Al least you can race the athletes against each other to find out who is the best. Much hard to do that with artists.

We could say we'll fund the fastest people but in all liklihood those will turn out to be people who have dedicated the most time to their sport, which is a pretty good proxy for being rich, because most people can't afford that level of time investment.

Many Olympic "sports" are judged on artistic merit. Which seems weird to me, but what do I know?

> Who gets to choose which artists and athletes are funded?

Preferably via UBI which would prevent cheating and inconsistencies and minimise the bureaucracy around it.

> When do we start funding them?

Smarter people than me have already answered this, but generally at 18 years of age or after graduation seems to be a common answer.

> I have a 6yo son who is really good at doing various crafts and he really enjoys it, does he count as an artist?

As far as I am concerned yes, he should be provided with UBI once he reaches a mature age (see earlier answer as well).

> How do we define art? Are we counting the preforming arts? Does someone playing the guitar in the subway count? What about my garage band that I have with my friends?

That's what's so great about UBI, no need for subjective/objective debates. Everyone gets it, nobody gets to gate-keep, no expensive investigations into what is art and so on. All these people are eligible for UBI.

> On the flip side, are we also going to ensure Taylor Swift has a livable wage for life? Tom Brady?

That's where the _Universal_ part of _Universal Basic Income_ makes itself reminded.

And how is such a UBI funded, pray tell? Will you agree to a 90% tax rate for your regular job, so that UBI could be had?

What you do not consider is that all serious UBI initiatives will see UBI as a _replacement_ to multiple other already existing welfare programs such as housing stipends, childcare benefits, maternity leave benefits, illness benefits, food stamps, veteran care... Not only will those be removed if UBI is implemented, the bureaucracy around those benefits will be eliminated or significantly reduced which means that more of the money paid in taxes will be distributed to people.

As far as my own tax burden, I pay a marginal tax rate of about 33% and would have no issue increasing that. I also think I pay too little in property taxes for my house. I am also getting a tax write-off to my loan which means I can take on a higher loan that I maybe should have (this write-off is bad on a macro scale because of the increased risk), I think that write-off should be phased out. There are also other taxes to adjust such as Tobacco taxes, VAT:s (we have four tiers today: 0, 6, 12, and 25 percent VAT depending on the type of good), Wealth taxes, Carbon taxes, and Financial taxes such as those on dividends and transactions.

No actual smart people think that UBI is an effective answer to anything. The math simply doesn't work. Those claiming that UBI is the answer are either innumerate or are making ideological claims at odds with objective reality.

UBI would have an expense comparable to the entire current welfare state, which is a large part of the federal budget even in America--much larger than defense spending, for example.

However, GDP keeps going up, and many people would argue that "real" labor force participation keeps going down (e.g., bullshit service sector jobs, which mostly provide value to customers who want to feel superior to someone). At some point, UBI is going to be affordable; especially if it replaces most of the current welfare state.

Is there any other part of the math that simply doesn't work?

You can't replace most of the current welfare state since you are ultimately going to have to provide food, medical and housing payments directly because people will blow all their UBI and not have those things. Unless you are willing to let people starve to death since they wasted their money you will end up with both systems.

Ok, you're guessing that current welfare recipients are uniformly imprudent and lack all virtue, rather than having some sizeable minority who are simply temporarily down on their luck. Let's grant your assumption, for the sake of this argument.

The biggest parts of the federal welfare budget by far are social security and medicare/medicaid. SS is simply a QBI, a UBI which is for qualified recipient instead of universal. So that's $1.4T saved, right there.

Medicare/Medicaid together are another $1.4T, and replacing them isn't automatic--a UBI high enough to cover contemporary American medical costs would be huge. I must note, though, that these exorbitant medical costs are being collectively paid by Americans anyway; if we switched to literally any other system--from Robin Hanson's "buy life insurance and medical care from the same company" to EU-style public/private insurance--we'd save enough for UBI from that alone.

The rest of welfare is comparitively penny-ante stuff--food stamps are only $120B, section 8 housing is $70B, etc. Even if we still had to provide Guaranteed Basic Food and Guaranteed Basic Housing in addition to UBI, it could still end up cheaper than our current system.

And even if it didn't, I stand by my observation that the GDP keeps going up. If we genuinely can't afford a UBI at a GDP of 27T, what about at 30T? That increase covers the entirety of the current spending on both social security and medical aid. If not at 30T, what about at 40T or 50T?

> Ok, you're guessing that current welfare recipients are uniformly imprudent and lack all virtue,

I have done no such thing. I have never said that welfare receipts "uniformly" do anything. I am just saying that SOME will not use their money wisely and our choice is either to provide them with additional benefits or let them die.

If we are going to continue to give some people the benefits we are trying to get rid of, they won't go away and more and more people will find ways to get the additional benefits.

> rather than having some sizeable minority who are simply temporarily down on their luck. Let's grant your assumption, for the sake of this argument.

The reason people need benefits is irrelevant to my argument.

> The biggest parts of the federal welfare budget by far are social security and medicare/medicaid. SS is simply a QBI, a UBI which is for qualified recipient instead of universal. So that's $1.4T saved, right there.

If we do not have SS there will be no SS tax which is what mostly funds SS. Unless you are advocating for retaining a tax for SS and not using it on SS, which is a dubious proposition.

> Medicare/Medicaid together are another $1.4T, and replacing them isn't automatic--a UBI high enough to cover contemporary American medical costs would be huge. I must note, though, that these exorbitant medical costs are being collectively paid by Americans anyway; if we switched to literally any other system--from Robin Hanson's "buy life insurance and medical care from the same company" to EU-style public/private insurance--we'd save enough for UBI from that alone.

You are saying the only way to make UBI work is to make UBI not cover everything that we are trying to replace with UBI. I mean, if that is your argument I can see how you can get the math can work...

If you want to figure out if it will actually be cheaper you have to include everything covered currently with welfare. If you don't do that we really can't have any sort of actual comparison.

Also, there are more reasons than just the way insurance is set up causing high costs that won't magically go away because of a change to an EU style system.

> The rest of welfare is comparitively penny-ante stuff--food stamps are only $120B, section 8 housing is $70B, etc. Even if we still had to provide Guaranteed Basic Food and Guaranteed Basic Housing in addition to UBI, it could still end up cheaper than our current system.

Interesting that you are now using the phrase "could still end up cheaper than our current system.". You seemed so positive before that it would and now you don't seem so certain.

> And even if it didn't, I stand by my observation that the GDP keeps going up. If we genuinely can't afford a UBI at a GDP of 27T, what about at 30T? That increase covers the entirety of the current spending on both social security and medical aid. If not at 30T, what about at 40T or 50T?

I don't think anybody is saying we can't afford UBI. The US could give everybody $1 and it would be UBI. The problem is providing enough money to replace the welfare system without messing up the costs of things or causing people to not work.

I'm all for trying something, but I think that something should be a negative income tax rather than UBI to prevent any negative incentives that come with UBI.

> I have done no such thing. I have never said that welfare receipts "uniformly" do anything. I am just saying that SOME will not use their money wisely and our choice is either to provide them with additional benefits or let them die.

> If we are going to continue to give some people the benefits we are trying to get rid of, they won't go away and more and more people will find ways to get the additional benefits.

Yes, means-testing is the enemy, and reducing the administrative burden of welfare is most of the cost savings that UBI offers.

Still, even if we can't reform American healthcare at all, reducing means testing to just medical care would be huge. After all, you're now testing for the severity and expense of the medical condition itself, not for income or assets--and to falsify that, a welfare recipient would need an MD to commit blatant fraud.

> Interesting that you are now using the phrase "could still end up cheaper than our current system.". You seemed so positive before that it would and now you don't seem so certain.

You may be confusing me with other UBI advocates. I never claimed UBI would be cheaper than the current system.

> I'm all for trying something, but I think that something should be a negative income tax rather than UBI to prevent any negative incentives that come with UBI.

Have you looked at the incentives described by, say, the Adam Smith institute? They describe a negative income tax as incentivizing more participation in the labor market by poor people, due to the lower marginal tax rate: https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/nit-or-ubi-that-is-the-econom...

UBI sounds good on paper, and I was in favor of replacing the rest of our safety nets with it until 2019. The problem is, after trying it, as happened in lots of different places during the COVID lockdowns, way too many people will decide to live off of it alone while doing absolutely nothing useful.

First of all, funding arts/sports != livable wages for the artists/atheletes. There's an overlap but wage is just at the tip of the iceberg of funding.

Provide livable wages to athletes and artists who represent your country (i.e., Olympians and national performers/artists). Fund development programs from as early as possible; this means grassroots efforts like summer camps, higher-level contests/tournaments, providing funds for national and international exposure, and providing for easy access to decent gear, among others. A lot of the participants in these programs wouldn't do this for life---won't make it to the Olympics or to the National Opera---but it will do a lot of other things like keep children off the streets and, not to mention, develop other skills/connections that could still come in useful later in life. If anything, sports could give them a love for exercise which, I heard recently, is the most potent medical intervention.

And yes, your son is an artist as long as he imagines himself to be. Ideally he has access to these development programs that could pave the way for him to a professional art career if he's so determined.

Your garage band is an artist group; what you may not be is a professional artist group. Same goes for the subway busker.

Speaking of which, when you went to the flip side, you kinda went from oranges to, not quite apples but lemons. Professionals like Swift and Brady should be far far less the taxpayer's concern compared to Olympians and other amateurs.

> national performers/artists

Who is in this group?

So you hold a competition to see who is the best...

Is this trumpet player better than that painter? Is this sculptor better than that beat poet?

My discussion of funding, was not in reference to development programs but in reference to the top of the thread:

>On one hand you want to provide livable wages to your athletes, but Canada just registered a deficit of 62 billions. Cuts are coming and more money to Olympians will be put up against funding for healthcare, education, etc... At some point you have to make hard decisions.

and my question of where this money will come from.

The initial discussion did not specify a set of "Athletes and artists who represent your country (i.e., Olympians and national performers/artists)" although it cold be argued it was inferred due to the topic being Olympians. However, since Artists are part of the thread and I am not aware of any Olympic medals for things traditional considered art i.e. painting, sculpture, I decided it would be a good topic of discussion.

I like a lot of your answer but you ran into the same obstacle that I did when considering this: >Provide livable wages to athletes and artists who represent your country (i.e., Olympians and national performers/artists).

>Professionals like Swift and Brady should be far far less the taxpayer's concern

Swift and Brady are athletes who represent the country; Swift explicitly when she does international tours, while Brady has international appeal as well bringing the NFL outside of the USA(if you disagree, substitute Brady with Micheal Jordan or Babe Ruth)(https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/33007604/my-michael-jord...).

>compared to Olympians and other amateurs.

This is where I was having the most trouble, as I can not find a way to draw a distinction between say Brady and Michael Phelps; both have a large amount of natural talent but they both had to train intensively every day. The only difference is the sport that Brady engaged in is a national league that who's bidding process drives up the athlete's pay.

It gets even harder when you try to do the analysis for artists, Maurizio Cattelan(famous conceptualist, who's works include a golden toilet and banana taped to the wall)(net worth 5 million) or Phillip Glass(composer)(net worth 35 million)

>“While working, I suddenly heard a noise and looked up to find Robert Hughes, the art critic of Time magazine, staring at me in disbelief. ‘But you’re Philip Glass! What are you doing here?’ It was obvious that I was installing his dishwasher and I told him I would soon be finished. ‘But you are an artist,’ he protested. I explained that I was an artist but that I was sometimes a plumber as well and that he should go away and let me finish.”.

We want to support these people when they need it but that is before they rise to fame. Once they do, they generally don't need the support. But sometimes they do...take the number of "professional" NBA, NFL, etc that spend their money unwisely and are bankrupt as soon as they are unable to play sports.