Which is in line with most other UBI experiments. How many more experiments do we need until politicians just acknowledge that this is good policy and we need to start implementing it?
I’m not against it, but where would the money come from?
Rich people. Increase taxes a tiny bit on the 1% and this will be paid for, and then some.
Well not a tiny bit. Increase taxes in the 0.1% a whole fuckload. I’d increase taxes on billionaires to 90% and start freezing assets of anyone who tries to go overseas to avoid them. levy the world’s strongest ever economic and geopolitical sanctions against countries that harbor billionaire american tax evasion expats or something.
Let’s see someone run on that platform and not get JFKed before election day first.
Ok what do you do when foreign investment dries up and no foreign entity wants their money in your bank since you have a habit of seizing it? How strong is the economy then?
I don’t think you understand the consequences
foreign investment dries up and no foreign entity wants their money in your bank since you have a habit of seizing it?
Won’t happen if they still want access to your markets.
How strong is the economy then?
Plenty
No one wants access to markets that seize money or companies. It is why Venezuela isn’t seeing foreign investment.
If foreign money isn’t coming in your economy us going to be very weak comparatively.
With natural resources and trillions in seized assets? I doubt it.
Who cares? Did you not see how it was cheaper than what we’re currently doing because fewer people wind up in hospitals and prisons?
Where does the more money we are currently spending come from?
They just print it. There’s nothing tying the value of the currency to what it’s worth in terms of purchase power except how much is circulated.
My issue with UBI, at large-scale, is that it will cause inflation that will 100% go to the wealthiest people on the planet. For example, it’s not that the cost of a burger would need to go from $10->$15 because companies now need to compete in wages in an environment where their employees have an extra $12k, it’s that the cost of a burger will go from $10->$15 because the rich want the extra $5, leaving people receiving UBI with the same (or less) purchasing power.
EDIT: To be clear, I’m excited about the possibilities that these studies show, and I’m not against UBI. I just am getting older and coming to the conclusion that the non-wealthy get fucked every time anything that is meant to help us is implemented.
Yeah the effects on inflation need to be looked at pretty closely. Extra cash to people who need it is great for them. Extra cash for everyone, especially if it is just printed, surely will cause problems. Just the increase in money supply will result in inflation but yeah greedy assholes will find ways to suck up the free money from everyone else.
The problem with the wealthy fucking over us peons is what’s truly Universal when we have so much corruption.
If I didn’t fear it falling into squalor, along with NIMBY problems, some kind of public free housing would effectively be like a portion of UBI but harder for greedy pricks to suck up the money legally. And at least that way the people who would otherwise be able to work (e.g. those who became homeless due to medical emergencies) wouldn’t be at a disadvantage from being unhomed.
Of course the real answer there is universal healthcare and elimination of for profit healthcare and elimination of health insurance. So that medical emergencies are just covered.
is that it will cause inflation that will 100% go to the wealthiest people on the planet
It will only cause inflation if you print the money. If the supply of money goes up then value of money goes down.
I just am getting older and coming to the conclusion that the non-wealthy get fucked every time anything that is meant to help us is implemented.
I hear you there. We have a corrupt political class to blame for that. Which is why I advocate for the Forward party, which aims to break up the duopoly of the political system. It’s main policy goals are Nonpartisan primaries and Ranked Choice Voting.
Yes, regardless of if the money gets printed or just ends up in people’s bank accounts, as the amount of money in circulation increases, inflation will follow. The only other way to get money in people’s accounts is to take it from other accounts, like taxing the crap out of the wealthiest people, purchases over a certain threshold, etc. Then it wouldn’t lead to inflation, just redistribution of wealth. I’m not an expert on economies, and I’m sure the semantics of what I’m saying isn’t quite right, but I think you know what I mean.
Yeah you have a good grasp of the ideas involved.
as the amount of money in circulation increases
If you don’t print money to fund a UBI, money in circulation stays the same so there is no inflation.
In fact in the few widescale UBI experiments that have taken place, inflation decreased. Alaska has had a form of a basic income, funded by oil revenues on from state land, since 1982. Ever since, Alaska has had LOWER inflation than the entire U.S. Their term it is the Permanent Fund dividend and it managed by a state owned corporation.
As an aside Economics is a social science, and is imperfect because it cant be replicated. The term for this is Replication crisis. Interesting wikipedia article on that.
I’m not understanding the need for printed money to increase inflation. Wouldn’t direct deposit to people’s checking accounts have the same effect as printed currency?
No, direct deposit is just the method of moving around currency from the government to people. Inflation is based upon the economic theory of supply and demand. The price of a good is determined by the intersection of supply and demand. If both supply and demand go up equally the price stays the same. If supply goes up without demand changing the price goes down. If demand goes down without supply changing the price goes up.
Supply in this case is how much money is in circulation. When money is moved around from a group of people to another, then the amount of money is still the same. Demand in this case is how much it costs to borrow money. Demand is otherwise known as the interest rate when applied to money.
If both the amount of money in circulation and the interest rate stay steady, than no change will occur in the value of money. This is the case of a UBI funded by cutting spending or increasing taxes.
However if only supply increases and demand stays the same, then the value of money will decrease. Likewise if only demand increases and supply stays the same, then the value of money will decrease.
Inflation is the devaluing of currency caused by either of the above listed changes to the supply-demand equation.
Think about the amount of printed currency like housing supply in LA. The price for housing is ever increasing because the demand for housing is increasing while the supply is barely inching upwards. That is an example of the value of houses in LA inflating. The same concept applies to government backed money. The only difference is the government decides the supply and demand of the currency market.
yeah i’ve never understood why they can’t just print the money. how does that actually force the dude at costco to print new price tags. ohh oh no this amount seems like less now, it’s not as though we have abundance beyond our wildest dreams, better increase prices because of the graphs!!
Because money is made up until the point when it isn’t and someone wants a debt repaid.
Some of these programs end up saving the governments money, due to reducing other costs like policing, shelters, and maybe also increased tax revenue due to these people improving their employment situations, thus paying taxes.
It may be the case that a less targeted program, ie an actual broad-based UBI, would have an actual cost associated with it. There are a lot of benefits to reducing poverty that reduce the drag on other government support systems, though.
Would you ask that if it came to the defense budget?
I would rather the government spent its money on directly helping citizens rather than only giving it to the military industrial complex.
The defense budget doesn’t purport to be a replacement for capitalism.
Neither does a UBI. It merely claims to help people improve their life.
You’re the one bringing capitalism into this.
Then in what sense is it “universal”?
A UBI is universal in the sense that it applies without a means test or a need to work. Traditional social welfare programs have many overly restrictive policies that limit who is eligible. This results in only about ~25% of those who are eligible actually using those programs.
If you are arguing that the linked article is not an example of a UBI, you would be correct as it is a targeted basic income.
It’s universal in that everyone receives it.
Closing yeah loopholes and making the rich pay their share, churches, decreasing military spending by a fraction etc…
Ideally you use it to reduce/depreciate services that are more expensive counter parts to what UBI provides. Ideally a reduction in homeless shelters, food banks, police services, emergency hospital ect
Part of it comes from removing existing social support schemes that UBI supplants. Not only can you reallocate those funds, the simplified ruleset should also reduce bureaucratic overhead, which can also go towards funding UBI.
Will that cover all of the additional expenses? Probably not. But it’s a start, at least.
Where would it go?
Partially this is a Cotton Eye Joe reference, but mostly pointing out that people spend money. Spent money is taxed. Huuzah.
Also money isn’t real. You can just print the stuff.
The only issue is the productive capacity of the society doing it.It could come from rich people or it could come from cutting back on the services that go hand in hand with homelessness. Shelters, policing, less crime, etc
Rolling back trump’s $2 Trillion tax cuts for the rich and corporations would be a great start. From there, increase taxes on both groups substantially. They will still be rich and still be making record profits, but we will gain social safety nets such as UBI in the process.
Alternatively, we could generate funding for this the same way we did to fund over 20 years of military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. It could come from the same place we get the funds for subsidizing fossil fuel companies. It could even come from the very same money printers we used to give free PPP loans to “businesses” during the height of the pandemic.
The point being, if it’s good policy, a healthy functioning government does it, and doesn’t waste time asking questions about how we pay for things. Taxes. The answer is always taxes, it’s literally called the Internal Revenue Service.
Weed/drugs in general.
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What can be reduced or removed with the introduction of UBI that offsets those costs? The need for a significant number of programs would be reduced or eliminated entirely with this type of support.
That in mind, one needs to be sure they don’t give people less under the guise of giving them more, as is usually the case.
A negative lowest tax bracket would be more affordable, since that plus unemployment would only at most make up about 50million or .6 trillion a year.
The main problem with cuting services like housing assistance or food stamps would be that thouse can be more than just a 1000 a month in many places and the government can do things to help with thouse at scale than an individual looking for a apartment can’t.
You could eliminate SSI/Disability payments, but that’s a drop in the bucket. Maybe a tweak to child tax credits since you’d be coming out ahead for most. Then an income limit as well.
Not sure of the math behind OPs numbers so could likely expand on it
If we implemented socialized healthcare and UBI, could we eliminate social security, medicare, medicaid?
Social Security would require a higher amount than 1k a month, lots of social security recipients get more than that. You’d be looking at a tiered system, which eliminates the U in it.
Medicare and Medicaid yes, but you’d be supplementing with higher taxes (a net positive more likely anyways since the higher taxes would likely be lower than the cost of private insurance)
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That would save money on homelessness services and pig salaries, plus the money would be spent and therefore taxed.
Even if it wouldn’t save money (it would) some taxes have needed to go up for a while now anyway.
$12,000 / year * 600,000 homeless people in the USA =
$7,200,000,000 / yearMaybe let’s start small and help some homeless people get off the streets for the low low price of ~0.1% of the country’s annual spending.
I assume that once you have a stable situation, the supreme gets cut off. As more homeless get off the streets, this number should decrease (but probably not disappear [my cynicism says that we’ll probably never completely solve homelessness]). As more homeless become taxably employed, federal government revenue will increase; spending should decrease as various programs can be throttled back. I’m sure some sociologist-economist can give you a calculated estimated ROI figure on this investment, but I feel that the numbers would probably balance pretty evenly with the added benefit of helping a bunch of people and communities.
UBI would be great but I don’t expect that to occur without a tonne of baby steps
It can come out of state budgets as well, not just federal budgets.
I wonder how that would work by starting only in big cities, and expanding to less populated areas over time.
More money income means people spent, means more taxes, means more money in the treasury, means more money to give away.
By using the money to boost economy where it could be utilized could mean possibility to boost the economy elsewhere, without instantly enrolling everyone at the same time.
numbers dont lie
But assumptions do.
There is no set rule, that a UBI has to be $1000/mo. Even at $100 dollars it would be a huge help to many of us.
That would make it ~$1/3 trillion / yr.
Which would be 5% of the FY 2022 US Budget.
A UBI would not require that Federal taxes go up by a significant rate.
Why is this article 3 sentences long? What study? By how much?
Here. Found in the article, as an hyperlink.
Page 10 contains info about the participants. Pages 12 - 33 contains the data you might be interested in. There’s also some information about the methodology they used.
Why are people ignoring that 100% of this money would be pumped back into the economy every month? If you want your economy to boom, you pump money to people with the least means.
People who only focus on “but it’ll cost xxxx per year!” Are completely missing the big picture. This money is taxed twice, because it becomes income, and then sales tax. When it is spent, it directly helps the local economy, which in turn inflates the state economy, which in turn inflates the US economy.
If you want a gilded age of economic growth and prosperity, this is how you do it.
Also, the money can come out of state budgets as well as federal budgets.
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