It’s precisely because SS & Medicare are funded by a separate payroll tax that most people seem to have more of a sense of having “earned” their SS. They DID pay into it (well, many of us did anyways) and it’s not really a “free” giveaway to them. WIC, SNAP, etc, and the other more traditional “welfare” components of the social safety net? The people taking advantage of them often haven’t paid for them.
If true, so?
It was a response / counter-point to this claim:
If true, then the recipient doesn’t actually “contribute to the payment”.
I’m afraid I have to reiterate “If true, so?” since the relevance is unclear.
Well that’s the thing, yes we should provide housing BUT, does it have to be in an expensive area like Portland?
Yes, we should provide basic medical care, BUT, does that cover every medical test, drug, procedure and hospital stay a doctor or a person wants? (sidenote - my cousin in Denmark had to pay to take his wife to a private hospital for surgery when the government wait list was too long.)
Yes, we can provide free college, BUT, does that mean a person can stay in college for 10 years while only keeping a C average? Do we have to pay for every field of study? Do we have to pay for the most expensive colleges around including private? Do we hold colleges responsible for holding the line on spending?
Well consider in a prison they dont give you food money, not even food stamps. Your given a prison ration and you have darn little say on what they give you. On housing your given a cell which you might have to share with someone. You dont get to keep a pet or have your family with you. In most prisons you have a job you must do.
So I dont think its similar.
I’ve not examined the details of Andrew Yang’s plan, but there are reasons why a one-size-fits-all UBI replacing other welfare programs is a bad idea.
For starters, people collect disability payments because they paid insurance premiums, sustained a possibly work-related accident, and can no longer get a salary. Should a worker still able to work draw the same total assistance as the victim of disability?
Denying the UBI to children seems backwards. Childless adults can usually muddle through. It’s those who do have children who need special help.
And — though I’ve been booed down for this opinion in the past — some of UBI benefits should be delivered in kind rather than in cash: access to cheap food and housing, education, healthcare, childcare. This approach would reduce the total cost to taxpayers of UBI while increasing the benefit to the needy.
With the above components in place, and perhaps some UBI in the form of cash as well, I think we can just continue to find ways to subsidize higher education without making it absolutely free.
Apparently you missed the news story (from somewhere near Appalachia?) of the fire department who stood by and watched as someone’s home burned to the ground. The fire department had shown up only in case the fire spread to any of the neighboring homes which were owned by subscribers.
I don’t know if SDMB is ready for a thread on Modern Monetary Theory. And AFAIK the only prominent political thinker who has come out in explicit favor of MMT is … Rush Limbaugh! :eek:
It sounds like you’re not quite ready to support MMT. 
Even so, I’m slightly confused. Is government revenue a fixed constant, like the melting point of copper? Or might tax revenue be allowed to increase when spending increases?
No. Many people would not get on board with that.
The poor are always getting split into the deserving and undeserving poor. Many people will not be okay with giving such benefits to the “undeserving” poor.
The safety net also fails for people who have severe mental illnesses or are drug addicts, unless the government manages their money. (This is one reason I’m semi-opposed to “harm reduction”.)
What do you do in a case like this: Is it OK if someone wants to live for years on a bench?
They’ve been offered housing, even their original housing. They haven’t been diagnosed with anything, either. But they refuse to live in a home.
This doesn’t actually conflict with what I said. The “bare minumum” food, shelter, and medical care could be prison-quality rations, a tiny concrete room with a small bed and a toilet, and prison-quality health care.
OK. I generally favor all of those. (Of course, a good percentage of folk/reps don’t.) One undeniable benefit of universal income is that it eliminates the administrative costs of the programs you cite. And I speak as a career employee of Social Security administering the disability programs. Instead of deciding who is poor, disabled, or not, pay everyone, and recoup it from the employed/wealthy.
Sounds good to me.
Actually many shelters are run this way. They get a bed for the night, food (on a chow line - like one tray per person), bathroom, and a place to shower and wash their clothes. They also have access to counseling, education, and job programs. They break the rules and they are out.
Of course it sounds good to you. You get to replace your job of processing paperwork for poor people receiving benefits or whatever with a check for doing essentially nothing.
For someone like me, I just see having to work harder because more hands are in my pocket.
That is, unless you can convince me that the benefits of UI for all are offset by the reduction in administration costs for targeting benefits (with numbers…not handwaving).
Preventive care is one of those cases where a penny invested avoiding problems can save thousands spent in minimizing them once they’ve happened. From vaccines to reasonable amounts and types of wellness checks (where “reasonable” is defined according to the current status of medical knowledge and not in order to maximize billing), if there is one single area of medical care that should be covered it’s preventive care.
No; yes, to an extent. You have to worry about increased fiscal spending crowding out private financing, and there are lots of nuances about where you spend money that have to be taken into account when estimating a fiscal multiplier. Crowding out is my primary concern with expansionary fiscal policy when public debt is already over 100% of the GDP (!).
And you’re right. I’m not a fan of MMP, but I haven’t done much research on it. The idea that you can sell more bonds (decreasing banking reserves) without raising interest rates is beyond my immediate comprehension.
~Max
Please re-read. I think you misrepresent my post.
My comment “Sounds good to me” was re: medical costs, not universal income.
My begrudging support for the idea of grossly reforming “entitlement” programs would very much be against my personal interests. Unless you are Bill Gates, it is unlikely that what you would pay in increased taxes would come close to what I would lose in salary.
This is one of many reasons I support UBI. I am not sure how “decent,” though, and I would eliminate many programs.
Reading a primer, I guess they are saying you don’t need to issue bonds and can just pay for things with new money.
That is interesting but I think it is dangerous to assume that directly increasing the money supply with fiscal policy (if it’s even called that any more) won’t result in inflation. Fatal political issues aside, taxes have a significant effect on MPC and international markets that I don’t think is being accounted for under MMP. Direct regulation of non-monopoly companies will likely result in either passing along costs (more inflation), or if properly done, will reduce the supply of relevant goods and services (more inflation). So unless we assume that most inflation is due to eg: corporate abuse of market powers, I don’t see an effective way to combat inflation.
And the fatal political issues are fatal, in my opinion. The Fed isn’t going to set tax rates any time soon, and I don’t trust Congress to handle monetary policy. The priorities of Congress just aren’t aligned correctly.
~Max
Sounds like the government should immediately find some remote location, build a ton of Section 8 housing and start bussing them there. Build a hospital such that Medicare type service is provided (long wait times but near unlimited coverage) , and a food outlet of some sort.
Recoup the money on the back end by not having to provide SNAP, WIC, welfare etc.
ISTR something similar was discussed on these boards recently. I believe someplace in Washington or Oregon proposed rehabbing a prison into a shelter. But various folk opposed providing for folk “there” rather than where they were.
But ANYTHING that requires oversight - even down to “workfare”, involves administrative costs greater than just cutting checks.
MMT is not a belief system nor is it a scheme of some sort. It’s a description of how things work in the real world for a country with a sovereign fiat currency. It’s like gravity, it works whether anyone believes in it or not, because any theory regarding gravity is just a mathematical interpretation of observed functioning. Here’s a primer that should keep y’all busy for a while.