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Re:Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs by sokoloff on Monday May 13, 2019 @11:34AM (#19900302)
I'm a UBI supporter in theory. It's the practical math that always leaves me hung up. Even $600/mo/adult citizen is a seemingly prohibitive amount of money (works out to approximately the entire amount of all individual income tax payments, or about half of total receipts, including FICA).

And of course, $600/mo/adult is an extremely meager existence.

Re:Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs by xienze on Monday May 13, 2019 @01:20PM (#19901450)
> And of course, $600/mo/adult is an extremely meager existence.

Well the good news is that once UBI is implemented all future elections will boil down to politicians promising a bigger UBI increase than the other guy. Problem solved!

Re:Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs by sim_card_map on Monday May 13, 2019 @12:39PM (#19901012)
If we take all the money the Netherlands spends on social security, welfare, pensions, etc, and add extra money from increased taxes (make it flat 50-60%), every single household can have a UBI of about 42 000 euros/year.

The numbers are similar for other western economies.

Re:Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs by gridlockd on Monday May 13, 2019 @02:26PM (#19902239)
> If we take all the money the Netherlands spends on social security, welfare, pensions...

Okay...

> ... add extra money from increased taxes (make it flat 50-60%)

No. You can't presume anything about increased revenue from extra taxes. If you taxed income for any amount of work at 50% and you give every "household" 42,000€ (which I assume is livable in NL) you would drastically reduce the incentive to work and pay taxes, so your actual tax revenue goes down.

> The numbers are similar for other western economies.

The numbers generally say that if you pool all the social spending, you can redistribute it to everyone and it will pay for a subsistence level of living. However, a big part of that pool is pensions, which are liabilities in proportion to the amount paid by the individual. A lot of pensioners would be subsidizing people who never paid into the system. That's the main problem.

Re:Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs by EpicEng on Monday May 13, 2019 @01:43PM (#19901719)
>add extra money from increased taxes (make it flat 50-60%)

Good luck passing a bill that raises my effective tax rate from 17% to 55%. Obviously if you take a whole lot more money from everyone else there will be more to hand out to others.

Re:Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs by sim_card_map on Monday May 13, 2019 @02:09PM (#19902010)
There's no way your effective rate goes from 17% to 55%. Did you include the extra 3000/month you'll be getting?
Re:Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs by gridlockd on Monday May 13, 2019 @02:35PM (#19902342)
The effective total rate of taxes may not be 55%, but the rate on income earned would be. Who would work full-time in an ordinary job if it was taxed at 55% when they simultaneously get paid a generous UBI?

Also remember you counted in pensions into your budget, those are separate from taxes. So the net profit from working would be maybe 30% or less - ridiculous!

Re:Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs by EpicEng on Monday May 13, 2019 @02:33PM (#19902317)
Ok that's fair; I completely ignored the ~$36,000 deduction I'd be getting.
Re:Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs by sim_card_map on Monday May 13, 2019 @01:04PM (#19901283)
Current social security spending gives us $9k per household. Cutting military spending in half (utopian, but so is UBI): $3200 per hh. Raising income tax to a simple flat 50% rate gives us extra 0.7 trillion or $7k per hh. Single payer would give us about $1k per hh plus free healthcare for everyone. No more insurance payments.

That is already about $21k per year per household.

Re:Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs by gridlockd on Monday May 13, 2019 @02:45PM (#19902478)
> Raising income tax to a simple flat 50% rate gives us extra 0.7 trillion or $7k per hh.

If income tax was raised to 50% flat and you keep all the social security and single payer spending, your paycheck would net maybe 25% of your salary. Who works full time for 25 cents on the dollar when they can just retire?

So then people won't work full time, your tax revenue, your single payer money, your pension money, it all goes down. It can't pay for your UBI.

Even worse, all this spending you are talking about redistributing isn't even paid for today. It's funded by debt. With the boomers retiring, there are huge amounts of unfunded liabilities.

It may not be obvious to you, but what you are proposing is that we can just all sit back, work less, print money and everyone will be better off. It's a fantasy.

To be clear, I support a UBI, but one has to be very careful about the actual amount.

Re:Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs by sokoloff on Monday May 13, 2019 @04:44PM (#19903763)
> one has to be very careful about the actual amount.

And limits/process on how/if it can be raised. Otherwise, it's likely to devolve into people literally voting themselves an ever-increasing share of money from the treasury...

Re:Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs by bluGill on Monday May 13, 2019 @12:29PM (#19900908)
I'm not sure if I support UBI or not. There are good arguments on both sides. I suspect that there are unintended consequences of it that are currently completely unknown (I don't know if they are good or bad).

If I'm to support UBI it would be a meager existence: enough that you can eat. Like socialism UBI need to account for eventually somebody needs to do something. Food needs to come from someplace, that means somebody had to work for it, and that somebody should get some reward for it.