It is awfully peculiar that universal basic income is so readily touted here. If there is even the slightest hint of monetary compensation in an article or comment, someone has to chime in saying basic income is the solution. While the crucial point you bring up about actually funding it is usually brushed aside.

Are you trying to start or end a conversation with these figures?

I've noticed a trend where someone thinks that some napkin math ends a conversation, and it seems a bit like scientism to me.

For example, many BI schemes I've seen discussed assume that most people with jobs will be taxed to reclaim the UBI and the actual benefit is for people trying to get out of poverty who aren't trapped by egregious equivalent tax rates where they lose 2 dollars of benefits for every extra dollar they earn and so rationally decide that working less is more financially rewarded.

Why don't you run the numbers for that?

I'm trying to start a conversation, but a less vague one(although to be sincere, I'm doubtful about basic income - I think the same goals(which are great) , if possible to reach, would require something far more complex, both on the giving money side, but also on structuring the economy in certain ways that would reduce the cost of living)

But could you please share some numbers for those offers you proposed - they'll be interesting to hear.

I think it works best as a negative income tax. If you make no money, you get a refundable credit up to, say $25k/year. This would phase out as you earn income, so that once you're earning over $25k you're paying in and not getting the credit. This way people still have an incentive to work if they want more, but they won't starve if they earn less.

This way you're not giving a flat $25k to someone who's already earning $100k. But if that person loses their job, they'll still get enough to live on.

If the amount you receive is inversely proportional to how much you earn then this effectively creates a marginal tax on earnings, therefore creating a disincentive to seek further employment for fear of losing existing benefits.

This is one of the main problems UBI seeks to address by not being means tested like current benefits.

If instead of phasing out the earned credit for any earnings below $25k/year it was just withdrawn above that threshold (an effective marginal tax rate of 100% beteen $25k-$50k/year) then you would get clustering of incomes at just under $25k/year with no incomes between $25k-$50k/year. Potentially you could phase it out starting at $25k as arguably the incentive effects are less pronounced at higher incomes. Obviously this could not be considered universal however.

I think I get what you're saying, and that's the problem with the hard cutoffs we have for aid now. Wouldn't it be solved by just making it completely smooth up to 25k/year?

If you earn $0, you get $25k.

If you earn $10k, you get $15k

If you earn $24999, you get a $1 credit.

Anything $25k and up, you get 0 credits, with a progressive tax scheme to support the above.

I guess it's not "universal" per se, but the only means testing would be to figure out how much income you made, which the government already does in the course of collecting income taxes anyway.

What's the point in taking a $10k a year job in that hypothetical implementation?

Maybe it's not a full time job. Maybe it's something you're just really interested in doing, but isn't economically viable. Maybe it's a hobby or craft that you're able to somewhat monetize but not fully support yourself with, at least at first, but it can grow to fully support you if you're not scrambling to keep yourself alive for the first couple years.

Many people are not going to just sit around the house and play video games all day. People have a natural desire to do productive things.

What you've described here is a 100% tax rate for those earning less than $25k. Who in their right mind would want to work in that situation?

How is that a 100% tax rate? If you earn 10k, you keep the entire 10k, plus get a 15k credit. That is a negative tax. The government is not taking any of your income, it's giving additional income.

If you do nothing, you get 25k. Until you find a job that pays more than 25k, any work you do puts zero additional dollars into your pocket. That is effectively a 100% tax rate. It means you have zero incentive to work unless you can make the jump from 0 to more than 25k.

That assumes that the only reason anyone would ever do anything that makes money is to get paid. That's not the case.

No, it doesn't. That assumes that the only reason anyone would do a job is to get paid, which is true a priori. Plenty of people do volunteer work without getting paid for it. Perhaps a lot more would if they were on a 25k basic income. That doesn't change the fact that what you described above featured a 100% tax rate on all income below 25k.

   Per a very worrisome concurrent to this 4 8 2017 thread about stroke survival and cost, how is a UBI in a land of 'buy more hamburger, buy more tobacco, buy more white bread, buy more audience-centric entertainments' ... maybe all using non-pedestrian means for the purchase [ vehicle, taxi, ...] not having a  hidden cost to society in obesity/stroke/diabetes constant diet and exercise sub-par but par for that the neighbors are doing and up to and demand for friendliness, earlier stroke risk in a sizable number of the UBI while young but much more less healthy, not out of breath activities during ones day 2019 vs 1819, and the consequential thirty years after its onset not Pritikin or similar while young and in one's productive years, tearing asunder the capacity of society to deal with it in a traditionally within-ones-extended family medical care with once a week medical assitance, where the norm is now maybe or will be, confiscate, put in villa of warehoused stroke obese survival bedrooms, with TV, cake, etc, and overworked underpaid and maybe even deprived of retirement income for current health plan tax, nursing staff and the like?......

..................................... ..................................... For instance, I was once bullied into obesity and suffer a consequential decades later heart risk I only learned existed while passing a clean stress test, then learning a few weeks ago that per /r/medicine that small plaques are omnipresent for STEMI fatal consequences and all the while unbeknownst to the bearer of same [ I ] and his doctor and the like, invisible on EKG and the stress test, and a dangerous onset in the young people of today, should they be inside during the many hours our forefathers were picking cotton, treading in the woods trapping wildlife, praying for their next meal without an electric kitchen, and at time suffering mini starvations in village and forest enclave and/or during winters and/or during times such as the Dust Bowl or Great Depression when bus rides, one's vehicle in front to go to/from appointment, ER, movie, restaurant,takeout, pizza aisle special coupon venue, grocery to excess with an electric car at the assist, etc, and other in-city in-town behind-gated-walls within-HOA within residential condo enclave with elevator not stairs, and on and on, and due to the 85% spending of what is spent by women head of household vs that 1810-ish no credit card for women yet, much less bank account nor vehicle, and the like, but a ring finger from which to ask allowance for the meal in the few hours the farm owner or ranch owner or town storeowner with closures every Sat Sun as a matter of course, was home and had limited 'where is our next meal coming from' times of solace within each others' shared fears and prayers vs celebrations from remote 'what about the weather at the other side of the world, what we can do to help' hours of 'are you with, or against' polls needing hours of divisiveness, take sides, slander if one is into that cup of tea, and the like, parisan to well-fed plaque-while-we-talk or plaque-as-we-view stroke-risk-more-next-week-than-this-week, oops,that is 500K, as per YN on 4 8 2107, frightening the high pulse pressure wonderer and concerned person for the health of his literate and skilled former colleagues and present-day citizenry, beset by cost and ethics conundrums, but always at the ready to inquire of each other, and may I paraphrase what I heard while waiting for a wrist Xray after a spill, female... it is 2pm, have you overeaten yet? yummy! male... Yes I overate, but only once, So good! female... and last saturday? male... Yes, I had that plate at such and such restaurant, but it was only overeating because of the previous day's birthday party for ____________ relative, which was so yummy!

Which is not to be overly critical of the conversation, because I was once a part of a same group and overfed, but due to ignorance and naive utopian goal from being bullied that in hindsight was only extremely damaging to my own health, vs victimizng to others which one could take it as, since it encouraged overeating if one was observing my overeating, and was accompanied by my strange silences as one by birth-surgery isolation not very conversant, still, in conversation as I prefer to write to expound, as this, and .... well, whatever. ..... tl;dr... UBI may impose a decades-later extreme uptrend in stroke among a not-small subset of its recipients... costly to society and the families of those UBI gainers of income at the earliest years of its onset. Something to put into the mix, if one is so inclined. [ text input box here not conducive to editing, and also out of time, dual-reason only of draft quality small treatise, I as newbie to YN may be excused. Thanks! IAMYD ]

As a concrete example, the original formulation was a 2 for 1 tax credit. Let's say taxes are 10% if BI is $1000 dollars, and you earn no money, you get $1000.

if you earn $500, ($50 in taxes), you get 2 for one credits, so that pulls $25 out of your 1000, you take home $500 for working, and $975 for BI.

if you earn $100000, $10000 in taxes, you get a 2 for one credit, so only $8000 in taxes.

BI makes it always better to earn some money.

People always seem to forget the tax credit side, and assume we're just writing everyone a check.

True but you don't want to incentivize not working though

Actually, you (they) kinda do want to incentivise not working.

The idea is that, currently, "not working" is dis-incentivised to such a degree that it creates more problems than it solves. Consider:

- For currently unemployed people: are they lacking in motivation, or in ability?

- For people who legitimately cannot find employment: is it moral to expose them to policies aimed at punishing 'freeloaders'?

- Considering existing work-requirements even for basic assistance with food and housing: is it correct to say these operate from a model of human motivation where people stop trying as soon as they can afford the basic necessities of life?

- Do you stop trying as soon as you know you have enough food and a roof over your head for the foreseeable future?

- Do you know anybody who does that?

- If people are forced into jobs with the thread of starvation or homelessness, what are the trade-offs they are required to make? I. e. to what degree is this forcing short-termism, and hindering their ability to invest time into, for example, education?

- To what degree does the looming threat of starvation compromise the position of low-income workers in negotiations with employers?

- Consider some model citizen from the lower middle class that you can think of: maybe a factory worker from the midwest, or an accountant's clerk in Houston, whatever... They have been gainfully employed for all their (adult) life, and will be for the foreseeable future. Question: How much needless anxiety is that person possibly experiencing, because they are just some random economic events away from complete destitution?

- To what degree could society profit by mitigating some of the risks associated with attempting something new?

The incentive to work comes from making the basic income "minimal", but also from allowing people to keep the first couple of thousand they make.

Right now if you receive welfare, and you make a dollar, you lose a dollar of welfare. That's the actual disincentive to work.

Without a reasonable estimate on how much money that will require that's still very vague.

Let's talk other concerns, like inflation and housing. Many of the people who are most in need of help would be fine if we brought back genuinely affordable housing AND if size and cost of housing keeps going up and up, no amount of basic income guarantees any kind of real security. If you print enough money to issue a UBI, you will have massive inflation, devaluing the amount they are being given. It creates a situation where no amount is ever enough. But if we can inject genuinely affordable housing back into the system, a thing that is practically extinct, then even losers with a part-time, minimum wage job should be okay.

(And don't bust my chops about using the word losers. I am homeless. It is not me looking down my nose at other people, JFC.)

It's not only about income but also reduced living expenses. In 30 years, my electricity bill, water bill and food costs should be substantially less.

If automation takes over, human labor is going to have to be redirected at the household and community level.

Why would you give every adult in the united states a basic income of $25K a year when the poverty line in the continental US is ~$12K?

$25k a year is about the poverty line for a family of four.

So it's still $2.5tn .

And people at the poverty line get state support(Medicare , etc) . So that's more money.

>> The rest have their basic income absorbed by their taxes.

Isn't this whole notion of BI dependent on the political support of a large share of Americans who think they'll get money - and now you're saying they won't ?

Or in other words - why aren't talking about unemployment insurance that doesn't forces you to work ? because that's what's your offer is.

BI is not dependent on the political support of Americans. Americans don't even have universal health care, so BI will probably be implemented somewhere more progressive.

BI is not the same as unemployment insurance, because that would require you to work beforehand. It's also not the same because with every dollar you earn, you loose the same dollar from your unemployment insurance. BI would mean that the first couple of thousand of dollars you earn, you will keep. Essentially it provides an incentive for those on welfare or unemployment to engage in at least some work, because they can keep that money.

Well, you could structure the income tax so that you'll have to pay the BI back, if you earn above whatever. Sure, there's no difference at the end of the year, but it should be easier to sell.

Good point. I personally support a basic income, but I also accept that it would require massive tax increases. It seems like a lot of the pro-BI rhetoric out there just waves away any serious fiscal concerns.

It a world where economies, political systems, and even entire ecologies are being horribly degraded by historically extreme concentrations of wealth, a massive tax hike is a feature, not a bug. Some may ignore this aspect of UBI programs, to others it's just as important as the social security and well-distributed economic base that UBI provides.

"But...but redistribution!"

Yeah, about that. Unless you've been protesting the massive policy-driven upward redistribution of wealth that's happened over the past three decades, your position probably isn't as principled as you imagine. More on the specifics of how the great grift worked can be found here https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-07/how-middl...

So promulgate and make certain a UBI, but roll back based on new concentration of wealth within the upper quadrile than the lower three quadriles itself reversing course so that "oh, we do not need the UBI any more because", where is that Congress of sorts, excluding the upper quadrile, and specifically its mailing address? Because based on my two posts above, approximate number, I would like to make myself useful rather than a glance at the sayings of the upper quadrile, glance at the sayings of the three lower quadriles, and once-a-lower-quadrile-for certain and now all over the map depending upon which UBI I should maybe be entitled to unless I am recused for being a spokesperson for that lower three quadriles, another way to make Dad proud of me were he still living. Or something. [ if the reader of this reply will forgive me, I am not certain if I am agreeing or disagreeing with the post to which I am replying, but confirming to myself that I can post within YN as a new skillset. Critiques welcome, but probably will not reach me as I doubt to read this same thread tomorrow. Doubly apologetic. Thanks.

Tax the robots!