Quote:
Originally Posted by GGG
A UBI is an AND not an OR. It would be 1800 a month doing nothing or (now that the bottom bracket has a 35% federal tax and another 1250 for working for a total of 3250.
Not that it really changes anything. A large enough portion of people would quit their jobs with that level of UBI.
What i have found interesting is that during the pandemic significantly less labour was required to meet societies needs. Essentially that if we could distribute access to food and shelter more equitably everyone could work less. We hit probably around 30% unemployment on a near global basis and there was only minor shortages.
Effectively 30% of our effort is just waste. This would suggest there is room for a UBI to allow people to work less without society falling apart. The problem is that we don’t have a large scale system that works better than regulated capitalism to do it.
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I think the AND vs OR discussion is one that is being missed here. In fact, the PBO document I referenced earlier seems to work on the OR principle, that only low income people get the UBI (which is why its so much cheaper than the full $500+ billion required for all adults to get UBI).
But only giving UBI to the poor makes it no longer universal. It also creates bad incentives, because the effective marginal tax rates for someone trying to climb out of poverty are really high. If you lose 50% of your UBI plus pay 10% payroll taxes and 20% income taxes, your effective tax rate on a dollar of earned income is 80%, which is pretty de-motivating.
From a policy point of view I like the idea of truly universal basic income. Everyone gets it. The increased taxes on the rich effectively mean that theirs gets taxed away, but administratively its really easy if everyone gets it. It also reduces the disincentive to work, because you don't lose the UBI, it just becomes an additional hand-up for those actively trying to better themselves.
I agree with the comment that significant amounts of labour is wasted throughout the system. Although many of the people laid off during the pandemic aren't necessarily waste. Some stuff that is objectively productive (everything from elective surgeries to the science centre to movie theatres) were fully closed.
I suspect the only way UBI could ever work would be to combine it with a huge overhaul of the entire system of government. You would need to cut whole departments and have huge layoffs to get savings like that, and each of those programs would have people who benefit from it outraged. Plus, given the cost would exceed total Federal spending, you'd need to make deep cuts PLUS significantly raise taxes. Maybe the GST could go to 20%? You would certainly need to massively increase income taxes as well.
Unless the narrator of that video has a plan from his review of the Panama papers that will massively increase tax revenue
