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.