So, what do you propose as an alternative? Roll new programs out to the whole population without bothering with pilot studies? Or, never try any new social welfare programs at all, because there’s no way to know in advance if they will work? Or what?
Maybe this is because it’s early and I haven’t had my coffee yet, but I can’t find anything in that article about them running out of money. Is it in there, or are you just assuming?
It sounds like the Finnish Parliament changed their mind, for reasons that the article doesn’t specify.
I got that from this line: “We ought to have been given additional time and more money to achieve reliable results.”
If you fund it in part through a progressive income tax, then effectively you’re not giving any money to the rich (since the amount you give them is less than the increase in their tax bill). But so long as people still keep a fraction of every dollar they earn, it’s not really a “negative incentive”, just a slightly reduced positive incentive.
Ludovic, a huge portion for the funding of UBI will come from the elimination of exemptions, deductions, graduated rates. For example currently on a $50,000 income a single person would pay $6,250/per year federal income tax–which has a top rate of 25%. Instead suppose he paid a 25% across the board rate with a $6,250/year UBI. That would be $50,000 * .25 = $12,500 - $6,250 = $6,250–in other words he would be in exactly the same financial position as he is in now. Yet an UBI is supposedly catastrophically expensive–while the current set of exemptions, deductions, graduated rates is not.
Overall you expect the poor to be better off, the middle class about the same, and the rich to be slightly worse off under a viable UBI proposal–and this level would be closer to $10,000/year UBI than $20,000/year.
Thanks for clarifying where you were getting that. I read this more as the person running the program saying “We’d have preferred to have done a larger, longer-term study” rather than suggesting that the cost per participant to make UBI effective was higher than they anticipated. (I.e., more about the government not supporting their research as much as they want, rather than a statement about UBI being too expensive to be workable.) But the Business Insider article is kind of vague on this, and on to what degree the cost of the program influenced the Parliament’s decision to make a change.
I tried to follow their links to the source, but it’s a bid hard to follow given that I don’t speak Finnish:
Basinkomsten gav mod att ta emot jobb, men deltagarna visste inte vilken mediekarusell de skulle hamna i
I gather that basinkomsten led to some participants finding a jobb, but the whole thing has become a bit of a mediekarusell. 
That should of course say “a bit hard to follow”. Darn edit window.
The key is that everyone needs a livelihood, and most people need a vocation, but we’ve fallen into the trap of assuming that those both need to be the same thing, and call it a job. If robots did all of the work, and all people were provided with the necessities, then everyone could do whatever it is that they’re really driven to. There are a lot of folks out there who would love to be artists, but who can’t afford to be, because art doesn’t pay very well. But if they had an independent livelihood, then the art still might not pay very well, but it wouldn’t matter, and they’d be able to do it. Or maybe they’re raising animals, or maybe they’re going mountain climbing, or maybe they’re being full-time parents, or whatever it is they’re driven to do.
On income cutoffs for UBI, it’s not just about the cliff disincentivizing work. It also makes it a lot simpler to implement. A lot of the cost of “welfare” programs like SNAP and Medicaid is in figuring out who’s eligible for them. If the answer to that question is just “everyone”, then you can save a lot of money on that front. And really, if billionaires are still getting the 15 grand a year or whatever it is, who cares? There aren’t all that many billionaires for that to add up to much, and they’re paying much more than that in taxes anyway.
That is not how taxes work.The top tax rate only applies to the income above the threshold. Someone with 50K income and no dependents would have paid 11% this year in tax and will pay 8.7% next year. You would be almost tripling the taxes on the taxpayer in exchange for a $6,250 check.
I am pretty sure PastTense understands that and I don’t understand where you got 11% from. For a single guy earning 50k
($9325@10%=932.50)+($28,265@15%=4293.75)+($12,050@25%=3012.50)=$8238.75 for an effective tax rate of 16.5%.
I am no accountant so maybe I am missing something? Regardless, I think PastTense was suggesting a flat rate of 25% for incomes up to $50k.
Oh wait, I forgot the “standard deduction” of $6300, of course. So the tax bill PastTense suggests is about right, for an effective tax rate of 13% or so.
I skimmed the thread for a mention of this, but didn’t fine one, so I apologize if I missed it. I have what seems to me a very basic question about a universal basic income: wouldn’t it just cause inflation and thus defeat its own purpose? If landlords knew that everyone had an additional $15,000 per year, wouldn’t they just raise rents accordingly? Wouldn’t Starbucks just increase the price of their lattes, and Target of toilet paper? Isn’t this economics 101, the law of supply and demand? Am I missing something?
You’re missing the chapter on competition. A landlord that raised the rent by only $5,000 a year would have full apartments while the others would be emptier, and would thus be losing money since debt payment on an apartment is not contingent on occupancy rates. That assumes an adequate supply of apartments which is probably be covered by supply and demand.
Except in California.
Assuming that taxes were raised to keep total consumer spending power unchanged, then average prices wouldn’t change. But you’d expect a very slight increase in the prices for the goods and services lower-income people buy, and a very slight decrease in the prices for upper-income goods.
Alternatively, borrowing and money “printing” could be substituted for tax increases. What effect that will have on price levels is already an experiment in progress.
Of course prices/rents would reach an equilibrium fairly quickly- that’s what the classic “what the market will bear” saying means.
And almost certainly that new equilibrium would be higher than before- why wouldn’t it be? We already see drastic differences between prices for the same goods and services in rich vs. poor neighborhoods- nobody in their right mind thinks that what amounts to a massive cash infusion into poorer areas isn’t going to have a corresponding rise in prices and rents?
OP is attempting to imply UBI is not financially feasible.
The project didn’t fail, the finnish government had lost it’s boner for UBI and they let it die. Small scale UBI projects are bound to fail unless they’re properly subsidized. The alaska permanent fund I believe it’s called, subsidized oil to give their people money. The result was no decrease in employment and in fact there was a 17% increase in part time workers iirc.
I believe UBI would work better in the states simply because we have so much shit to subsidize it with. We’re sitting on about 20% of all the wealth in the entire world. I mean shit, couldn’t we subsidize welfare for UBI? There’s so many ways you could keep UBI going. If I had my way I’d try to bring people off welfare and decrease spending meanwhile taxing the fuck out of alcohol, tobacco and cannabis. All that money could help fund UBI, which in return would get people out of the welfare trap and allow the poor to consume more and climb the ladder expanding the middle class. Essentially this would be reverse trickle down economics, trickle up economics? I wonder if that’s a thing.
This is about casino income going to each and every tribe member, but it’s like a UBI.
“A Cherokee Tribe’s Basic Income Success Story”
So the gist of the anti-UBI argument, as I understand it, is that people are motivated to work because if they don’t work, they become homeless and will probably eventually die from lack of medical care, exposure, crime, and so on.
If people had UBI, antis say that
a. Rent prices would magically rise to exactly equal UBI, everywhere, making the recipients no better off
b. People would just not work, choosing to luxuriate in their tiny apartments on 10-20k a year, enjoying their 55" TVs and basic smartphones (since those devices are now so cheap even the poor can afford them)
c. Because nobody’s working, nobody would be paying the UBI taxes and the country would fall into ruin
d. This is socialism. (because it more or less is)
Have I summed up all the anti-arguments?
Because the pros, as I understand it, I see it this way.
Right now, randomly, 1% of Americans get chosen at birth to inherit vast fortunes. Remember, most of the wealth is in the hands of the top 1% or less. Those people now have the ultimate in UBI - a near inexhaustible lake of money. Some of them choose to do interesting things in their lives, some don’t. Either way, our civilization produces dozens of homes, jet aircraft, automobiles, and all the other resources we produce for these individuals to enjoy. Who didn’t earn the money themselves.
Out of all our GDP - all the goods and services this entire nation makes, about 38% of it goes to supplying just their needs and wants.
This seems distressingly inefficient. A “fair” idea would be that instead of making just randomly chosen individuals inherit a trust fund of infinite wealth, why don’t we give every American citizen at birth the benefits of a much smaller “trust fund”, by taking back the estates and holdings of the rich individuals who did earn that wealth when they inevitably die.
Instead of picking just genetic lottery winners, we distribute that wealth equally.
So every new American born would have a far smaller trust fund - mere thousands of dollars, probably - but due to the logarithmic utility of money, it would be a far more efficient use of resources.
UBI is sort of a variant on this idea.
Some form of Universal Basic Income is a great idea. I support Welfare State – with everyone being provided with Housing, Food, Medicine and maybe some money/credit for personal expenses.
I agree 100%. Even though I disagree with Liberals on some important issues, I agree with Liberals on Economic issues.
The government has a right to tax the very rich. The government should have a duty to care for people who do not provide for themselves.