I mean we can't get single-payer healthcare going in this country, despite the numerous models of it working quite well (and at lower cost than our system) in a number of other developed countries that are glad to share their experience with us. UBI is a fine idea, but proponents are awfully short on specifics. It would be very nice if people would cite a particular scheme or gameplan they consider to be credible when they mention the topic.

Social Security and Medicare expanded to everyone, regardless of age.

No handwaving, that's the general idea. The devil is in the details, and there are many details to work out.

What I'm complaining about is that hardly anyone seems to be making a serious effort to fill out those details, and if proponents of the idea can't even point to a detailed proposal for how to implement it over a reasonable timeframe, how do you expect to convince people to sign on to it? 'Let's elect politicians who support it and then work out the details once they're in office' has not IMHO worked out very well historically.

I'm not saying you have to come up with the whole plan or type it out every time the subject comes up, f course! But I wish you could point me to who you think has something resembling an actionable plan.

That said, recently I've been thinking of a different approach. Concerns about scale (and migration) are smaller if we start with a smaller amount. I've been thinking an approach might be creation of a private institution tasked with designing and coordinating a basic income program for regions (probably at the city or county level, in the US) that opt in and who meet whatever necessary standards. The program would then apply to anyone who lives or works in a participating locality. The program could then be gradually rolled out and scaled up as (/if) it's found to work. National benefits can be phased out by treating BI income as income. One thing that makes this plan seem more workable is that the organization could raise money from supportive individuals to build a buffer for the program, to serve as something of a carrot for prospective localities.

That's an idea, but its not the idea of UBI. Medicare is a complex health insurance system consisting both of government provided and government-subsidized-private health insurance, it isn't anything like UBI.

Social Security is, aside from age or disability test to withdraw from it, a system with benefits governed by your (or your spouse's) past contributions, as such its also (even ignoring the age/disability part) very much not like UBI.

Single-payer healthcare removes a HUGE problem with providing basic income. I don't see how providing universal healthcare interferes with UBI.

> Social Security is, aside from age or disability test to withdraw from it, a system with benefits governed by your (or your spouss) past contributions, its also (even ignoring the age/disability part) very much not like UBI.

And.....? The SSA is already extremely efficient at distributing funds. Allow them to issue no-fee debit cards they issue, remove age/disability testing, ignore contributions, and then get funding from the general fund.

I'm not saying its easy. I'm saying its how you eat an elephant: one bite at a time.

Whether or not that's the case, single-payer healthcare is a different idea from UBI, not a component of UBI (and, indeed, something that conservative supporters of UBI -- of which there are quite a few -- are more likely to see UBI as an alternative to rather than to see as part of UBI.)

> > Social Security is, aside from age or disability test to withdraw from it, a system with benefits governed by your (or your spouse's) past contributions, its also (even ignoring the age/disability part) very much not like UBI.

> And.....?

And so your claim that the idea of UBI is Social Security and Medicare for everyone regardless of age is simply grossly inaccurate.

When Ronald Reagan was a top-billed Hollywood actor, he faced a ~90% tax bracket. Rather than work hard only to see most of his earnings confiscated, he'd make just a few movies and then enjoy those profits instead of spending time on diminishing returns. Same for plenty of us motivated ones: if 80% are living off the 20%, that will require taking so much from the 20% that most of those will opt for doing something interesting and untaxable. The "seriously productive" ones you're expecting to leech off MUST have lots of less-but-still-productive people working for them - and you're tearing out the incentive to do so. Raise my taxes enough (only to "redistribute" to those opting to not work) and I'll switch to untaxable yet satisfying "off the grid" living.

That's actually not a harm, and its exactly why you aren't tearing out the incentive for productive activity; when you devote more of your time to that because you've hit a high-enough marginal tax rate that the marginal benefit post-tax from additional gain through taxable activity is not sufficient to meet your marginal opportunity cost from that activity, simple supply and demand increases the incentive for others for whom that balance works out differently -- perhaps because they are lower on the progressive tax scale so that the marginal realized net monetary return is greater, or perhaps because they are at a similar place to where you are but weigh the costs differently -- to engage in the activity you are forgoing. In fact, a net upward (on the wealth/income) scale shift in tax burden increases the incentive for productive activity at the lower end of the scale.

I think the idea of 80% leeches living off the 20% productive is just wrong headed. What we will see is the general quality of life improved for everyone. Sure there will some that need to be entirely supported by the rest of us: the homeless, the mentally ill, the infirm, the elderly. The real danger is that the increases in productivity are being siphoned off by the rich and not being equitably distributed. Capitalism is inherently an unstable system tending towards monopoly and the destruction of the commons (pollution and the like) and must be reasonably constrained.

Post-scarcity economy is a contradiction in terms, and if post-scarcity conditions existed, one wouldn't have any need to worry about economy -- which is, after all, nothing but the system by which scarce resources are allocated.

But we're not really discussing post-scarcity conditions, we're talking about managing conditions where the rewards from production are increasingly concentrated in the holders of capital and the returns to labor are mostly extremely low with a (proportionally) very small set of high-value labor positions available.

I'm a little skeptical of basic income as well, just like I'd be skeptical of any untested widespread social policy, but the orthodox reasons why it doesn't work are based on a model of reality that's ~3 generations and 70+ years old. I suspect that if it doesn't work, it'll be because of some problem we haven't thought of yet, not the old "tax on the productive". The top candidate, IMHO, is that we're outcompeted by some other society that doesn't have basic income.

Sounds good to me. More actors, more variety. Maybe we wouldn't see every single sci-fi/action movie star Tom Cruise.

The situation UBI applies to is in a more post-labor world. One where a McDonald's only needs 2 people working instead of 16. At this point it's not going to be taxing those 2 workers but the company itself.

If you want to earn more money than your UBI check (which you would still get if you work), you will still have an incentive to earn more money.

Where a 90% tax really hurts is entrepreneurship and risk taking. If that 90% tax includes taxes on capital gains, then I have no incentive to start a business or invest in a business. If it fails I lose my money and sweat equity. If it succeeds, I get taxed so much I barely make more money than if I had just worked.

One of the reasons the economy was good in the 50's despite the high taxes was that those high taxes only applied to salaries, not capital gains. Also, there were lots and lots of loopholes so a lot of people didn't end up paying that 90%.

That all said. Americans already pay a ton of taxes. There is plenty of money for UBI already. It just needs to be reallocated from failed programs and bureaucracies - such as 90% of the educational system.

Given the pay disparity, if he works less there's probably more output.

(... note that this is considering his decision to work less, in isolation - not the effect of the tax level that purportedly motivated that as a whole, which would take a much deeper analysis...)

You're assuming what you do can't be automated. I want to automate what you do so you can live "off the grid" if you want.

Capitalism only entitles you to profits on your labor capital until it has no value.

Is that what happened? Or did he simply realize that he had enough, and he didn't need to work himself to death to have all the money? Seriously, what's wrong with people realizing they have enough, and don't need to overwork themselves just to have more?

I think you would find a lot more support among conservatives than you think (it seems like you have quite the caricature of them). It seems like there would opposition from left, and UBI would require a complete dismantling of all non-healthcare entitlement programs, a serious reduction of the tax code, and heavily clamping down on all immigration.

And that's exactly what the Tea Party types are saying.

>I think you would find a lot more support among conservatives than you think (it seems like you have quite the caricature of them).

I don't. And it's not a caricature when based on statements they've actually made. Remember Mitt Romney's 47%?