>I can't see how they could believe this. First of all a minimum wage becomes unimportant as you should hypothetically have enough money to support the kind of lifestyle a minimum wage job would provide without working.

It's considered a distraction because it's a political pipe dream that has a very low chance of being implemented.

The reason the left doesn't like it is fourfold:

* The pretext for basic income presumes that we have a lack of spending because we've run out of things to spend money on. This couldn't be further from the truth. American infrastructure is crumbling and yet politicians still want to restrict necessary spending, choking off demand and killing jobs.

* The pretext for basic income also presumes that we have a wide variety of cheap goods that don't need much US labor because of efficient markets and automation. We don't. We have a wide variety of cheap goods not requiring US labor because China intentionally undervalues its currency. China can pull the plug on that at any point and trigger a torrential level of inflation in the US.

* The last time the US faced this problem of high unemployment due to artificially suppressed demand (in the 30s) it was successfully fixed with federal job guarantees that ended up providing useful employment and getting a huge amount of useful infrastructure built that we still use today.

* However much you try to deny it or dress it up, people actually want jobs - for more than just the income.

Some good points, I'm curious about your final point though. Personal want just for more than just the income. IF the UBI worked, are you suggested people would want to, but couldn't work anymore? That jobs would be difficult to find?

I'm so glad we imported this style of politics to Australia. It's lovely watching our government openly and boldly torch tens of billions of dollars on our Internet infrastructure and condemn our economic prospects for decades simply to spite the other political party, while the idiot masses cheer them on because the blue team is winning against the red team.

The biggest problem with the UBI debate is that few people explicitly name the amounts they imagine. You seem to imply a level near the minimum wage, but that's flat out impossible. The total US tax revenue is around $20k/year/person, so a realistic UBI is upper bounded at perhaps $2-300/month (full time at $15 is about $2,600/month) - and at 20% of total revenue, that would have to replace substantial portions of existing social programs to be viable.

I envision it as enough for someone to get by. So not enough for luxury expenditures. Basically food and shelter. I'm also looking at this from the perspective of someone in the UK who doesn't have to think of things like health care and education which changes things quite a bit. I'd say around $800 p/m per person would be plenty if you look at food and rent for a room in a shared apartment. Tax revenue should also stretch much further with a UBI. You could reduce huge inefficiency and lay off the majority of staff involved in welfare programs which would amount to massive savings.

The savings from laying off a few bureaucrats and jobcentre employees aren't going to change the fact that the £250bn needed just to give a $800/£550 per month BI to working age adults in the UK is a lot more than the £3bn spent on unemployment benefit. (eliminating tax credits, disability benefits and housing benefits will net another £110bn, but also render a lot of poor people poorer or even homeless, which is the opposite of what BI is generally proposed to do)

Yes, obviously the program needs to be revenue neutral for middle incomes, otherwise it is unaffordable. So for the average bloke in the UK who earns £30k and receives a £6.6k UBI in addition, taxes would have to be increased by 22 percentage points to balance.

So rather than 0%-20%-40% income tax bands, we are talking about 20%-40%-60% tax - which looks ridiculously high on the face of it, but has no effect on after-tax income of the average earner after the UBI.

Because of the shocking sticker effect of the taxes, my view is that it is a lot better to position UBI as "negative income tax for low earners" if you want to get it adopted...

>> "eliminating tax credits, disability benefits and housing benefits will net another £110bn, but also render a lot of poor people poorer or even homeless, which is the opposite of what BI is generally proposed to do)"

I don't see how that's true. Isn't the UBI supposed to replace ALL of those programmes with a single number for everyone that is sufficient for everyone? If the UBI provides enough for food and shelter you shouldn't need housing benefits. Disability may be different I suppose but if you cannot meet your needs with UBI due to a disability I think that's something you could probably roll into the NHS where equipment you need but cannot afford is provided to you by them (I haven't really thought that through though it's a very good point you've brought up).

Sure, as I acknowledged in my above post, if you're comfortable with a situation where everybody living in social housing in London is forced to relocate to a different part of the country and severely disabled people are substantially poorer in pure cash terms than before, then you can replace all those programmes with a flat subsidy of £550 per month (or slightly less than the average London room rental in a shared house) and find some way of recovering the remaining additional £140bn cost through increases to gross taxes that leaves lower middle class single people at least no worse off.

Otherwise you need a flat subsidy much higher than £550 per month to properly replace the existing subsidy in all parts of the country, which would cost an awful lot more in taxes and make it a very comfortable living in other parts of the country.

The disability part is definitely an important issue I had not considered before. As for the housing cost I worked out the amount based on food and a room for one person in London. It's doable at £550. You won't be incredibly comfortable but you will have enough food and decent shelter at no cost to you. If you have a partner (so two UBI's to work with) finding a 1 bedroom apartment within that budget is also doable in Zone 4/5/6. And of course we're talking about the most expensive part of the UK. I know someone who has bought a 2 bed apartment in Manchester with a mortgage of around £600pm. Easy for 2 people on a UBI of £550 to manage. Generally I'm very against the idea of poor people being forced out of a city due to it becoming unaffordable but it seems like a fair trade off for a UBI. You can take that and live anywhere else in the country without working or if you want to stay you don't need a high income job, just an average wage to supplement the UBI. It would also be interesting to see how a UBI would effect the cost of private rentals in a city like London. I'm sure a lot of people who don't need to live in London for work anymore would leave and landlords would be less interested in income and more interested in good long-term tenants.

Zoopla's average London room rental is £552 per month. That's without adding bills, council tax, food etc. I'm well aware better value for money options exist (I have one) but you can't use that as a basis for assuming the average turfed-out social housing tenant is going to find them. Needless to say, the housing and other expenditure figures generally used in "Living Wage" calculations are much higher than that.

Of course, there's an argument that subsidising people that clearly couldn't afford to live in the area they grew up in isn't a particularly good use of funds (compared with subsidising gap years, early retirements and stay at home partners?) but I can't see the left buying it. Or anyone on the right being keen to find the extra gross £140bn pa you still need to find even once you've reduced disability and housing spend to zero.

I think you need to view state pensions and minimum income for pensioners into the numbers. You would also want to increase basic rate tax at least to the point where you'd reclaimed the money from anybody at or above the higher rate threshold.

You'd still need some people to work on running welfare programmes. Not every basic need can be met by a fixed sum for everyone. For example, some disabled people need extra money to run a car, get equipment in their homes or perhaps employ a carer (if this wasn't otherwise supplied).

Another comment made this point and it's a good one, I hadn't thought about it before. I think when it comes to equipment you could provide that through the NHS (essentially doctors could be in a position to prescribe it). Same goes for a carer. If you need it for health reasons the NHS should be able to prescribe it. I guess then you run into moral issues (e.g. this person doesn't NEED a carer but it would make their life much easier).

$800/month comes out to just short of 50% of total tax revenue. You need a lot more than massive savings on welfare programs to pull off a 50% cut in all government spending, local, state and federal.

Ok. I'm just looking at a chart showing the US Federal Budget. 10% on welfare. 25% on pensions. That brings us to 35% so we're still short. Still about 15% off. I believe that the US has lower taxes than many other nations so for a UBI to work that would have to change and would bring us closer to the mark. Reducing some of the 21% spent on defence would also help and the health care sector would be interesting. I think for it to work you go to a completely public system. That would be important to make that $800 figure work and it might also reduce some of the inefficiencies in the current system (US is spending much higher % of GDP than other OECD countries despite having less coverage for citizens).

I think there are lots of ways to adjust current spending and make it work. My personal idea would not fly with the American public though (reduce defence spending by 80% and raise taxes - especially for higher earners).