One way to think about it: we already have a basic income in the US.

Nobody starves to death in the US. Nobody is denied medical care in the emergency room. In many places (though not everywhere), there are shelters where a person can sleep inside. There are food stamps and a patchwork of welfare programs.

However meager they may seem, things like this amount to a form of universal basic income. Does it prevent people from working?

In some cases, you could say it does--there are populations in every city that survive off this safety net, though they don't live well.

But in most cases, it doesn't prevent people from working. The vast majority of people are willing to work for a better life than what the US "basic income" can provide.

What makes you think this would be any less true if the basic income was, say, $30k per year instead of whatever the equivalent is now to provide the meager safety net we have?

It's certainly possible to survive on a $30k basic income in many places in the US, but for most, it won't be an easy or especially pleasant life. Most people will want better.

With a basic income that's a bit more substantial (and has no strings or stigma attached), people will have more freedom to make choices that can truly improve their circumstances, rather than being stuck on a treadmill of barely making ends meet with no space to come up for air and consider education or career changes.

I am not trying to disagree at all, in fact I think we very much need to do more for the poorest among us, especially the kids. Where does that 30k come from though? For 300 million people, that's 9 trillion dollars a year, ~half of GDP. Inflation would be out of control, essentially Venezuela / Zimbabwe levels.

This might be solved by a Negative Income Tax [1]:

> In economics, a negative income tax (NIT) is a system which reverses the direction in which tax is paid for incomes below a certain level; in other words, earners above that level pay money to the state while earners below it receive money.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax

Edit: I'm not economically literate enough to say I fully support this, but the idea is appealing

So we are going to raise taxes on the middle class to give free money to people that choose not to work? Every single family would then do a calculation to see if its worth the second earner working or if they make more just staying home and getting a UBI. I would not be ok going to work to pay people that have decided that they are fine living on the UBI and don't want to work anymore. Seems like a pretty antagonistic solution to the problem.

>So we are going to raise taxes on the middle class to give free money to people that choose not to work?

1. UBI aims to streamline redistribution of wealth and remove a lot of bureaucracy around it, reducing a lot of the cost of the current system

2. Why the middle class specifically? Upper class could shoulder most of the costs (if there are) easily

>I would not be ok going to work to pay people that have decided that they are fine living on the UBI and don't want to work anymore.

Then don't work. We already have taxes for things which are way less useful for society. You could choose not to work and live on with the bare minimum. That's the freedom UBI brings. Now probably you'd do something or another out of boredom which would end up being useful to society anyway. You'd just do it for free instead of having to convince someone to pay for it.

EDIT: A better way to put it is to see UBI as an investment into people instead of as a cost. You give them what they need to live so that, in aggregate, they can innovate more and worry less about making ends meet. Notwithstanding the fact that this is something we can do, for somewhat cheap and would help a lot of people.

Have you actually done the math? The reality is that there aren't enough upper class people to generate sufficient tax revenue for a meaningful UBI. While I do support higher taxes at the upper levels, you can only squeeze people so much before they decide to bail out and move to tax havens.

>The reality is that there aren't enough upper class people to generate sufficient tax revenue for a meaningful UBI.

What makes you think so?

There are a lot of discussion online about the costs/benefits of UBI. This article has an US-centric view on how this could be afforded

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/14/budget-neutral-universal-bas...

Interesting. Sounds like it axes Medicare, SS, and a large number of tax deductions (which is how the US implements a lot of policy). I'd love a simplified tax code, but unsure of the SS and Medicare removal. I wonder how that would look for people who are currently collecting, paying in at various stages, etc. That would be a massive windfall for most if the money paid-in was returned.

I'm not sure which veteran benefits they want to get rid of specifically, but this could be a bad idea. One of the main ways to increase economic class if one is poor is to serve in the military and have the pay for college after they get out (yes, the payment could cover part of it, assuming they aren't using it for living expenses which would be mostly covered during their enlistment). The VA is under funded and doesn't have a great record, but that's so highly beneficial to many.

> Sounds like it axes Medicare, SS, and a large number of tax deductions…

… as well various special-purpose programs including housing benefits, SSI, SNAP, TANF, veteran's benefits, WIC, Medicaid, SS Disability, and disaster relief. I'm sure those currently receiving these benefits will be thrilled to find out that they're being replaced by a flat UBI payment of $15k/yr (minus taxes) with no allowance for special circumstances or hardship.

> [SS and Medicare removal] would be a massive windfall for most if the money paid-in was returned.

Undoubtedly, but what are the odds of that happening?

It sounds like you’re being sarcastic, but it will be vastly preferable to avoid the bureaucracy that comes with all those programs. Not to mention the cognitive burden that comes from constantly being means tested.

Average Medicaid expenditures (per year) for persons with disabilities (age 0-64) was $19.7k in 2016[0]. It's probably higher by now. So by cutting Medicaid and replacing it with a flat $15k/year you're reducing benefits to persons with disabilities, on average, by almost $5k/year. Since that's an average, I'm sure there are some who will see much larger cuts and quite a few who will find themselves unable to afford necessary treatments or other costs relating to their disability.

That's just Medicaid; it gets worse when you consider all the other programs being cut.

Even allowing for realistic reductions in bureaucratic overhead, you can't just cut narrowly targeted programs and spread the same amount of money evenly across the entire population without significantly reducing the money available, on average, to the original beneficiaries.

[0] https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/fact-sheets/medicaid-facts-and-...

UBI doesn’t mean every expenditure suddenly becomes out of pocket.

The sensible move would be to keep disability, etc. as a form of insurance where costs are spread across the populace.

> The sensible move would be to keep disability, etc. as a form of insurance where costs are spread across the populace.

And now you're back where you started—you haven't eliminated these need-based programs at all, or reduced the bureaucracy. You've just added the UBI as an extra expense.

It’s not at all or nothing proposition. Your employer probably pays you a salary and offers you disability insurance too.

That's literally what the proposition in the link is - remove these existing programs and tax deductions to pay for the UBI.

I'm skeptical you can actually "avoid the bureaucracy" with UBI. At the end of the day there will still be people who need more aid than the standard UBI can provide (eg. people with mental/physical disabilities). We can't realistically let them fend for themselves, so you still need the bureaucracy to manage those people.

In an ideal world you would subsidize mental/physical assistance instead of giving them more money. It's both easier to do and fairer to those affected.

Yeah... letting the companies that provide those services, making a profit from them, determine who qualifies is probably going to rife with fraud and abuse. At best, you end up with inflated costs due to there being little incentivize keeping costs down, like we see with student loans and college.

A lot of countries nationalised these services since they're essential. Nothing stops the US from doing the same.

That's not what the proposal is suggesting, and not really part of most UBI proposals.

"but it will be vastly preferable"

To whom? The government, sure. The individuals using those programs, probably not. Healthcare costs alone would likely wipe that out (for the demographics using Medicare). Rent in many areas would eat more than half.

Rent is expensive in big cities? Wow, the poor are gonna be so pissed when they find out. /s

Affordable housing is a separate issue and point of concern no matter who is paying.

That's not a separate issue. One of the programs they would cut is housing assistance. So that directly affects it.

You could say that housing costs are a larger issue. However that issue is largely a non-issue for the demographic we are talking about currently since they qualify for stuff like HUD assistance (which would be removed under the plan).

I think the premisr of the proposition is that UBI makes housing assistances superfluous, since UBI should cover basic needs.

That may be the premise, but as stated earlier in this chain, it appears to be false ($15k won't cover healthcare, housing, etc that would be removed under the proposal).

I don’t understand. You think every homeless family gets a $7000 apartment? Do you have any idea what HUD actually spends on vouchers, section 8, etc?

> Do you have any idea what HUD actually spends on vouchers, section 8, etc?

The actual amount varies by region and income, but e.g. the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (which is financed by HUD) says[0]:

> For CY2020, HACLA paid more than $582 Million to private Landlords on behalf of more than 44,000 participant families.

That works out to an average (mean) of $13.2k per year per family—and they're only covering a portion of the rent. A couple living on UBI and no longer receiving Section 8 vouchers would spend about half of two UBI payments making up for the loss of Section 8, while the other $16.8k/year needs to cover the rest of their rent, food, clothing, transportation, medicine, and any other necessary expenses for both of them.

[0] http://home.hacla.org/abouts8

HACLA isn’t solely funded by HUD so the actual figure is less.

Spending 50% of household income is fairly cost burdened, but not unworkable. The same problem exists under the current scheme as well.

Living in a big city affords more opportunities to earn income. Some would use their initial UBI payments to move to cheaper locales. Grants could help.

> HACLA isn’t solely funded by HUD so the actual figure is less.

Over 85% of HACLA's revenues in 2020 came directly from HUD[0]. Another 10% were from other government grants (which would also be cut). The numbers reported before were just for the Section 8 program, which AFAICT is administered by HACLA but fully funded by HUD.

> Spending 50% of household income is fairly cost burdened, but not unworkable.

That 50% is the part paid by Section 8. The part not paid by Section 8 is expected to be about 30% of income, which at the 2020 poverty level for a family of two would be about $5k (30% of $17.2k), so the total rent is more like $20k or 65% of their pooled UBIs. And again, this is just Section 8. If you qualify for Section 8 housing you probably qualify for some of the other programs which are also being eliminated.

> Living in a big city affords more opportunities to earn income.

Possibly, but then again we're talking about people who are already living in these places and still qualify for housing assistance. Telling them to get a (better) job or move somewhere cheaper isn't a viable solution. If these were reasonably solutions with UBI they would also be reasonable solutions without UBI.

> Grants could help.

I hope you're not suggesting federal grants since those, too, would be eliminated under this proposal. And really that just gets back to programs targeting specific needs.

[0] https://online.fliphtml5.com/ctqqu/gmgb/#p=42

> That 50% is the part paid by Section 8. The part not paid by Section 8 is expected to be about 30% of income

An excellent point to keep in mind that receiving assistance doesn’t mean you have no other source of income, so the situation likely would not be as dire as you suggest.

You seem to be hung up on the proposal from the CNBC link? Which is a strawman purposely designed by the right wing think tank AEI with the flaws you’ve keyed in on, so that it can be easily batted down like a strawman should.

"You think every homeless family gets a $7000 apartment?"

No, and it's pretty disingenuous for you to put words in my mouth.

It's not so much what HUD spends as what those individuals would need to pay. $500 is an extremely low estimate that would still mean $6k per year (assuming they live in the cheapest stuff they can find). Average costs in most cities for a studio apartment are generally over $1k, giving about $12k per year.

This is only one of the many things eliminated under the proposal. Healthcare is the real big rock and could bankrupt anyone needing substantial care. Even just premiums run from $150-300 per month for the cheapest plans (depending on various factors).

The article has a chart.

This is a transfer from the very poorest to the middle and upper middle class (how much revenue does a tax on millionaires really accomplish?)

I'll take it because it would benefit me, but that doesn't make it great policy. Also most UBI supporters aren't usually on the same side of an issue as AEI.

The chart shows a slight negative for the very poorest (that are eligible for benefits - it doesn't seem to take into account the people that don't pay taxes, aka the very very poorest, who would presumably not see such a loss).

Although this is fixable by taxing more the middle class if that's what we wish to do (aka, not being "budget-neutral")

"slight negative" is a net loss of what looks like 15k or over 1/3 of the cash value of their current benefits.

> Why the middle class specifically? Upper class could shoulder most of the costs

Reach people have disproportionate political influence so the can carve some exemptions for themselves and they have resources to exploit unintentionally created loopholes. Middle class typically have no ways to avoid taxes.

Lets say we instituted a 100% wealth tax on the 1%, that's 45 trillion if somehow we could get the cash value for their stocks at a normal valuation(which someone would have to buy). How many years does that fund the UBI for until we run out of that money?

See this post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30248741

That says wiping out all social programs and raising taxes on those over 1m/yr in income would cover 15k/yr.

It seems like 45tn in asset seizures would cover the additional 15k/yr for around 10 years.

But I would be very worried about the impact on capital markets and company formation.

I would immediately leave the US if this kind of seizure got through the House and looked like it might pass the Senate.

The stock market would go to zero as there would be no one capable of buying that stock and pretty much no demand either. People would know that their assets can be seized whenever the government wants. 401k's and retirement accounts would be wiped out. Pension funds would go bankrupt overnight. I feel like this is the scenario that so many overlook when they call for massive wealth taxes or the abolishment of the billionaire / millionaire class.

This is hyperbole. Removing loopholes and taxing the top 5% more will not destroy society. Just like taxing the middle class didn't make them stop working, or made them work shitty jobs just to not pay taxes.

Sure, but we were specifically talking about a 100% wealth rax scenario. Very likely not a realistic scenario

It actually happened not that long ago, in the US.

And the country did not collapsed. It actually entered a era or unparalleled prosperity ( but that had little to do with taxes )

In 1945 tax rate was around 90% IIRC

Honest question : you do understand that a 100% tax rate means that 100% of revenu are taxed correct. ( as opposed to 100% are taken by the state ). Of those 100% only a percentage of it is actually “lost”.

Sorry if it’s obvious but the catastrophic scenario you are describing seems to correspond to “let’s take all the rich folks money, all of it”

Source on high historical tax rate in the US around 1950 https://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/...

Holy crap how are your comments not greyed out?

Marginal income tax rate of 90% != Wealth tax (for which we haven't even tested constitutionality)

Also, nobody paid close to 90% thanks to generous loop holes and strategic tax avoidance: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-nocera-tax-avoidance-...

I don’t know what is the wealth tax you are referring to and I don’t see it referenced in my comment.

I was pointing out a historical period where taxes were setup differently than now. We tend to forget it was the case; and it seems to be out of the collective psyché.

Indeed in 2022 nobody pays close to 90%. I was referring to the 1945 to 1960 period. ( see linked article, nice read )

`wonderwonder` said that a 100% wealth tax was unprecedented and not a realistic scenario.

Then you replied "It actually happened not that long ago, in the US" and cited that the US used to have a 90% marginal income tax bracket.

A 90% marginal income rate is not in the same universe as a 100% wealth tax rate.

I see now. Thanks for pointing it out.

lol, we are on the same page. I am not suggesting it as an real option I am stating it to describe the insanity of the people who think that just taxing the rich will supply all the money we need. I am using the example of a 100% wealth tax to show there is just not enough money to do everything that is desired. That regardless of taxation we would have to print money.

I see. Sorry I guess I’m dense, I completely missed that in your message.

That "free money" is just enough to subsist on and pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Instead of "choosing not to work", think of it as "seeking work that's a good fit for them". The incentives are set up so that entering the labor market and improving their earnings makes them better off - which, incredibly enough, most poverty alleviation programs (which are a non-trivial chunk of all government spending) utterly fail at.

> see if its worth the second earner working or if they make more just staying home

The available experimental outcomes show that by and large, people that stay at home on a properly-designed UBI are those who can thereby make highly-valued contributions to the household, such as by raising young kids. Otherwise, they choose to work just as much.

Any credible UBI proposal always involves raising taxes to support payments to everyone. Usually the marketing pitch is that it will be a wash for the middle class (tax increases ~= UBI payouts). But of course "middle class" is poorly defined and spans a wide range of incomes that aren't taxed the same. Presumably a middle class family in San Jose would have a much different calculation than a similar family in Des Moines.

> So we are going to raise taxes on the middle class to give free money to people that choose not to work?

No, ideally, we would raise taxes on the upper class, to give money (compared to the status quo system where we already have means-tested poverty support aid) to the people choosing to do more work (since means-tested aid gets cut with additional income, but UBI doesn't, except by the effects of progressive taxation.)

One way to do part of this:

* Roll payroll taxes into progressive income tax (including basing eligibility for payroll-tax funded programs on total income, not just income currently subject to payroll taxes.) For Social Security, this may involve adding one or more additional “bend points” to the benefit formula.

* Eliminate favorable rates for long-term capital gains, taxing them at normal income tax rates; to better target fairness for gains that genuinely require an extended period and which would be overtaxed if treated as income in the year of realization, allow freely recognizing income (not just capital income) for tax purposes in advance of realization, and additionally allow deferral of some portion of windfall (based on recent past years as baseline) gains over a period of several years.

Taxes wouldn't necessarily be raised. The idea would be to replace many (possibly all) of the usual government social services by these payments.

You already pay taxes, and they are already used to fund other people. The idea would be to allow people to choose individually how to spend this money. The goal is efficiency, fair distribution of benefits and elimination of bureaucracy and administrative overhead.

Well, you'd still need the usual government social services though in order to protect those who might still be homeless or hungry even with the UBI.

You could also state : lower class people who choose to do work would be catapulted to another revenue level.

It seems to be what is happening in Argentina.

A system like this exists in many countries already, except it's framed differently; in my own country, if you're below a certain income level, you are entitled to stipends to help pay for rent, health insurance, child (day) care and probably some other things. It's a socialist support system, and it's framed in a way that doesn't make 'the rich' feel like they are paying 'the poor'.

Of course, there's a huge administrative overhead involved as well, plus there's a big case going on now of people falsely being accused of defrauding the system because some department got rewarded for finding fraudsters, or whatever the issue was. It financially ruined many people because they went from getting a bit of money to help make ends meet, to getting charged €30,000 or more in back pay and fines.

1. 22% of the US population are children. so it doesn't have to be UBI the moment someone pops out of the wound

2. we put almost a trillion dollars into welfare every year.

3. You don't have to provide Equal UBI to every citizen regardless of their income. You can make it like a reverse tax that decreases as you go higher in income that peters out at 100k or so (which 30% of Americans make).

No point in taking the plan someone gave as an example so literally. These are econimic problems that experts spent decades thinking aobut and would take months to draft in order to prevent these obvious counterarguments.

Automation technology has allowed a machine to create 100,000s to millions of a product with very little input from a human to put in the raw resources into it.

GDP grows instantly by at least 13% (in the US) if doing a $1,000/month UBI, for example.

Etc.

Andrew Yang has looked into this a lot - his last two books: “The War On Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future”, and “Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy”

This is nonsense completely disconnected from reality. Sure we could increase GDP in nominal dollar terms by 13% or 130% or any arbitrary number by just printing more dollars but inflation doesn't make us wealthier. At some point someone has to actually make things. Most forms of resource extraction, farming, and manufacturing are still quite labor intensive. The dilettantes who believe that automation will save us from working have probably never had to clean the conveyor belt in a mushroom packing plant; show me a robot capable of doing that.

Have you ever invested in yourself and did you become more valuable to yourself, to the people around you, etc?

And do you think people who are struggling to just survive, who are constantly stressed (which causes mental health issues, poor decision making, and long-term dis-ease progression) will become more productive to society, become more valuable/useful to society if their basic needs are covered - and that people will become less counter-productive (which has a cost too)?

What makes you think people who get UBI also aren't going to want to work? People being lazy isn't attractive.

The logic that people think people given money won't work doesn't fit because billionaires still keep working; yes, some people won't work, but better they don't work than go into crime and hurt society - and then cost society even more if they're caught and we have to pay for them to be in jail.

Dilettantes, neat word - it seems like you're the one who's under-studied in this area though - you seem to have all-or-nothing thinking as well, while catastrophizing while not working from first principles; I am certain you could create a system to efficiently clean a conveyor belt in a mushroom packing plant: high pressure air/water washers, robotic arms that can target specific areas (like how robotic arms move around material to then weld vehicles together, etc) - perhaps requiring innovation on the conveyor belt technology itself.

Have you ever searched for self-washing mushroom packing plant conveyor belt? Maybe someone's already developing/developed one?

What I think is the greatest about automating as much as possible is that that means we free up more time for humans to be creative, to develop themselves and their mind and knowledge, to raise healthy families, to build and strengthen community, etc.

I'm all for automation, let's build more of it. But the current state of automation technology is nowhere near the level that UBI proponents naively assume. In the real world that shit it tremendously expensive, not very flexible, and often unreliable.

Increased automation will raise living standards but it generally doesn't free up time for humans to do non-work things. People contine working just as much but on different tasks. And let's be realistic. Most people aren't very creative, and even the ones who try to be creative never produce much of value. If they don't have to work then a lot of them are going to sit around getting high and playing Xbox. I'm not a moralizer, I have nothing against people choosing to spend their time on such activities. But there's no way I'm going to vote to raise my own taxes in order to provide UBI for people who are capable of working but choose not to.

I think if you actually created a matrix and outlined costs and productivity of machines and their development and operations cost, you'd clearly see that your argument is wrong - but until someone thoroughly puts that effort in, it's all just conjecture from both of us isn't it?

What if you don't actually have to raise your taxes because the productivity increase, and reduced inefficiency, actually pays for itself? Or what if it is a temporary tax but then not only elevates the quality of life of the poorest who would arguably benefit the most (at least who's basic needs aren't met so Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs aren't met anywhere near adequately) but that also your own quality of life improves as well - more than the "$1,000"/month you're receiving in addition?

Also realize that companies/businesses avoiding taxes can't avoid a VAT, so that revenue leak is fixed and puts more money into the system that otherwise is draining it without replenishing it.

"GDP grows instantly by at least 13% (in the US) if doing a $1,000/month UBI, for example"

That really does not track though, sure GDP will go up if the money is spent, but its just spending money that we either borrowed or just printed. Not to mention a ton of that money would be saved, essentially removing it from circulation. Inflation would go out of control. If not, then why not just print 100,000 for each person?

12k a year for 300 million people is ~3.6 trillion. ~20% of gdp a year being printed.

It's too complex to rehash here in a comment - there are people like Andrew Yang who "have done the MATH" and it works out; you tie UBI to inflation also, so people only with UBI don't get priced out of the market, at the same time people can move to towns where things like housing inflation isn't running wild, etc.

Yang also has said you make up most of the difference with a Value Added Tax (consumption tax) - and you can say make Facebook ads have an 80% tax, and diapers - necessities having 0% tax, that way poorer people aren't impacted by the tax; if everyone's receiving $12,000 / year in UBI then you can design it so only people spending more than $200,000 per year are actually paying back into the system - otherwise the taxes you pay is just putting that $12k UBI back into the system. What Yang points out is with the UBI tied to inflation + VAT you can have many levers to pull on if you need to to increase/decrease tax.

Another chunk of covering that UBI comes from cash and cash-like social assistance programs that people will have to decide for themselves if the $1,000/month is better for them or if their current social assistance programs (for cash and cash-like things) is better for them; and no, it's not a Trojan Horse, Yang doesn't want to cut social assistance programs - but if people choose the cash because that's better for their specific circumstances (and they get to decide that, not a bureaucratic government) then that program's spending is going down - the cost of what's provided goes down (turned into the UBI) but then also the management/bureaucracy cost of managing different programs will go down as well depending on how many people chose the UBI over the cash/cash-like options.

And then there's even more that ties into this that reduces costs; stress going down, crime going down, emergency services costs (fire/ambulance/police) go down, etc.

You are trying to disagree here.

Otherwise, you’d have looked at other comparable economic powers worldwide that provide a more socialist alternative and see that they are nowhere near the inflation rate you’re describing, e.g. France.

Granted, it’s not $30K a year, but $7.5K for a single person, with free healthcare & education that could be considered a form of income. Doing the same maths as you did, round it $10K per person and you’re at 30% of GDP.

It’s been running for years and debt levels didn’t skyrocket much higher than the US.

Again, where does the 30% of gdp come from? Frances tax brackets seem to run ~10 - 15% higher than the comparable US ones. Now if I could get free health care and college for my kids I may be open to paying an extra 10% assuming the quality was good. Using round numbers though, we are taxing everyone an extra 10 - 15% but need to raise an extra 30% of gdp, we are still short. France has a VAT of 20% on goods sold, likely why their Debt to GDP is stable. So while they dont have inflation, everything has gone up 20% right off the bat.

Is a VAT a regressive tax? The poor likely spend 100% of their income so are taxed 20% on everything. The rich are able to save a good portion of it, so get to keep it tax free after income taxes.

Not sure I would be willing to pay essentially 30 - 35% more in taxes for 'free' health care. That's more than I save for retirement. How would I retire? Retirement would essentially be living on the UBI.

Frances Debt to GDP is similar to the US. What happens as population decline affects France and less people work? The Debt to GDP keeps climbing and begins to do so faster and faster.

Doctors and medical professionals would likely have to take paycuts as the federal government cannot afford to pay them 325k a year. You could argue that we could make up the difference by cutting military spending which I agree with, but the military is very much a jobs program as is, so a ton of those soldiers and military contractors including high paying engineering jobs at places like Lockheed go away now. Once that happens and the US can no longer afford to project force in europe, what happens in France when Russia gets aggressive, do they in turn have to raise defense spending and reduce benefits. If we have a military conflict, are we bringing back the draft?

So again I am not disagreeing, I think certain benefits should be given, including universal health care, I am just saying its very complicated and I don't have all the answers and would love to hear some.

I’ve computed the 30% of GDP using the same maths as you did before, by taking 10K per capita over 34K of GDP per capita.

Yes taxes are higher in France. Yes some budgets and jobs might need a pay cut to apply a similar model in the US. That doesn’t sound like an impossible task.

All I’m saying is that dismissing the whole idea of your parent comment by saying that a basic income representing a high portion of GDP would imply absurdly high inflation rates is not true, as there are at least a few counter-examples. Maybe the amount is too high. But the idea is not as unreasonable as you made it sound.

Note regarding population decline: France is reaching its peak of aged population / younger blood to infuse the economy following WW2’s baby boom. It will likely not have a higher impact than it currently has today in the upcoming years.

The US DOD employs something like 1MM soldiers and 1MM civilian staff (actual numbers slanted more towards military personnel.) There are huge savings there before you start cutting into contracts (which TBF also need cuts.)

Then the important part is to not think of those jobs as disappearing. Think of those bodies - educated, professionally trained bodies - that can now alleviate the hiring shortage faced by industry.

Think of the boost to GDP when that effort is applied to productive enterprise.

I like the general idea of UBI but I don't see it work without price fixing which is often the first step in an economical downward spiral.

Also I don't understand how any low-trust society like ours would survive the transition phase into UBI when people (even though they like working) might take an extended holiday if the UBI pays for all living costs. Suddenly millions of critical positions would be left unoccupied.

The inflation argument is one I don't know enough to be able to square myself. Don't fully understand how whatever the UBI is eventually reduces to being below the bare minimum of basic.

But, putting that part aside, the idea is that it's just the barest of basics. So if you have a decent salary now, the UBI that is 1/5th or less than that is not gonna help you pay your rent/mortgage that has gone from 30% of your salary to 150% of your UBI. People could likely realign their life though over time which would be massively impactful. Perhaps some would prefer having their basic needs met + working a very part amount of time for some spending money + engaging in a different core life pursuit. But, with that part taking time the market could presumably correct.

That's just for high earners though who can't currently just drop out / transition overnight due to present obligations. The folks who are closer to where a UBI would be putting them anyway it gets way more difficult. A negative income tax might work there, so that keeping the job is still more regardless of what that currently salary is. That flat UBI tends to have some problems in that regard. Then again, those same folks might be over night doubling their take home cash or being able to have no change in cash for a complete reduction in work and the temptation to just go to zero hours would be high (assuming they aren't in financial pain already where the current amount is still not enough). A flat UBI would probably need to be slowly rolled out. Basically get folks used to being more well off so that the flat UBI only can be appropriately viewed as less ideal than their (new) current situation.

Why would it need price-fixing? We basically provided a UBI of 5k as part of the pandemic and it seems to have worked relatively well.

If a position is critical enough it should probably be a higher paid position.

Inflation and the national debt are way up. It might feel nice to have an extra $5K today but we increased the burden on our descendants and have nothing of lasting value to show for it. Shame on us.

No one is going to raise wages for a particular position just because it was arbitrarily classified as "critical".

The benefit of a market economy is that if people really do consider something critical, they will pay more for it.

The increase profit margins will attract competitive companies or existing companies will be forced to pay workers more for overtime to satisfy the demand.

The negative of this is that the poor or unemployed have very few dollars with which to vote. A UBI solves this by giving them at least some small percentage of the vote.

I think you're being disingenuous if you believe receiving a no-shit check from the government for $30k per year is the same as scraping by through food banks, homeless shelters, and one-time medical care in the emergency room. I would say all of those things absolutely prevent people from not working. No one would willingly want to live their life that way.

$30k is neither here nor there, but how many people manage to get hired for useful work while they're staying at homeless shelters? The simplest story is that the prospect of homelessness only makes it harder to engage in productive work.

There are a lot of other programs at work. Access is a mess, but 0 earners with children qualify for about 50k in benefits between SNAP, childcare assistance, housing assistance, medicaid, and CHIP.

Nicely written. I like to think of UBI as a tool to get out of a local minimum which isn't easily possible if you're a slave to your minimum wage job.

If it's $30k per year, that's not very far off from the median salary in the US. So I think many people would be a fairly pleasant life, particularly for a couple making $60k. I think the dynamics of who would work or not changes considerably from your example of food stamps and homeless shelters (unless substantial inflation happens, which I think would be likely in that scenario).

Let’s not say nobody starves death in America because people do. Emergency room healthcare is also a poor substitute for most health issues beyond acute illness and trauma.

The working poor do get a lot out of social services that are available if they take advantage of those programs, though some states make it as hard as possible.

But I’m on the same page that UBI is a good thing and better for everybody. People have basic needs and they should be provided for.

I still don’t see how we get there in the US, sadly. The fact that the childcare tax credit was enough to lift so many families out of poverty speaks volumes and yet it seems to be politically ignored by conservatives/republican voters despite the fact that these programs and other social services benefit those communities in red states more than blue states.

The best trick the wealthy pulled was convincing the working poor that all the people they don’t like are abusing the system and living like kings while the working stiff is just getting by.

This doesn't say where the money comes from.

> This doesn't say where the money comes from.

Taxing the middle class.

Surely there would be some limitations to that. Eventually you would run out of other people's money

The middle class has been decimated by various economic policies.

It seems like those who don't want their old jobs back, don't want to work for the wages offered in places like sandwich shops, or think they're above a certain class of work prove this out. The "everyone really wants to work" idea seems pretty squarely in the land of myth, at least here in California.

Someone has to wash dishes, dig ditches, empty bedpans, make sandwiches, etc. Further, the sandwich shop which employs family members etc. and doesn't pay an unskilled laborer $30/hour will crush the ones that do. Multiple businesses have demonstrated that virtue alone doesn't make overpriced goods sustainable in the long term. And nobody seems to want to examine the basic math behind adding $10 per hour to everyone's hourly wage.

It is definitely outside the box. But think of it like this:

For the last few hundred years, human productivity has vastly increased. Thanks to technological progress, farming has gone from what the bulk of people do to a niche activity that most see only driving by.

Who benefits most from the productivity increases? The rich. We are approaching gilded-age levels of inequality, while the wage for most workers is stagnant. What if instead of concentrating that wealth on a few people who won the "ovarian lottery" [1] we split the dividends of our ancestors' achievements among everybody?

This isn't totally ridiculous. For example, Alaska has spent decade giving each resident about $1000/year from a fund built up with oil revenues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund

So imagine a program like that but bigger. Maybe a poverty-level income for each person, like $1000/month. What would happen? Some people wouldn't work. But that's nothing unusual; only 63% of people in the US work right now. (And really, how many people are doing bullshit jobs that don't add much to the economy?) Others would keep working because they wanted more money, or just because they like working. (Personally, I'm in that last group.)

Could this work? Personally, I'm skeptical but curious. But it's definitely not impossible.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/16/warren-buffett-says-being-a-...

> nobody has to work

That's generally not the expectation. The expectation is that there's more than enough wealth to allow for everyone to have a baseline of income to meet their most basic needs. You want to buy a house, buy a car, travel, eat at fancy restaurants, buy expensive things, you still have to work. But if you want to quit your job and find another one you don't need to fear starvation or eviction because you are without income for a few months.

It's the same logic as preventative medicine. Instead of dishing out money for surgery you can catch problems earlier when they are cheaper to fix.

> The expectation is that there's more than enough wealth to allow for everyone to have a baseline of income to meet their most basic needs.

Yes, that's what they said: nobody has to work. They can if they want the additional perks you've described, but they don't have to.

I guess you're right. I interpreted that as "no body works" which...is not what they said.

>> How exactly is this supposed to work? The government prints money and gives it away for free, nobody has to work?

I grew up around a lot of poor people. One issue in the US is healthcare. If you make <13k (or whatever your state limit is) you dont qualify for government healthcare. Also, 13k is too little to actually purchase private healthcare, so there is a "donut hole" where it makes sense not to work below a certain wage since you get less with income than with no income.

The solution here is obvious to me -- if you provide some of the benefits without means-testing (i.e., the "U" in "UBI") then people are incentivized to work even bits without risking losting healthcare/foodstamps.

Another example was in college -- if you earned even a bit of money, your student aid often went down commensurately. At that point, why would you work? You were no better off unless you could make a LOT of money. I realize this has changed over the past 20yrs.

Also, as someone who's gone thru this -- this is a very delicate process. You do one thing wrong, and you're in bureaucratic hell for months without benefits. The "safe" thing to do is to earn nothing -- God forbid you earn a thousand here or there and lose medical care. The whole system of means-testing makes no sense. It seems to be more a way to create jobs for bureaucrats.

It Works like this in Denmark

So the "where the money comes from" part is a separate discussion (maybe another thread?), but I'll try to answer "how it (could) work".

So, let's say there's some amount X that is enough for a person to afford housing, food, reasonable transport etc. It's as simple as saying "everyone gets this amount now, rich or poor".

For a rich person, it'll be a drop in the bucket, but for a poor person it could mean the economic freedom to quit a bad job. A few quick points around this:

* inflation. People keep worrying about this. Wages have stagnated since the 70s, and whenever raising minimum wage is mentioned, people say it will cause inflation. My counter-question is, how have we stagnated wages and still have inflation as high as it is now? It kinda feels like inflation isn't a result of growing wages but tied to economic growth in general. If inflation will just happen as part of economic growth, why not cut poor people in on the pie a little bit? (I know why, I'm asking rhetorically)

* welfare. People think we're doing something like this already with welfare, except welfare comes with all kinds of random classist baggage. Should the person get welfare if they, say, try to buy some 'luxury' item that's not strictly needed to live but might give them a small hint of joy in an otherwise tough situation? This version just takes away the restrictions and qualifying conditions by saying everyone just qualifies.

* no one working. Of course people would still work. It's just they wouldn't be forced to do so under pain of homelessness or starvation. Imagine saying "I quit" and still getting your base needs met. What kind of working conditions would people have to give you to keep you wanting to work? What kind of job satisfaction would need to become the norm?

I realize many of these don't apply to many of the people in this forum, but it can make a huge difference in industries like food service, where working conditions and perks are... a bit different from tech.

Universal basic income is not "anti-work", it's pro-work. The GP seems a bit confused. The simplest way of putting it is that everyone gets a "baseline" subsidy that's at best just enough to live a minimally dignified life. But working to earn a supplemental income can never leave you worse off. And even when this can be described as "anti-forced" work, that's because having such a safe baseline gives you the flexibility of trying for a better fit. It's something everyone would want for themselves.

If you give someone a fish, they starve after a day.

Teach someone to fish and they can eat + sell the fish.

But if I make a fish-catching machine to catch fish for everyone, does everyone eat, or does everyone starve?

UBI is essentially a means of ensuring that in a world where the robots catch all the fish, people can still afford to buy a fish.

You still need a fish catching machine. In the literal sense. Despite all the innovations, we still need fisherman and sailors. Even if we have a fish catching machine who/what will make the fish catching machine? And there are still tons of other automation problems and a fish catching machines isn't even the hardest one.

The automation challenge is often conveniently underplayed, while it's an insanely hard problem. You might as wel say a wizard will do it.

Will it be possible some day in the future? Probably? In a relevant time frame? Probably not.

It's fascinating how some people view on manufacturing is oversimplified. Fish catching machine needs maintenance, it uses consumable items to work properly. To produce all of that there should be tools, transportation, mining, engineering and so on. There will be no state in any near term future when it would be possible to have work optional for any meaningful group of people. All the welfare we have right now is basically a subsidy (mandatory charity) of working people to not working people.

I believed more in "corporate welfare" when a corporation finds a way to create a free product for large group of people while selling something else. But closer and closer connections between the government and corporations made this possibility less likely from my opinion.

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

Now I certainly agree that there is no realistic scenario where any significant portion of people can just choose free fish in 5 or even 10 years[1]. But the automation of work tasks is like Mike's bankruptcy: it builds slowly until we have the sudden realization that we're over the cliff. Robots making and repairing robots, people watched over by machines of loving grace, the whole 9 yards.

Personally, I would like to have the UBI parachute strapped on before we find ourselves floating Wile E. Coyote style over an economic collapse. Given the rate at which new legislation passes in today's society, the time to start the fight is at least 20 years before you really need it.

[1] Unless those singulatarian types are right, and human-level machine intelligence is 7 years out: https://longbets.org/1/

Check the percent of the population involved in agriculture over time, or involved in fishing. From a quick Google search something like 90% in 1800 vs 2% now.

We definitely have machines, not saying there’s no labor involved but it’s certainly less than it has been historically. It really is similar to the village where one person operates a fish catching machine.

I am against UBI because I think we aren't there just yet with technology but I do agree that we need a way to ensure that "everyone can eat" when the time comes.

Right now we also need to look at how we can provide job for those who are affected by automation and not just say that the coal miners need "learn to code" and move.

Edit to add: We have some industries that are highly automated, ie. semiconductor manufacturing. Yet they still have raw inputs that take non-automated work. If we were able to develop a complete automated line, I would support gov/private group "socializing" the output.

We could at least be experimenting, maybe implement a $100/month UBI in one state, see how it affects their productivity/health/budget, consider trying other numbers in other locations.

Can you nail down what it will look like once we are there?

Technology wise, there are a lot of diffrent visions of how it might look like.

I liked the description of the Universal Constructors in Diamond Age, toothed gears that captured atoms and placed them into buckets, sorting the elements out of the ocean water.

That is probably more fantasy though, more likely to like like how it does now with modular rock crushers, moving belts, etc.

Food supply is going to be interesting(read difficult), we can automate harvesting grains(rice, wheat, corn) easily. But things like tomatoes, lettuce, spinach rely heavily on human labor to tend and harvest. One of the things that is noticeable is that as we select foods that ship and store better(which we will be doing more of as we automate more) they are less tasty. Maybe we can engineer foods that are easy to harvest, tasty and transport well but that will necessitate us to get over our fear of GMO.

On the societal front, I would not want the government to have control of the manufacturing systems because the temptation to use control against political adversaries would be to great(See Biden's recent comments on how Spotify should do more about Joe Rogan and how Trump used his influence(Not taking a stance on any issues, just showing the issues exist and would have grave ramifications).

My thought would be that as you have a product more and more automated and vertically integrated, let's say bread. Planting, harvest, milling, mixing, baking are all owned by a handful of companies with minimum human labor. Government should then hold bids to see who gets to supply the market, limiting each supplier to below a 20%(?) share as to keep multiple suppliers in the market but also spread the risk so you don't have a too big to fail.

The companies would be paid via taxes and everyone would get free bread.

Now, you would have to deal with the effects of that; people wasting bread because it's free, health effects of eating more bread because it's free are two that I can think of off the top of my head.

One other thought on the after effects: We will have no way to educate and no way to punish those who commit crime. I like kids but I doubt I would want to spend the majority of my day trying to get a group of them to learn when I don't have to. And honestly, they would also feel like it is a waste of time because it is not needed.

No one will want to spend their time policing ,running prisons, jails or courthouses either. Hell, you have a hard enough time trying to get people to serve jury duty now.

I know we like to that crime will cease to exist if we have plenty, but there is more than the lust for physical items that drives crime. Desire to control others, lust.

The transition to a society where everyone can get what they want, when they want it is fraught with pitfalls and traps. The best cases would end with up something like the Isaac Asimov's utopias or Ian M. Bank's Culture universe. Middle case is dystopias like Snow Crash and Diamond Age. Worst case is that humanity falls into a hedonistic loop, people stop learning and then things break. Probably wouldn't kill everyone but humanity would be reset at that point.

Random tidbit that I didn't work in: If you can't design a system that is 100% perfect and requires no maintenance, you should design one that requires ~yearly maintenance. If the maintenance cycles are too far apart, no one will remember when to do it and how to do it. Later when it breaks, there might not be anyone who knows how to fix it.

Kind of reminds me of The Mitchell and Webb Look skits about the Angel Summoner and the BMX Bandit. BMX Bandit (the workers) want to be useful, but they just can't compete with an Angel Summoner (automation machine) that can just summon an angelic horde every time and solve the problem without hardly any effort.

[1]: https://youtu.be/zFuMpYTyRjw

At face value, and with traditional neoclassical economics, it does appear to be an infeasible facade. Ex nilho creation of Robison Crusoe style goods.

From a practical reality, we already have a UBI of $0 guaranteed, and with time cost that increases if people want to seek welfare benefits. A UBI could be implemented, potentially, solely on streamlining of processes to decrease the costs of welfare benefit search.

Likely a realistic funding would be a mix of improving services delivery (lowering costs) and taxation of capital holders (offset some of the gains that put labor out of work). Under neoclassical theory, there are major differences in the two workhorse models of overlapping generations versus infinitely lived agents. An OLG model better approximates groups of people and their lifecycles.

In my view, this is a slow-burn fight w/in the optimal taxation literature, based solely on the papers themselves and having not participated in the conferences!

[1] https://www.nber.org/papers/w24335

[2] https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed019/258.html

You cut most of our bureaucratic social safety net (food stamps, disability, social security, etc) and replace it with a system where everyone gets enough for the bare basics. If you were smart, you'd fund it with a carbon tax.

In all honesty I don't see UBI becoming a thing until we start automating ourselves into unemployment. People say this would increase inflation. Maybe. Let's trial it with 1% of the population and find out.

That's a tad bit insane - disabled people won't be able to find jobs, whether you want it or not. You are pushing them deeper in poverty by giving them the same amount of money as you give to someone who chooses not to work.

Well I think for ubi to accomplish its goals you'd have to index it to the federal poverty line. I used to be on disability and let me tell you, the FPL would have been a drastic improvement. People really don't understand how little someone on disability makes. It was not enough for me to live a remotely dignified life even in a very low cost of living area.

Continuing to have additional assistance for people who need more is not ruled out by what parent said.

> until we start automating ourselves into unemployment

Still waiting for steam engines to replace human labour...

John Henry would have a word.

There will still be those who spend all their UBI on drugs or whatever and have nowhere to stay. Do we just let them die on the street since there's no more social safety nets?

There are those that do so today. Given we have no real mental health facilities, those people simply wind up in jail on drug possession charges. It's inhumane, yeah, but I don't think replacing things with UBI would make it more so. Maybe one of these days we'll actually get our act together to help those that need it most.

I assume with more 'normal' people being liberated from the yoke of work there might be more volunteers and volunteer initiatives to help those in need out. The question is how much of the self-destructive behaviour if a product of a 'sick' society where mental health treatment seems prohibited by the cost.

> In all honesty I don't see UBI becoming a thing until we start automating ourselves into unemployment.

From a political stability perspective, I expect this would be wise to get in front of.

From a political perspective, it is easier to profit (in terms of political capital or actual capital) from a crisis than it is to prevent it. If you prevent it, then you've spent a lot of capital all for most people to say "well, nothing even happened!". It is a sad state of affairs.

> How exactly is this supposed to work? The government prints money and gives it away for free, nobody has to work?

I'm not a committed supporter of UBI, so my opinion should be taken with a grain of salt (or more) but I assume the whole point is to promote wealth redistribution. Not print money. So you give everyone some amount, say 12K/year, and then support it with taxes.

It sounds infeasible with the current budget, because of course it is. But modeling the final result isn't that simple I'd guess. More money into the circle, so the circle gets bigger, etc. So while it'd be easy to shoot it down using a single iteration of the circle, I'd like to see someone do a longer term simulation. I'm sure they have, I just haven't seen it.

> Not print money. So you give everyone some amount, say 12K/year, and then support it with taxes.

I’m trying to say this with utmost respect. But $12k x 330M is $4T/year.

In 2021, the US collected about $4T [0]. The US spent about $7T [1]. So it would take lots of iterations to figure this out.

I think there are some efficiencies so you can reduce some of this budget but introducing a UBI like this would up the spent to $10T and require an extra $6T in taxes every year.

It just seems so non-sensible. As the only way to reach this level would be to inflate money so it bought nothing much.

Proposing this seems less likely than just researching Star Trek replicators to reduce the need to buy food or something.

Or free housing for everyone is more feasible since that seems more achievable than increasing tax revenue by 150%.

Even if you seize every penny of US billionaires assets that’s only $4.2T [2]. At least that covers the first year but then those assets are gone.

[0] https://datalab.usaspending.gov/americas-finance-guide/reven...

[1] https://apnews.com/article/business-economy-government-spend...

[2] https://americansfortaxfairness.org/billionaires/

> Proposing this seems less likely than just researching Star Trek replicators to reduce the need to buy food or something.

The problem with that is, without UBI, replicators don't solve the problem. The corporation that invents such a thing would get rich and charge the poorest to use it.

We currently HAVE enough food, shelter, and health care as a society to cover everyone, but the efficiency/productivity gains haven't sufficiently sufficiently benefited everyone. UBI is one proposed option for correcting that situation.

As for the actual cost - just as an exercise for trimming, without going into excessive detail:

* About 80 million of the 330 million in the US are under 18[1]. Let's assume 4 year olds don't need UBI. Maybe there's a childcare credit, maybe not, but for the sake of NOT encouraging parents to have kids just for the paycheck, let's start UBI at 18+ years old

* About half of US households make over $75k right now[2]. 33% make over 100k. I'm handwaving a bit here, but let's say the tax changes to support UBI result in increased taxes, and the "breakeven" point is somewhere around the 75k mark (i.e., above 75k household income - which would be 87k for a 1 person home, or 99k for a 2 person home, with the UBI - there's enough taxed off that the household is paying as much or more in taxes than they get from UBI).

With those two tweaks, you're down to 125 million people or less that are getting more than they put in. And that comes to about 1.25T USD. And... if you look at our spending trends[3], that 7T USD number for 2021 you quoted already includes 1.6T in "income security". So it might actually be possible to hit UBI with the current budget/deficit by rearranging how the money is distributed.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/241488/population-of-the...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/203183/percentage-distri...

[3] https://datalab.usaspending.gov/americas-finance-guide/spend...

I think the answer to replicators isn’t to give people enough money to buy replicators. The issue is to make replicators free to everyone.

I think this is parallel to “free college.” I don’t think we should give everyone $20k/year to go to college. We should make college free and low cost.

I don’t think it’s fair to funnel UBI to billionaires as the goal is to help people, but make some people really rich with the new transfers.

> I’m trying to say this with utmost respect. But $12k x 330M is $4T/year.

I don't disagree, it sounds infeasible. But it's such a massive stimulus that I think it's really hard to model the real outcome. I just think it's probably not accurate to try and model it using a single iteration of the current budget.

Ultimately I think we have to collectively decide whether or not our society can support a basic level of civilized existence for all members, or if there is a core requirement that some people are going to need to suffer so that a plurality will be able to live comfortably. Same for health care -- can we simply not afford for everyone to have a basic level of health care? Must someone else suffer so that I can get adequate care for myself and family?

UBI and things like it are just a means to that end.

No, it’s really easy to model. And all models show it as not feasible. Saying something is “hard to model” is not accurate in this situation.

It’s like saying “it’s hard to model how prepend will marry Katherine Hepburn.” It’s true, I suppose. But it’s true because that’s an impossible situation on many dimensions.

And again, it’s not about some suffering so others don’t (although I think that’s an unhealthy way of looking at it). Even if you take all money from all billionaires. Like every penny and they suffer. That doesn’t even support a simple UBI of only $13k/year. So there’s not a suffering model that works out. There’s no proposed taxation plan that would account for this.

When more work is automated the same amount of work is completed with less humans doing it. Currently that means that normal people make less money, but it doesn't have to be that way. Wealth distribution could remain the same as more things are automated. A lot of people believe we passed the point where the country makes enough money from a small enough number of people that they could re-distribute it as it used to be.

A lot of people also believe that a huge percentage of society is engaging in "bullshit" jobs because there isn't enough real work that needs to be done.

The ideal way would be to pass a national Land Value Tax, and use the proceeds to fund UBI. The country has plenty of money, but it's all accumulating to landlords. An LVT is the most effective way to both moderate the excesses of the wealthy and continuously fund a social safety net. It would also let you eliminate most other forms of social safety and taxation, since Land/Natural Resources are the greatest stores of value.

So if landlords now have to pay for everyone's UBI, why aren't the Landlords just going to raise rent to get that money right back?

The Land Value Tax is tied to the assessment of the value of the land. If the landlord raised the rent 20%, sans improvements (which are not taxed), the assessed value of the land itself would go up 20% as a reflection and nullify the incentive to raise rent in the first place.

The only way you can raise rents (in a way that nets a profit) under a LVT is to improve the property or provide services. If you own a 4 unit complex and you want a higher return, you need to build more units, a gym or provide on-site dry cleaning. This also means more efficient land-use in areas of high land value (i.e. densely built town/city centers). Since no more land can be produced, and speculation cannot produce profit, the incentivized usage is a productive one (building more housing where it's in high demand).

Philosophically, a person who supports this concept wouldn't view it as the landlords paying everyone's UBI. We can respect every American's right to enjoy private property, while also holding the value of that property as a public trust. The LVT payments represent the capture of that value, and the UBI is the mechanism by which the public share is distributed.

It's the land VALUE, meaning things built on the land add value, say a skyscraper for example with offices... these would pay quite a bit more than say an un-utilized piece of land for sale in Utah without water rights.

Then there's land that doesn't have buildings but still has high value because of the resources (oil, natural gas, minerals, etc) that sit underneath.

I think this works swell, but we should maybe have a variable VAT too that makes it so even UBI recipients pay some taxes back on everything they purchase, etc...and I think the system should be pegged at making the amount doled out and taxes raised from land-owners equivalent to 3x rent, aka rent should account on average 1/3rd of the amount given out.

Could also simply have a program where everyone's given 1k, plus vouchers for rent upto a limit, plus foodstamps... could be foodstamps are usable to pay rent, to make it easier to manage, and whatever's left over is your food budget... then the extra 1k pays utilities, insurance, etc... of course there should be free healthcare and better education deal....

Personally I'd prefer usd moves to crypto and only allows 1 account per person with a 50 million dollar max-limit, basically making all income over a threshold taxed, so billionaires can't even exist...and redistributes to those who hodl less and spend more. but I'm a bit more radical in my thinking....

Tying UBI to CPI/rental index would quash that dynamic's profit seeking reasonably, I think.

This really is the only way to make it work. Only problem is that once you eliminate poverty the no-longer-impoverished have a tendency to pull the ladder up behind them

> How exactly is this supposed to work? The government prints money and gives it away for free, nobody has to work?

Nobody HAS to work, correct. If they only want to survive, they don't need to work. Everyone gets money for food, water, shelter and education; no questions asked.

If you want an iPhone or eat something nice, you should probably get some money though.

Universal basic income isn't much usually, it's enough to survive, enough for a livable life.

That's paid by taxes of the majority of people that will still work, because people usually want more than just to survive, so they'll work. They'll just not work at Starbucks for 10 years to pay their student loan, they'll find a job that they like, a job with meaning.

ubi is ultimately about control: continue to extract wealth upwards and everyone who's left gets locked onto the money-printing teat (so that taxes don't even need to rise for said wealthy). it has its own logic: the already powerful and wealthy get to ossify socioeconomic stratification, creating a permanent gentry class. we should be fighting this dystopian gambit at every turn (note that dynamism is what makes political economies great, not stagnation).

note that what we should instead be doing is pushing for more meaningful work up and down the economy.

It is unfeasible. The reason money works is because it is an abstraction for someone's production of value that is way easier than bartering for everything. physical labor, skilled labor, educated thinking, management, knowledge transfer... anything that is valuable to someone else.

If you just pay people to sit on their asses, many of them are just going to sit on their asses, creating nothing, simply consuming resources. The host (civilized society) cannot survive when everyone is a leech.

Most people don't actually want to live at the UBI subsistence level so they'll work to live at a higher level. Some people need help for a while, and the infrastructure needed to dole out services to those in need creates waste and neglect.

People who work bullshit jobs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs) are already unintentional leeches. UBI would disincentivize that inefficiency. Then those who want to sit on their asses with their $1200 could do so guilt-free, and, in my rosy vision for the world, the fraction who want to do something more fulfilling than making money for "the host" (e.g., FAMAG, Wall Street, I dunno) would be empowered to focus on things that are important to them, and probably to humanity as well.

> government prints money and gives it away for free

In some circumstances this is actually a good idea. One core idea of Modern Monetary Theory is that printing money is only inflationary when the economy is at capacity.

So giving money to people that can't or won't work actually drives growth because they can spend.

If you moralize about economics or think MMT is wrong, this sounds like a horrible idea. If you only care about results, then it's a great idea.

The comments here at the time of my writing don't provide a good explanation of it. There are practical UBI proposals out there that are revenue neutral for various countries that would largely replace income transfers of the existing social safety net, better go look them up. (There is no fundamental reason it needs to be RN but it's a good starting point to understand why it doesn't intrinsically mean more funding).

It's not a panacea, generally it can make current recipients of means tested transfers well off in exchange for eliminating some problems associated with means tested programs.

Pool together all ( or most ) social benefits in one single payment to get some economy of scale.( removing the need to have specific admin XYZ to distribute XYZ benefits )

I live in the US, and from what I understand you guys have little to no benefits.

But in place where it does exists, similar sums are already being spend between unemployment, rent assistance, affordable healthcare and the likes.

To give you a idea the RSA in France is around 400€ / month. That’s pretty much a given if you do some paperwork )

A transition to UBI would mean to consolidate it to reach higher level.

And make it non conditional.

That’s a shift for sure.

I think that many yearn for an idealized life in a small, relatively isolated community, low tech and free of fiat currency. They try to imagine workarounds for the fact that it's not actually currently possible in reality.

UBI, anarchism, antiwork and other radical ideas are proposed patches to the cold and lonely reality of modern metropolitan life. They would probably not work, but they are not really the point. The point is to imagine some escape from the current crushing system.

> The government prints money and gives it away for free, nobody has to work?

Counter question: assuming there's no UBI, and automation eats the world - Amazon Warehouses and delivery are 99% automated, as are Walmart and MacDonalds - nobody can work[1]. Corporations are still paying close to 0% taxes. How exactly is this supposed to work?

Except a few in repairs and automation, and a handful of industries less amenable to robots.

Read this article and the related studies: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/2/19/21112570/univer...

This Stanford article provides some explanation and also references several studies for more in-depth reading: https://basicincome.stanford.edu/about/what-is-ubi/

UBI is added on top of work so work will always mean you're better off.

Would you give up your job just to spend all day doing nothing, or would you end up doing something productive?

If you had infinite money, would you do nothing?

What do uber rich people do all day? Why do they work?

> What do uber rich people do all day? Why do they work?

For the most part they are the "uber rich" precisely because they prioritize earning, saving, and investing much more than average individuals, who for the most part put in just enough effort to fund what they deem an acceptable lifestyle comparable to their peers. If you want to know what UBI would look like for the average person, don't look at the handful of exceptionally successful entrepreneurs—instead, look at lottery winners, ordinary people with ordinary priorities who are suddenly given enough money to guarantee them a basic (or more than basic) income for life. It doesn't usually end well.

> If you had infinite money, would you do nothing?

Not "nothing", no. But I probably wouldn't care much about whether the things I choose to do have any value to other people, since I don't need to worry about whether they'll pay me to do them. Therein lies the core economic problem with eliminating the need to work or otherwise offer something of value (like access to capital) to earn a living: People will do things, sure—but most of what they'll choose to do in the absence of meaningful economic incentives will be unproductive.

You tax a couple dozen ultra rich billionaires and a couple dozen ultra profitable companies. There's plenty of money. We don't need to print more. And each doesn't need the spare $20B anyways.

Even if we zero out every US billionaire (imagine that for a second; take 100% of their wealth and leave them with exactly $0) it would not even cover 1/5 of the US national debt.

We can't see taking their money as a viable long term solution to UBI. Our debt is out of control and our day of reckoning will come eventually. Nothing is free; markets will correct for UBI and people will become just as poor as they were over time. Existing UBI studies cannot take into account for the _universal_ aspect of UBI because they are controlled studies — there will be unintended consequences.

https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/UnintendedConsequences.h...

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/nov/02/viral-imag....

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/01/us/politics/national-debt...

The COVID stimulus programs were a sort of UBI program. We're now starting to see mass inflation in part due to lower labor participation and excess liquidity.

Obviously only part of the picture as quantitative easing and low rates are also driving excess liquidity, and omicron is also driving lower short-term labor participation.

Emphasis on the sort of part; universal means universal—everyone gets it. It's not Universal Guaranteed Income, it's Universal Basic Income. My wife and I worked the whole time and we made too much to ever get any stimulus. So we worked while we saw many people our age goofing off and seeing just how long they could ride the unemployment wave—yes, they really were proud of this.

Meanwhile another half our peers want their college debt forgiven because they can't cut it in the real world with their liberal arts degree. Mark my words: if they ever do get around to slashing college debt, those who did what they were supposed to will be left there with their bill in hand while everyone else who made every ill-advised decision gets off for free.

> You tax a couple dozen ultra rich billionaires and a couple dozen ultra profitable companies. There's plenty of money.

The federal deficit is 2.8T for 1 year.

If we confiscated the 100% assets of the top 10 US billionaires we don't even get close to half of 1 year of federal spending. It's not plausible that a massive increase in taxes would pay for UBI.

https://www.usdebtclock.org/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/201426/the-richest-peopl...

As is, people not participating in the workforce right now is implicated in large parts of the various shortages. It's not clear how UBI improves things.

The public holds over $22 trillion of the national debt. Bonds.

Somehow we still get away with funding other welfare programs, even though we have a rising debt ceiling.

Anyways, this is why you increase taxes on the ultra-wealthy, in order to pay for UBI. It doesn't mean more debt.

The "ultra-wealthy" are not where the money is. Besides, what many leftists actually end up saying by focusing on those is that Gates and Buffett should not be allowed to put their money towards eradicating malaria, giving every African safe drinking water, and countless such high-value causes. Instead that hard-won wealth should be taxed from them and frittered away to fund a one-time super binge of mindless political activism and foolish "green" boondoggles in the highly developed West. Needless to say, I think this is a very bad idea.

You want to tax Larry Ellison's yacht and other ludicrous spending, fine by me. But that's the ultra-wealthy's consumption - it's not even their income, much less their wealth. If you can't tell the difference, you're not getting the point of this debate.

I agree with you, taxation does nothing but enable the government to work on projects it deems important in the name of helping the public. It's inefficient and obviously open to corruption.

If we really think that it is unjust for money to be concentrated in the hands of the rich and should go to the public instead of their heirs or private interests, there should be an option of zeroing out one's bank account. That is, literally destroying money (not to be confused with wealth). This should have roughly the same effect as dividing up one's fortune and distributing it evenly to all holders of that currency.

You've always been able to burn all your cash.

Not legally, and with a large enough balance not practically either.

False. You'd need 4 trillion dollars a year to give 12k to everyone in the US. That would mean doubling US federal expenditures. And some people would stop working, hence stop paying income tax. Some businesses would leave the country.

I do expect someday it will be feasible though. Maybe in my lifetime.

Maybe we lower the US military spending budget to "only" be 10% higher than the next highest spender. That should free up some cash.

Gotta start somewhere :)

Emphasis on the 'some' in some cash. As bloated as the US military is, it 'only' has a budget of $700B and a good portion of this is veterns welfare programs. This should put into perspective how ludicrously expensive UBI truly is

I'm not sure this is true. Asset valuation is a bit tricky when you're an outlier. It's not terribly liquid.

Lucky, tricky problems get solved when there's a trillion dollars on the line. For the most part, this idea that taxing the rich is in-theory difficult is just an illusion created by them, to dissuade people from even thinking about it.

And yet I have 22% of my equity sold and sent straight to the IRS every year. This is behind the scenes a complex multi-step process, and yet it happens like clockwork, easy as pie.

> And yet I have 37% of my equity sold and sent straight to the IRS

You need a better accountant / portfolio manager.

Updated ;) ETR != highest bracket, ofc

The core observations of the universal basic income drive are that:

a) The amount of actual human labor required in the developed world to maintain an acceptable standard of living for everyone in the society is decreasing (with no end in sight),

b) Much of the profit and control of that decreasing cost of providing for the society is concentrating in the hands of a very small number of extraordinarily wealthy people

c) The process you noted:

> The government prints money and gives it away for free, nobody has to work?

... is already how things work, we just dress it up in a byzantine (and expensive!) welfare/social insurance/corporate bailout system and the proliferation of "jobs" that provide no meaningful value to society [0].

If a system could be created that replaces the indirect spending with direct spending, the people who need to be could still be motivated to do the societally valuable jobs (because people want more things still!), and the people who want to do things that are prosocial but not well-remunerated by the capitalist system (arts, education/research, activism/humanitarianism/social work [because there will assuredly still be problems]) will be more able to do so.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

>How exactly is this supposed to work? The government prints money and gives it away for free, nobody has to work?

Given the tremendous inflation occurring because of non-universal benefits, UBI pretty well died as a subject. Everything the anti-UBI people have said would happen, is happening. So if it were universal, it would be worse than this.

Trying to discuss UBI is complex because every single attempt at it has failed.

There is a simplistic idea of UBI = $1000/month to every single person. Just start delivering cheques and see what happens? Everyone earns $1000 more and everyone bumps up in the progressive tax and hopefully you tax enough to keep the budget balanced and inflation under control? We know this doesn't work now. MMT is dead as a subject. We must do much more than just free money.

Lets look deeper.

What if we dismantle every single safety net. Welfare goes away, employment insurance, child benefits, old age pensions, indigenous UBI, etc. These all go away. We take those budgets and combine them and disperse equally. In essence what happens is that from a government budget point of view we aren't broke. At exactly the same time we also make a constitutional amendment requiring the government to balance the budget.

What is this exactly? It's a negative income tax that Milton Friedman recommended ages ago.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM

> Given the tremendous inflation occurring because of non-universal benefits

The amount of inflation is not especially high, it would've been quite normal back in the 1980s (post Volcker, even). That's why the Fed is slow at addressing it. And of course, the global pandemic had much to do with it.

In the latter part of your comment, you're talking about two versions of the same thing. Calling budget constraints 'MMT' does not change how they work.

>The amount of inflation is not especially high

From a historical point of view sure. The thing about WW1 boomers retiring in the 80s and causing major inflation. Sure it was a huge problem. This time it's the WW2 boomers retiring that will cause major inflation. But that effect hasnt quite kicked in. The inflation stems from benefits and low rates. Which low rates can be just called benefits as well.

> it would've been quite normal back in the 1980s (post Volcker, even). That's why the Fed is slow at addressing it. And of course, the global pandemic had much to do with it.

So here we sit post-benefits. You and I can both agree people who couldn't work because of the pandemic shouldn't be left to starve.

The consequence is extreme inflation, but worse. The USA has entered another recession. Nearby recessions means they are connected and therefore this is a depression. Which we can verify by the high correlation with psychological depression. What do you think, do you find more and more people around you are getting depressed?

>In the latter part of your comment, you're talking about two versions of the same thing. Calling budget constraints 'MMT' does not change how they work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_budget_amendment

The countries like Germany and Switzerland that have implemented this are brilliant. Though to be fair countries which dont even need the amendment are that much smarter.

I would prefer to fund it via a land value tax, which is seen as the most efficient form of taxation due to having no deadweight loss.

Like the other commenter said, the concept of a UBI is already practically the reality in countries with strong welfare states where no one technically needs to work. We just disguise it with all this means-testing because as a society we're still devoted to this pro-work capitalist grind mental model of everyone needing to make a buck to justify their existence.

Not absurd at all and it doesn't need to be framed as a handout either.

The US should have a single land tax and every American should be paid a citizen's dividend out of that. A "UBI" easily emerges from this fair and rational tax system.

Economists across the political spectrum have advocated a single land tax. How we would force politicians to enact it is left as an exercise for the reader.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_tax