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A comment on Request For Research: Basic Income. Parent comment

Re:Request For Research: Basic Income by marknutter on Wednesday January 27, 2016 @05:05PM (#10983880)
> However, by only distributing the payments to a subset of the population, there is a social stigma associated with receiving benefits. With a universal payment, there is no stigma.

People aren't so naive that they would ignore the fact that their basic income is being immediately taken out of their pockets to pay for other people's basic incomes.

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Re:Request For Research: Basic Income by Riseed on Wednesday January 27, 2016 @05:57PM (#10984263)
Certainly. With a tax-based universal basic income, the vast majority of individuals would be net beneficiaries.

As of 2011, an individual paying >$12k/yr in USA federal taxes is in the top 25%. [0] With a basic income of $1k/yr, anyone in the bottom 75% would effectively be receiving a 100% refund of all taxes, not only the funds earmarked for BI.

There is also the option of voluntary basic income systems, which have the advantage of being immediately implementable. [Disclosure: currently developing a voluntary basic income project/study]

[0] Apologies for the outdated info. http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/01/31/the-average...

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