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Every time someone casually throws out UBI my mind goes to the question "who is paying taxes when some people are on UBI ?" Is there like a transition period w

Every time someone casually throws out UBI my mind goes to the question "who is paying taxes when some people are on UBI ?" Is there like a transition period where some people don't have to pay taxes and yet don't get UBI, and if so, why hasn't that come yet ? Why aren't the minimum tax thresholds going up if UBI could be right around the corner ?

woile 1y ago
There's another question to answer: Who is working?
- int_19h 1y ago
  The robots.
juniperus 1y ago
The taxes will be most burdensome for the wealthiest and most productive of institutions, which is generally why these arrangements collapse economies and nations. UBI is hard to implement because it incentivizes non-productive behavior and disincentivizes productive activity. This creates economic crisis, taxes are basically a smaller scale version of this, UBI is like a more comprehensive wealth redistribution scheme. The creation of a syndicate (in this case, the state) to steal from the productive to give to the non-productive is a return to how humanity functioned before the creation of state-like structures when marauders and bandits used violence to steal from those who created anything. Eventually, the state arose to create arrangements and contracts to prevent theft, but later become the thief itself, leading to economic collapse and the cyclical revolutionary cycle. So, AI may certainly bring about UBI, but the corporations that are being milked by the state to provide wealth to the non-productive will begin to foment revolution along with those who find this arrangement unfair, and the productive activity of those especially productive individuals will be directed toward revolution instead of economic productivity. Companies have made nations many times before, and I'm sure it'll happen again.
- essnine 1y ago
  The assumption here that UBI "incentivizes non-productive behavior and disincentivizes productive activity" is the part that doesn't make sense. What do you think universal means? How does it disincentivize productive activity if it is provided to everyone regardless of their income/productivity/employment/whatever?
  - CER10TY 1y ago
    I guess the thinking goes like this: Why start a business, get a higher paying job etc if you're getting ~2k€/mo in UBI and can live off of that? Since more people will decide against starting a business or increasing their income, productive activity decreases.
    - essnine 1y ago
      I see more people starting businesses because they now have less risk, more people not changing jobs just to get a pay hike. The sort of financial aid UBI would bring might even make people more productive on the whole, since people who are earning have spare income for quality of life, and people with financial risk are able to work without being worried half the day about paying rent and bills. It's a bit of a dunk on people who see their position as employer/supervisor as a source of power because they can impose financial risk as punishment on people, which happens more often than any of us care to think, but isn't that a win? Or are we conceding that modern society is driven more by stick than carrot and we want it that way?
    - lotsoweiners 1y ago
      If everyone has 2k/mo then nobody has 2k/mo.
      - LouisSayers 1y ago
        That's like saying "money doesn't exist". In a sense everybody does have "2k" a month, because we all have the same amount of time to do productive things and exchange with others.
ako 1y ago
You also have to consider the alternative: if there’s no ubi, are you expecting millions to starve? This is a recipe for civil war, if you have a very large group of people unable to survive you get social unrest. Either you spend the money on ubi or on police/military suppression to battle the unrest.
int_19h 1y ago
The easiest way to implement this is to have literally everyone pay a flat tax on the non-UBI portion of their income. This then effectively amounts to a progressive income tax on total income. If you do some number crunching, it wouldn't even need to be crazy high to give everyone the equivalent of US minimum wage; comparable to some European countries. Over time, as more things get automated, you have more people deriving most of their income from UBI, but the remaining people will increasingly be the ones who own the automation and profit from it, so you can keep increasing the tax burden on them as well. The endpoint is when automation is generating all the wealth in the economy or nearly so, so nobody is working, and UBI simply redistributes the generated wealth from the nominal owners of automation to everyone else. This fiction can be maintained for as long as society entertains silly outdated notions about property rights in a post-scarcity society, but I doubt that would remain the case for long once you have true post-scarcity.

woile 1y ago

There's another question to answer: Who is working?

int_19h 1y ago
The robots.

juniperus 1y ago

The taxes will be most burdensome for the wealthiest and most productive of institutions, which is generally why these arrangements collapse economies and nations. UBI is hard to implement because it incentivizes non-productive behavior and disincentivizes productive activity. This creates economic crisis, taxes are basically a smaller scale version of this, UBI is like a more comprehensive wealth redistribution scheme. The creation of a syndicate (in this case, the state) to steal from the productive to give to the non-productive is a return to how humanity functioned before the creation of state-like structures when marauders and bandits used violence to steal from those who created anything. Eventually, the state arose to create arrangements and contracts to prevent theft, but later become the thief itself, leading to economic collapse and the cyclical revolutionary cycle. So, AI may certainly bring about UBI, but the corporations that are being milked by the state to provide wealth to the non-productive will begin to foment revolution along with those who find this arrangement unfair, and the productive activity of those especially productive individuals will be directed toward revolution instead of economic productivity. Companies have made nations many times before, and I'm sure it'll happen again.

essnine 1y ago
The assumption here that UBI "incentivizes non-productive behavior and disincentivizes productive activity" is the part that doesn't make sense. What do you think universal means? How does it disincentivize productive activity if it is provided to everyone regardless of their income/productivity/employment/whatever?
- CER10TY 1y ago
  I guess the thinking goes like this: Why start a business, get a higher paying job etc if you're getting ~2k€/mo in UBI and can live off of that? Since more people will decide against starting a business or increasing their income, productive activity decreases.
  - essnine 1y ago
    I see more people starting businesses because they now have less risk, more people not changing jobs just to get a pay hike. The sort of financial aid UBI would bring might even make people more productive on the whole, since people who are earning have spare income for quality of life, and people with financial risk are able to work without being worried half the day about paying rent and bills. It's a bit of a dunk on people who see their position as employer/supervisor as a source of power because they can impose financial risk as punishment on people, which happens more often than any of us care to think, but isn't that a win? Or are we conceding that modern society is driven more by stick than carrot and we want it that way?
  - lotsoweiners 1y ago
    If everyone has 2k/mo then nobody has 2k/mo.
    - LouisSayers 1y ago
      That's like saying "money doesn't exist". In a sense everybody does have "2k" a month, because we all have the same amount of time to do productive things and exchange with others.

ako 1y ago

You also have to consider the alternative: if there’s no ubi, are you expecting millions to starve? This is a recipe for civil war, if you have a very large group of people unable to survive you get social unrest. Either you spend the money on ubi or on police/military suppression to battle the unrest.

int_19h 1y ago

The easiest way to implement this is to have literally everyone pay a flat tax on the non-UBI portion of their income. This then effectively amounts to a progressive income tax on total income. If you do some number crunching, it wouldn't even need to be crazy high to give everyone the equivalent of US minimum wage; comparable to some European countries. Over time, as more things get automated, you have more people deriving most of their income from UBI, but the remaining people will increasingly be the ones who own the automation and profit from it, so you can keep increasing the tax burden on them as well. The endpoint is when automation is generating all the wealth in the economy or nearly so, so nobody is working, and UBI simply redistributes the generated wealth from the nominal owners of automation to everyone else. This fiction can be maintained for as long as society entertains silly outdated notions about property rights in a post-scarcity society, but I doubt that would remain the case for long once you have true post-scarcity.