 seconds of napkin math would show you how insane the proposal is, even at the rate of $1000/month. If you want to increase welfare for those below the median income, fine, let's have that discussion. Don't play games with the word 'universal'
      - drekipus 2y ago
        Generally the people who want UBI "as promised, no compromises" also don't see why we can't just print money to make the shortfall
        jampekka 2y ago
        > why we can't just print money to make the shortfall Printing money to make the shortfall is how US public sector budgeting has worked for decades.
      - patmcc 2y ago
        You'd adjust marginal rates so the poor would (net) benefit, the middle class would about break even, and the rich would pay more. Napkin math on that isn't that bad, especially if you chop a bunch of other welfare payments (and the associated expensive means-testing and administration). No one serious is suggesting "everyone gets $1000/month and literally nothing else changes".
        briHass 2y ago
        Which welfare plans are you cutting? Social Security? Nope, because the average payout is 50% higher than $1000/m. Same with SSI/disability. You certainly couldn't replace any of the medical plans (Medicaid/Medicare) with anywhere near that amount. The welfare plans that might be subject to being replaced only amount to a few percent of the federal budget. The bulk of the budget is those plans above, which would result in less benefits if replaced. You're not paying for this by finding lost coins in the couch cushions.
        patmcc 2y ago
        Yeah, as I said in my comment, the primary way to pay for it is to adjust marginal rates so that it's (mostly) a transfer from rich to poor. If you're rich, you'll get a $1k UBI and also pay $2k more in taxes (or $4k, or whatever). Probably for those at the median income it would be roughly neutral - but with the benefit that if you ever lose your job, or want to leave an abusive marriage, or want to try starting a business, you still have that $1k coming in. Medicaid and Medicare being wholly replaced by a truly universal plan unrelated to UBI is probably a prerequisite for a UBI for a bunch of reasons. Social security would probably be unaffected, at least initially, and SSI/disability would likely either be reduced or gradually phased out, depending on the amounts. I know the other various benefits aren't huge in the budget, but they add significant bureaucratic burden to both the state and the individual. Eliminating that would be a big benefit of UBI.
    - dbrueck 2y ago
      I don't think that's the case. Instead, it's just that the "let's tax the rich people more!!" idea is ill-founded to begin with, and the easiest way to show that is to point out that if instead of just taking some percentage more, you took everything they have, it still wouldn't solve the problem, not by a longshot.
      - yunwal 2y ago
        Choosing some arbitrarily small segment of the population and saying "See, they don't have enough money to fund this program" is not the steelman you seem to think it is. Instead, try discussing something serious, like a plausible adjustment to the progressive tax system.
        dbrueck 2y ago
        Nah, if someone puts forth an argument that is fundamentally flawed, it's neither wrong to point it out nor on me to do their thinking for them. That said, if we want to talk taxes, I think a progressive tax system is nearly always wrong, immoral, and unfair, so you probably would disagree with any adjustments I'd suggest. :)
    - roenxi 2y ago
      For new and expensive schemes it is often a challenge to figure out who will be paying for it. The proponents typically don't want to say for the obvious reason - the people paying for a universal service will probably be worse off than if they weren't so it isn't helpful to identify them (they'll just add to the resistance). But that means it is awkward to attack an idea on cost because detractors don't propose the scheme and are often dealing with people unwilling to suggest realistic costs or tax schemes. People with technically excellent arguments have to be a bit oblique in pointing out that someone has to pay and it'd speed the debate along for someone to figure out who. For a UBI, we might suspect it isn't going to be billionaires. The fair way would be if sentences had to pattern match "I think [scheme] is a good idea and we will pay for it by [specific tax proposal].". Seems unlikely in practice though.
  - kelseyfrog 2y ago
    Where does all that money go after the first year? It sounds like it vanishes?
    - mordae 2y ago
      The stocks would actually crash if converted to money. The net effect wouldn't be more cash to spend, but a stake in the economy. You would probably have to invent some more democratic formats of corporate governance.
      - kelseyfrog 2y ago
        Stocks are converted to money with every trade. Every buy has a matching sell. That's something that happens trillions of times a day and stocks aren't crashing because of it. I'm not sure I'm following.
        dmoy 2y ago
        I think the hypothetical here is if you tried to fund UBI via a billionaire-wealth-tax, it would involve liquidating basically all stock they hold. If you sell that much stock, the price will go down. (It's the opposite side of the coin compared to why you can't do a hostile takeover at market cap by just buying stock - the price goes way up as you buy up all available shares).
        kelseyfrog 2y ago
        There's several second and nth-order effects that seem crucial to our understanding. Every seller has a buyer. Who would be buying these liquidated stocks? What would the estimated new equilibrium be? What would be the effects of this equilibrium compared to the current state? Can we estimate the pros and cons? Conversely, holding the belief that stock prices are crucial to our betterment, wouldn't that imply that we would be better off if stock prices were higher due to more wealthy people owning stock and fewer non-wealthy people owning stocks? At face value that doesn't sound right, so I must be getting something wrong.
hobs 2y ago
It is a free gift, because you keep receiving it even if you dont make money next year. And that's right, its not meant to pay for people who can pay their way themselves, just like in most income redistribution schemes the rich would be taxed at several (thousand?) multiples of the value they receive back. In the current regime, the rich gain far more benefits from taxes (they pay little, and get to offload much of their cost of society to the rest of us) than in a UBI approach. That's the point.
jewayne 2y ago
1. Why are assuming that UBI would be paid for by individual income taxes? 2. Yes, no matter what, the richest people are going to receive so little benefit relative to their wealth/income that they won't support it. The same is true for most public services, actually. The ultra-wealthy receive little-to-no direct benefit from Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, public transportation, public schools (big one), public universities, or even public police and firefighters (they can afford their own). But somehow they haven't (yet) managed to rid themselves of these horrible violations of their privilege.

karmajunkie 2y ago

or for the ridiculously wealthy to be taxed at a very high rate. which is why they reject the notion of UBI so fervently.

Kamq 2y ago
The numbers don't line up for that. The sum total of the wealth of all the billionaires in the US in 2021 was ~$4.1 Trillion [0]. That's about the same as the government budget in a normal year pre-pandemic, or about 2/3 of the government budget post-pandemic. Assuming a $1000/month and a population of ~350 million, you're looking at $4.2 Trillion per year. You could almost fund it for the first year by taxing all of the wealth of the billionaires at 100%. But what are you going to do the second year? That's total wealth, not yearly income. [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2021/01/26/report-american-billionaires-have-added-more-than-1-trillion-in-wealth-during-pandemic/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2021/01/26/report-ame...
- karmajunkie 2y ago
  just curious, but why is there always an implicit assumption in this debate that we only tax the wealth of billionaires? is the money of a half billionaire somehow less green than a full billionaire?
  - briHass 2y ago
    Keep going until you're taxing everyone that makes over $80K/year or so, and you pretty much have it being balanced. I never understood the UBI argument. 30 seconds of napkin math would show you how insane the proposal is, even at the rate of $1000/month. If you want to increase welfare for those below the median income, fine, let's have that discussion. Don't play games with the word 'universal'
    - drekipus 2y ago
      Generally the people who want UBI "as promised, no compromises" also don't see why we can't just print money to make the shortfall
      - jampekka 2y ago
        > why we can't just print money to make the shortfall Printing money to make the shortfall is how US public sector budgeting has worked for decades.
    - patmcc 2y ago
      You'd adjust marginal rates so the poor would (net) benefit, the middle class would about break even, and the rich would pay more. Napkin math on that isn't that bad, especially if you chop a bunch of other welfare payments (and the associated expensive means-testing and administration). No one serious is suggesting "everyone gets $1000/month and literally nothing else changes".
      - briHass 2y ago
        Which welfare plans are you cutting? Social Security? Nope, because the average payout is 50% higher than $1000/m. Same with SSI/disability. You certainly couldn't replace any of the medical plans (Medicaid/Medicare) with anywhere near that amount. The welfare plans that might be subject to being replaced only amount to a few percent of the federal budget. The bulk of the budget is those plans above, which would result in less benefits if replaced. You're not paying for this by finding lost coins in the couch cushions.
        patmcc 2y ago
        Yeah, as I said in my comment, the primary way to pay for it is to adjust marginal rates so that it's (mostly) a transfer from rich to poor. If you're rich, you'll get a $1k UBI and also pay $2k more in taxes (or $4k, or whatever). Probably for those at the median income it would be roughly neutral - but with the benefit that if you ever lose your job, or want to leave an abusive marriage, or want to try starting a business, you still have that $1k coming in. Medicaid and Medicare being wholly replaced by a truly universal plan unrelated to UBI is probably a prerequisite for a UBI for a bunch of reasons. Social security would probably be unaffected, at least initially, and SSI/disability would likely either be reduced or gradually phased out, depending on the amounts. I know the other various benefits aren't huge in the budget, but they add significant bureaucratic burden to both the state and the individual. Eliminating that would be a big benefit of UBI.
  - dbrueck 2y ago
    I don't think that's the case. Instead, it's just that the "let's tax the rich people more!!" idea is ill-founded to begin with, and the easiest way to show that is to point out that if instead of just taking some percentage more, you took everything they have, it still wouldn't solve the problem, not by a longshot.
    - yunwal 2y ago
      Choosing some arbitrarily small segment of the population and saying "See, they don't have enough money to fund this program" is not the steelman you seem to think it is. Instead, try discussing something serious, like a plausible adjustment to the progressive tax system.
      - dbrueck 2y ago
        Nah, if someone puts forth an argument that is fundamentally flawed, it's neither wrong to point it out nor on me to do their thinking for them. That said, if we want to talk taxes, I think a progressive tax system is nearly always wrong, immoral, and unfair, so you probably would disagree with any adjustments I'd suggest. :)
  - roenxi 2y ago
    For new and expensive schemes it is often a challenge to figure out who will be paying for it. The proponents typically don't want to say for the obvious reason - the people paying for a universal service will probably be worse off than if they weren't so it isn't helpful to identify them (they'll just add to the resistance). But that means it is awkward to attack an idea on cost because detractors don't propose the scheme and are often dealing with people unwilling to suggest realistic costs or tax schemes. People with technically excellent arguments have to be a bit oblique in pointing out that someone has to pay and it'd speed the debate along for someone to figure out who. For a UBI, we might suspect it isn't going to be billionaires. The fair way would be if sentences had to pattern match "I think [scheme] is a good idea and we will pay for it by [specific tax proposal].". Seems unlikely in practice though.
- kelseyfrog 2y ago
  Where does all that money go after the first year? It sounds like it vanishes?
  - mordae 2y ago
    The stocks would actually crash if converted to money. The net effect wouldn't be more cash to spend, but a stake in the economy. You would probably have to invent some more democratic formats of corporate governance.
    - kelseyfrog 2y ago
      Stocks are converted to money with every trade. Every buy has a matching sell. That's something that happens trillions of times a day and stocks aren't crashing because of it. I'm not sure I'm following.
      - dmoy 2y ago
        I think the hypothetical here is if you tried to fund UBI via a billionaire-wealth-tax, it would involve liquidating basically all stock they hold. If you sell that much stock, the price will go down. (It's the opposite side of the coin compared to why you can't do a hostile takeover at market cap by just buying stock - the price goes way up as you buy up all available shares).
        kelseyfrog 2y ago
        There's several second and nth-order effects that seem crucial to our understanding. Every seller has a buyer. Who would be buying these liquidated stocks? What would the estimated new equilibrium be? What would be the effects of this equilibrium compared to the current state? Can we estimate the pros and cons? Conversely, holding the belief that stock prices are crucial to our betterment, wouldn't that imply that we would be better off if stock prices were higher due to more wealthy people owning stock and fewer non-wealthy people owning stocks? At face value that doesn't sound right, so I must be getting something wrong.

hobs 2y ago

It is a free gift, because you keep receiving it even if you dont make money next year. And that's right, its not meant to pay for people who can pay their way themselves, just like in most income redistribution schemes the rich would be taxed at several (thousand?) multiples of the value they receive back. In the current regime, the rich gain far more benefits from taxes (they pay little, and get to offload much of their cost of society to the rest of us) than in a UBI approach. That's the point.

jewayne 2y ago

1. Why are assuming that UBI would be paid for by individual income taxes? 2. Yes, no matter what, the richest people are going to receive so little benefit relative to their wealth/income that they won't support it. The same is true for most public services, actually. The ultra-wealthy receive little-to-no direct benefit from Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, public transportation, public schools (big one), public universities, or even public police and firefighters (they can afford their own). But somehow they haven't (yet) managed to rid themselves of these horrible violations of their privilege.