I don’t see why we should create a trillion dollar program so that people can work on their hobbies.
I’m not seeing much new about Finland’s proposal. KELA, their welfare agency, is looking into it. Maybe we’ll know more in a year.
We’re looking at it more seriously in Canada too. Both Jean-Yves Duclos, federal minister of families, children and social development, and François Blais, minister of employment and social solidarity, have been promoting the issue in the press.
Why do you think my proposal isn’t realistic?
If someone can make too much money to receive it, you’re not talking about a basic income. What you’re talking about is a negative income tax, which is not quite the same thing. You can read the paper I cited upthread on some of the differences.
The list of things you don’t see appears to be far longer than my patience with you on this subject. You are the one who insisted that everyone who was in favour of a basic income was ignorant of basic economics. When challenged, you have come up with no economic theory why other than “a trillion dollars is a lot of money!” Put up or shut up.
The way I see it, the only reason we do anything is ultimately so that people can work on their hobbies (and other enjoyments of life).
Your plan seems to be a zero-sum game. What’s the point of having a basic income if wages get decreased at the same time? It doesn’t actually help anybody.
My plan would help the people who actually need help, and moreover, it would do so in a manner that places a premium on personal responsibility. You spent your money on booze instead of food? Too bad, because we no longer have food stamps to help you out.
The author of that paper you linked to has an extremely confusing manner of writing. I couldn’t make heads or tails out of what he was trying to say.
My plan is not a negative income tax, although I may have failed to make that clear. The people who are eligible would receive a monthly check. What they did with the money, and whether they worked at all, would be entirely up to them.
There seems to be a fair bit of incorrect usage of terms in this area. A basic income is just that – it provides a base or basic level of income to the people who need it. It does not provide a windfall, nor does it provide a comfortable living, because that would be going beyond a basic level. Somebody who earns $100k a year does not need a government-provided basic income, because he is already making more than that. To use “basic income” in any other sense is incorrect and illogical.
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The hardest part of implementing basic income, other than getting people to implement basic income, is preventing the rentier class from taking all the money. To put it simply,if you have $1000 extra money from basic income every month, your rent will increase by $1000 a month. Or whatever other staple you can think of.
This is a bit of a tangent but :
Do you feel that there is something inherently morally right about work itself? Do you also feel that a system that creates disparities in pay based upon some people being better at working than others is an ideal?
For example, when gravity systems started paying everyone $70k no matter their position in the company, a small number of people quit because they did not believe it was fair - do you feel that that is a reasonable response?
I am wondering to what extent people with various ethos would be amenable to the elimination of a hierarchical compensation structure based purely on moral/ethical, grounds.
I think that would be a possibility - but the complexity of the situation voids the validity any sort of knee jerk speculation. A similar situation one might look at is the effects on prices of before and ager the implementation of social security in the US. One might also look at the UAE and see the effects of similar government payouts.
My plan is only zero-sum for those in the middle, and is so by design. Those currently earning less than the UBI would certainly be helped. Those on the top end would be paying more for those on the bottom, which would reduce their net income compared to the current system.
If wages are not reduced and a UBI is created, then inflation will occur from adding money to the economy. That would help no one, as any extra money received by the masses wouldn’t actually increase their buying power at all, as others have pointed out in the thread.
You may find it illogical, however you are incorrect in your usage. A negative income tax does not require someone to work to receive a check. It just means that the amount you receive is based on income. A basic income is an equal amount provided to every citizen, regardless of income.
Now, you can blur the lines by simultaneously adjusting the tax code to increase the higher tax brackets or reduce the basic deduction, but that’s a different kettle of fish.
My biggest problem with negative income taxes is that it increases government overhead, by trying to determine who “needs” the money and ensuring there is no defrauding the system. If you give the same amount to everyone, the overhead of ensuring it’s used properly disappears. There’s plenty of room left in the tax code for social engineering, I feel that the basic income is not the right place for it.
I’ll admit that the idea of giving money to millionaires rubs people the wrong way, and thus NIT has a more populist appeal. A UBI means never having to draw that line in the sand that states “you’ve earned too much, no basic income for you.” Given that I seriously doubt it happening in my lifetime, I feel I should support the better of the two never-going-to-happen options.
I think this is the key – We establish a new baseline above 0 – a new ‘minimum income’ that no one can ever have less than.
So many of our programs start out with “Since this old person/child/whomever doesn’t make enough to pay for food/pay for shelter/pay for healthcare/etc. we need to a) pay for food stamps/pay for a shelter/treat them for free/etc. and also b) we need a big bureaucracy to figure out who should get help, how much help they should get, how to get the help to them, prevent fraud, etc.”
This just sidesteps that whole piece. The minimum baseline is no longer 0, it is X (which will be the constant source of argument, but no worse than we have now), that is sufficient to cover every ‘basic’ need. You phase out every other program (yes, even social security, medicare, etc. over time) that you otherwise need if the baseline is 0.)
You don’t means check it, you don’t phase it out when they get a job, everyone just gets it by virtue of being a citizen.
Supply and demand works if there aren’t unregulated monopolies. Where I live the demand for housing is causing more and more housing to be built which keeps prices from skyrocketing. It’s not a new discovery.
I propose a scheme that would be less expensive than Basic Income and solve some of its problems.
The idea is to provide most of the basic income in the form of goods and services rather than cash. Healthcare and school (say, K-14) would be free, as most already support. Childcare would also be free. Cheap housing would be available for free; slightly better housing would be available at a subsidized price. (Such housing would not be available some places, e.g. Manhattan.) Instead of food stamps, there might be free or subsidized food made available, e.g. at the other free facilities: schools, clinics, childcare and public housing. Charitable organizations, e.g. soup kitchens, which already provide some of these sefvices might receive some government funding.
My political leanings tend toward pro small government and free markets. I would actually much more strongly favor a basic income scheme rather than this. Basic income schemes appeal to me because they require fairly minimal overhead and are resistant to political favoritism. I don’t want an entire bureaucracy sitting around deciding which areas should get subsidized housing, which goods are “basic” and which are luxury, what training programs should be subsidized, etc. Better to just give everyone enough to ensure a basic standard of living and let them go from there.
The way I see it, the value of low and unskilled labor is just going to keep on falling and falling. And that should be a good thing. But right now we have a class of people that need to do that sort of low paying work just to pay the bills and survive and don’t have the time or resources to train for or pursue better jobs. The way I see it, a basic income scheme is the best way to let the free market replace as many workers as it can with robots and push people toward the jobs that will still be around in the coming decades.
I don’t think that a negative income tax would be nearly as expensive as people think. Look at the social safety net now, how much MORE would we spend. That this is < $0 is without doubt but we have everyone pretty much covered now. What I’d like to see is for the ‘hard red line’ go away. That creates the incentive to stay with what you’ve got instead of working to get another couple grand.
For basic income vs negative income tax, does the latter have a mechanism for distributing the money throughout the year, vs only once after annual filing? Given the threads we have with people posting about how hard it is to get paid once a month vs twice or even every two weeks, a mechanism to spread the distribution out seems like a good idea.
Spreading it out seems trivial for basic income. I’m sure there’s an easy mechanism for it for negative income tax, but I don’t recall seeing a description.
What happens when a drug addict/gambling addict/Nigerian scam victim blows through his “basic income” check and still needs food, healthcare, housing, etc.? Another check?
What happens when a drug addict launders their EBT card for cash and still needs food? Another check?
What issues with the basic income does this solve? All I can see is contempt for the poor, who obviously don’t know how to spend their money properly, so we need to decide how that money gets spent for their own good. This would also create a massive government bureaucracy which would be ripe for exploitation from political favouritism. I’m unsure how this is solving a problem, instead of making a bigger one.
Most tax agencies accept instalment payments, I can’t see any practical reason that a NIT couldn’t or shouldn’t pay out in negative instalments. Given the amount of money being redistributed, I think it would almost be required.
A basic income or negative tax is not going to solve 100% of the problems with poverty. It would “merely” greatly reduce some of those problems. To compare, condoms are not 100% effective in preventing pregnancy, but they do greatly reduce the risk. So are you arguing that no one should ever use a condom, since only things which are 100% effective should ever be used?