Universal Basic Income Is Not Feasible

Re:Universal Basic Income Is Not Feasible by arebop on Thursday April 26, 2018 @06:40PM (#16936617)

The article confuses me with its enumeration of multiple points of argument that appear to amount to the same thing (UBI isn't feasible "because of the cost"; UBI isn't feasible "because taxes have to be high enough"). Also, it features seemingly contradictory arguments such as those from Feldstein, who says that UBI would require impossible tax increases and also that NIT would be fine.

One argument that isn't contradicted by its proponent in the article is that of Smetters, who says the evidence is that automation replaces some particular jobs, but does not reduce the aggregate labor opportunities for the great majority of people. I don't share this optimism but I can see why those who do would be uninterested in even posing the question of feasibility for a sweeping change such as UBI.

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Re:Universal Basic Income Is Not Feasible by adrianratnapala on Thursday April 26, 2018 @07:11PM (#16936830)

> that UBI would require impossible tax increases and also that NIT would be fine.

Intuitively I had thought of the UBI and NIT as very similar except that the UBI seeks to be large enough to be a workable living income, whereas a NIT can be any positive amount (or negative, depending on which way you look at it). So conversely the tax change required to fund it need not be large -- it just depends on how ambitious you want to be.

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Re:Universal Basic Income Is Not Feasible by 1123581321 on Thursday April 26, 2018 @07:17PM (#16936873)

This is part of the circle of miscommunication when discussing UBI. It goes like this:

Q. The tax rate would be too high.

A. Not if UBI is small.

Q. Small amounts won’t make a difference.

A. That’s why it needs to be enough to live on.

Q. Then the tax rate...

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Re:Universal Basic Income Is Not Feasible by keithnz on Thursday April 26, 2018 @07:45PM (#16937092)

the problem is people talk about paying for it through income tax and not a wealth tax.

If you look at wealth distribution, you look at how to slice enough off the top end to cover the bottom end.

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Re:Universal Basic Income Is Not Feasible by 1123581321 on Thursday April 26, 2018 @11:42PM (#16938308)

I assume you are looking at the $50-100 trillion of theoretically seizable wealth in the United States. Unfortunately, not much of that is fungible due to the lack of buyers in that scenario.

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Re:Universal Basic Income Is Not Feasible by akvadrako on Thursday April 26, 2018 @07:26PM (#16936951)

UBI and Negative Income Tax are two terms for the same thing. Well, according to Wikipedia, NIT is one implementation of UBI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax). I suppose that's fair, but it's the most obvious implementation.

Either can be large or small; that's not part of the definition.

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