If you want to start a ruckus in person or online, bring up the idea of universal basic income. You probably realize it’s a sensitive and hotly-debated topic, but you might be less clear on why.
If you want to know more, here are 16 people’s arguments for and against the concept.
16. The writing on the wall.
I’m not an economist. I don’t know for sure what UBI would do to the economy. But I can see the writing on the wall with robotics and automation.
Your job will probably be automated out of existence in your lifetime. Our economy is balanced on the notion that the demand for goods and services creates enough jobs for roughly everybody. What happens when that’s not true? What happens when we can make everything we want with less than half the people working at all?
Whether UBI is the answer is up for debate. But the problem is real.
15. Not so simple.
Only if you protect that income.
If the government were to enable UBI and then allow low income housing to increase rent to soak it up, then it wouldn’t accomplish anything.
14. Look to the past.
The debate about automation has been happening for decades now and we still find jobs for people to do.
Back when operators were fearing losing their job to automation, we used them as customer support. Different factory jobs automated, put them on another end of the floor.
This idea that automation will kill job sectors is wholly untrue, history has proven as other sectors get automated new jobs open up with them.
13. Perhaps.
Perhaps Universal Basic Provisions would be better then? Housing and money for heat/food with the ability to work towards better means via an education.
12. A touchy subject.
would we be able to lock down our borders? or at least make it that you had to be here legally for 10 years to get it? or legal and paid taxes for 10 years to be eligible?
11. Simple is better.
The advantage of a flat basic income over anything more specific, is the elimination of administrative costs. With a UBI the only admin needed is making sure everyone is getting the money, and adjusting the amount as needed (probably specified in the bill).
If you make it more specific you now need a fleet of people who make sure that the money is getting spent on the things specified.
Realistically the bill would have to specify how much is getting paid out and how to adjust it. Such as it being 150% of the median price of a single bedroom occupied dwelling of the municipality, adjusted every 2 years.
10. It depends.
BA in economics here
Depends on how it’s funded and how far it goes.
Ideally you want to tax the rich enough to supply the poor. Unfortunately the Rich’s accountants have found the tax code to be full of holes. I recommend taxing corporations, as a company has a clear profit where individuals have stocks they can hide behind until they cash out. I recommend taxing high profit companies as taxing the poor to pay for the poor only creates administrative costs.
Speaking of administrative costs, as UBI is implemented, you can start firing people who work in unemployment offices, perhaps even taking food stamps out of print.
The biggest difficulty is determining cost of living. What pays for rent in NYC pays a mortgage and a car payment in rural America. It needs to be an equation free of human political influence and truly universal in it’s implementation.
Lastly there’s the question of if it’s sustainable long term. Will we see if taxing the rich has the effect of decreasing the number of millionaires, or if productivity will boost high enough to create new millionaires.
Overall it’s positive. In pilot programs we find most people using the money wisely, not on the stock market, but on food, rent and to pay off principal on loans. We find people more open to looking for jobs that better fit their talents, or reducing hours at existing jobs to pursue their own business. It gives room to fail at the bottom, the kind that the top got in 2008.
The very last thing I want you to consider is automation. We don’t have an all robot McDonald’s yet but we are close. Close enough to consider what happens to the people working 3 fast food jobs 60 hrs a week and still can’t afford healthcare
9. Ah, the money argument.
The problem is the money has to come from somewhere. Giving every adult in the USA a $20,000/ year salary is, what, 5 trillion dollars? That’s a quarter of our country’s GDP. Do you print the 5 trillion a year? Do you put a 25% tax on literally everything to cover it? Do you say that you can only have the UBI under a certain threshold, and give those who are making an income literally nothing with an accompanying massive tax hike?
There’s really just no good way to implement it that doesn’t involve absurd taxes to the wealthy. You can be fine with that, but actually implementing it has a ~0.00% chance of happening because there will be a lot of folks not even remotely fine with that.
If we can find a way to implement a UBI that doesn’t have massive unintended consequences, I’m all for it. But I haven’t seen a serious way to implement it yet.
8. The truth…as he sees it.
CPA with almost a decade of practical experience in accounting and finance here. There aren’t really a bunch of ‘loopholes’ as people imagine them. Most rich people don’t pay a ton of taxes because they own assets which aren’t generally taxed until they are sold or exchanged for value of some time. The one big one that could actually be considered a loophole would be them pledging those assets as collateral for a loan, which gives them cash they can spend while not triggering a tax liability by selling the asset. That could be very easily fixed, call your representatives and tell them you want them to do that. Most of the other ‘loopholes’ you hear about are just complete nonsense, such as depreciation being an accounting trick. It would be better tax wise if they could just take the deduction for the asset when they buy it rather than over x amount of years as depreciation expense. The other great one I see on Reddit a lot is rich people own charities, lol. I won’t even bother trying to explain that one. TLDR: Loopholes do exist, but with very few exceptions you won’t see any of them explained on reddit.
As far as corporate taxes go, I think the tax rate should be much lower honestly and just raise tax rates to the individuals who receive dividends etc. or are highly compensated officers. Taxing the corporation just takes money away from further investment in the company, and from the people who receive dividends, which includes anyone who owns the stock regardless of their net worth or income. Then from there if you’re a billionaire who gets a ton of dividends, tax them at a higher rate like they should be, and raise the capital gains tax to be in line with ordinary income tax. Then from there we could levy larger taxes on corporations who do things that we see as bad for society overall (i.e. pollution, tobacco and alcohol, gambling) and reduce them for ones doing something good like offering a pension(assuming it’s actually funded) giving employer contributions to the company 401k plan or paying for all of the employees’ health insurance costs.
I know I’ll get downvoted for the above so I guess I’ll just double down with my personal opinion on the Reddit hivemind. You all as a group are worse than someone who knows nothing about how this whole system works, because you have beliefs that are flat out wrong and then you vote based on that.
There are plenty of things right and wrong with how all of this works and it is shocking how few people on this site actually come remotely close to the truth.
It’s not completely your fault, because there are plenty of interested parties who are pushing misleading or just false information on you. But at the end of the day it is your responsibility to either learn the correct information, or trust someone who is actually an expert in a particular field.
If you absolutely hate anti-vaxxers for spreading complete nonsense then you should realize that many, many of you are just as bad when it comes to economic and tax issues.
7. One successful model.
Let me tell you about Alaska. Back in the 70s they found oil in Alaska. Their Governor Jay Hammond was a Republican and he didn’t want outsiders coming to Alaska for their oil. Alaska’s resources should belong to Alaska and Alaskan tax dollars should benefit Alaska. So he helped establish the Alaska Permanent Fund through an amendment to the Alaska Constitution. It was designed to be an investment where at least 25% of the oil money would be put into a dedicated fund for future generations, who would no longer have oil as a resource. The Alaska Permanent Fund sets aside a certain share of oil revenues to continue benefiting current and all future generations of Alaskans.
Now Alaska basically has a trust fund for all it’s citizens and they get dividends yearly.
That’s a model for UBI. Tax dollars as an investment in resources that pays dividends.
6. It’s a fine line to walk.
Already a popular thread but I actually studied this concept pretty heavily in undergrad (graduated a few years ago) so I want to add my two cents.
Most studies that have been completed show that a UBI cash transfer program is more likely to be successful if it casts a wider net and provides a smaller amount of income. This means the less exclusionary the policy the more people are open to it (who would turn down free money) but you also need to provide an amount of money that doesn’t cover their living costs, rather an amount that supplements them.
Provide too much and people forgo work and a short term drop in productivity occurs, but provide too small an amount and people don’t change their spending/saving habits. So finding the thin line between too little and too much is the difficulty with UBI.
Also, the smaller amount of money provided the less of an affect you would expect to see on inflation.
5. Try it state-by-state.
There are threshold were it’s feasible and depends on the area/country employed. Different amounts mean different things for different people. Just looking at the US, 1000$ in NYC is nothing.
But Montana, yeah that’ll do good. So countries, states, cities, should analyze what’s best for their situation. Different ways if implemention and funding also vary.
4. Something other than money.
I would rather have it be a universal offer of basic needs, not money. Like anyone who wanted to could live in this dorm room with a basic meal plan in the cafeteria. So that sets a floor on basic living standards.
Otherwise, if you just have the same number of people you have now, seeking housing in the same number of housing units that exist now, and the only difference is that everyone has an extra $1000/month, then housing costs will all just go up $1000/month, and nothing changes.
3. It could go the wrong way.
I just worry that this pre-calculated income could just end up making more slums in the big cities, or not fixing them at all, as people get that check from the government and don’t have much choices over affordable living places. I imagine you could get stuck in some hotspot for crime, or in some literal health hazard of a place of living, with stuff like black mold, or proximity to industrial hubs putting people at risk with next to no alternatives, or some long winded bureaucratic nonsense to get more money to move elsewhere.
Honestly this is why access to better quality K-12 education, and higher education, with a huge emphasis career pathways is wayyy more important then making living on minimum wage jobs easier, as there are little to no career pathways, perpetuating poverty. If the government could help people avoid getting dead end degrees that don’t pay the bills college wouldn’t be viewed as a scam as much, and rather a place to further yourself.
With more people getting useful degrees and/or trades, more people are useful to the workforce, make more money, and more money is able to be taxed, and there are less people failing to repay their debt, thus needing less government assistance, thereby making those funds available to people who truly need it, and not someone who worked their asses of and ended up in a dud field.
It’s not rocket science, plenty of studies show how low income areas have terrible school funding, and access to higher education, and high income areas have good school funding, and access to college/trades. Poverty starts early, get at the roots instead of the branches.
2. Good in theory.
It’s one of those ideas that is good in theory, but hard to do right in practice.
I believe it was Switzerland that had a vote on whether or not to implement a UBI scheme, and it was shot down because they had no way to prevent people moving to their country en masse in order to claim UBI. If enough people did this, it would essentially cause the economy to collapse.
Then there’s the problem you face on the other end – to pay for UBI, proponents suggest raising taxes. We have seen numerous times that raising taxes can cause economic flight as the richest among us are typically Globalists who care about as much for their country as you do for a used tissue. Time and again, raising taxes has seen the rich move to another part of the country where taxes are lower, or just leave the country altogether.
These are the first two hurdles you need to overcome to make UBI work. First, you have to stop scroungers coming in. Second, you have to stop the rich from fleeing. No proponent of UBI has ever been able to solve this, as most (if not all) of them believe in Open Borders and 120% tax rates for the rich.
1. I mean, why not?
I support it. I taught carpentry at a non-profit for people in homelessness, recovery or recently released from prison to gain job skills, free therapy, free financial services to make a plan to get out of debt and afford housing.
We paid minimum wage, our employees were able to scrape by, but not by much. They wanted more and worked harder, found better jobs using their new skills. They finally found an incentive to join the working world, whereas when they were destitute they didn’t care and languished in an unhealthy life.
It’s Maslow’s pyramid, when you have food, shelter and safety you work your way up. When you’re living on the side of the road, heroine and crime look a lot more enticing, because…why not?
This is all very interesting (and civil, as far as these things go).
What’s your opinion? Let’s talk about it in the comments!
