Re:Finland ends Basic Income trial
by andrewchambers on Monday April 23, 2018 @06:04PM
(#16907870)
Then it is not "universal" or "basic" anymore, how is that different to just more benefits.
Re:Finland ends Basic Income trial
by freeloop10 on Thursday April 26, 2018 @10:07AM
(#16931960)
It depends on how you look at it. A phase out of UBI could also be viewed as an additional tax.
In fact, you could consider the current system of benefits only if you are not working a form of UBI, if you just treat the UBI not received by the working as a tax against the benefits they would have received.
All in all, UBI isn't much of a departure to what we already have, except that people are expecting the benefits given would be much moar.
What you're describing is more like a negative income tax. As long as the tax brackets are narrow enough (or better yet: tax rate is a continuous increasing function of income!) so that at no point does increasing youre before-benefit income reduce your total after-benefit income. With negative income tax, you have the problem of people cheating on their taxes to get free money, so it's often assumed that implementing it would require the abolition of cash.
Getting everyone onboard with taxing the rich to pay for it would be tough in US with its penchant for doing the exact opposite, cutting welfare and giving wealthy tax breaks... how trials like this go will be very interesting. I look forward toy the results even if it’s just targeting unemployed persons.