Opinion Is Universal Basic Income the way forward?

[OverCoronavirus Pressure]

In an ideal America

 

[Not A Theist]

In an ideal America

What kind of steps are needed to make it an ideal America? What other features does an ideal America have?

 

[HereticBD]

I don't think it will happen right now, but I think it's an inevitability with the rise of automation.

 

[tenniswhiz]

Life isn’t black and white like you think it is. There are lots of colors in between. You honestly think people will quit their jobs in mass because they get a couple grand a month? I don’t know about you but a thousand or 2 thousand a month ain’t shit. I would literally take that money and save it for retirement. You need to expand your thinking

Let’s use that 2k/month figure you mentioned.
There are TONS of people who make exactly that much...ex, shop cashier.
So are you suggesting that anyone who earns a salary in this range could just quit and opt for UBI instead?
Unemployment pays about that much in most states! And you can only collect that if you worked previously (and paid taxes). It doesn’t last forever either.

Sweden and Norway have a great system. It works for them.
That will not work in the USA.

 

[Corn Pop Hombre]

UBI is just undeserved welfare for the masses.
Who is going to work when they have a check every month for nothing?

yeah, undeserved

definitely not like mega corporations that make billions of dollars in profits and yet people little to no taxes and constantly get billions in handouts on top of paying very little taxes

you are a clown

 

[Not A Theist]

yeah, undeserved

definitely not like mega corporations that make billions of dollars in profits and yet people little to no taxes and constantly get billions in handouts on top of paying very little taxes

you are a clown

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't a small portion of upper income earners pay a majority of the taxes - taking the U.S. as an example? How do corporations fit into that? I think I've seen @JudoThrowFiasco talk about this. Could someone who knows a bit on this clarify? Sadly, I'm largely ignorant and haven't looked beyond talking points.

(for reference, article below talking about upper income earners - still interested in how corporations fit into this)

Top 3% of U.S. Taxpayers Paid Majority of Income Tax in 2016

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...xpayers-paid-majority-of-income-taxes-in-2016

 

[Corn Pop Hombre]

• Universal Basic Income (UBI) takes money from the poor and gives it to everyone, increasing poverty and depriving the poor of needed targeted support.

Where are you getting this from? Your pro and con say the opposite thing and you're directly contradicting yourself. There are a number of different ways to fund a UBI. Acting like the only way you can fund it is by "taking money from the poor" is just silly.

If UBI does become an actually then obviously it needs to be structured in a way that distributes money downward, not upward.

• UBI removes the incentive to work, adversely affecting the economy and leading to a labor and skills shortage.

Yeah, it's almost as if human life should be about something other than being a productive cog in an economic machine. Human beings have numerous different traits and attributes that are important for a meaning and fulfilled life, but the only attribute that capitalism selects for is economic productivity. We live in a highly advanced industrial era and there is an excess of abundance and resources to go around. Human beings should be free to develop their lives in the ways that they see fit, not stuck in a cubicle or on a fry cook line having their labor exploited for billionaires.

• UBI is too expensive.

Nonsense. We have trillions of dollars readily available for maintaining global imperialism and building machines for murdering each other. Government programs only suddenly become "too expensive" when they're programs aimed at actually improving peoples lives.

 

[OverCoronavirus Pressure]

What kind of steps are needed to make it an ideal America? What other features does an ideal America have?

I don't know about steps to take.

Seems to me an ideal America would feature having to earn your Citizenship through service to the State, which would ensure the right to vote, coupled with basic housing, education, income and health care.
In a strong, ideal America, we take care of other Americans ensuring a strong workforce.

 

[superpunch]

Life isn’t black and white like you think it is. There are lots of colors in between. You honestly think people will quit their jobs in mass because they get a couple grand a month? I don’t know about you but a thousand or 2 thousand a month ain’t shit. I would literally take that money and save it for retirement. You need to expand your thinking

I wouldn't quit working. But I would definitely quit working a mentally stressful professional job 40-60 hours a week for $80K or so. I would just go do something easy like flip burgers for 15-20 hours a week, and make $40K or so.

 

[Corn Pop Hombre]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't a small portion of upper income earners pay a majority of the taxes - taking the U.S. as an example? How do corporations fit into that? I think I've seen @JudoThrowFiasco talk about this. Could someone who knows a bit on this clarify? Sadly, I'm largely ignorant and haven't looked beyond talking points.

(for reference, article below talking about upper income earners - still interested in how corporations fit into this)

Top 3% of U.S. Taxpayers Paid Majority of Income Tax in 2016

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...xpayers-paid-majority-of-income-taxes-in-2016

Yeah these are high income individual earners paying those taxes, not corporations.

Besides that, the truly ultra rich elite don't really make an income. They have hundreds of millions or billions of dollars from inheritance/investment/etc/etc and they only pay capital gains, because they don't actually earn an income from doing anything.

Also, your statistic is incorrect.

The top 1% paying 24% in taxes because they're making the lions share of the income.

Again returning to the topic, these are high earning individuals, not corporations.

 

[superpunch]

Also, if implemented as a non global system, this will undoubtedly place a greater tax burden on the wealthy. I don't have a problem with that in principle but, since (insert country trying the UBI) isn't the only game in town, how do we stop the golden geese paying for it from flying to the other country down the street where they're not trying UBI?

You start banning travel, control who can or can't leave the country, etc. Why does this sound familiar?

 

[Not A Theist]

Yeah these are high income individual earners paying those taxes, not corporations.

Besides that, the truly ultra rich elite don't really make an income. They have hundreds of millions or billions of dollars from inheritance/investment/etc/etc and they only pay capital gains, because they don't actually earn an income from doing anything.

Also, your statistic is incorrect.

The top 1% paying 24% in taxes because they're making the lions share of the income.

Again returning to the topic, these are high earning individuals, not corporations.

Interesting. Could you break down why the Bloomberg article's numbers are incorrect and the numbers from ITEP's tax model are for me? I'm not an economist or anything, and this stuff is a bit out of my area of expertise. I wasn't really endorsing those numbers so much as displaying some of the types of talking points that I can neither verify or deny in an informed way.

Also, noted on the corporations. Any idea how corporations fit into the whole scheme? That was one of my original questions.

 

[all caps]

So many men want to live under the thumb of another man. Sad.

 

[Seano]

yeah, undeserved

definitely not like mega corporations that make billions of dollars in profits and yet people little to no taxes and constantly get billions in handouts on top of paying very little taxes

you are a clown

Better a clown than a leech with no pride or work ethic.

 

[Not A Theist]

You start banning travel, control who can or can't leave the country, etc. Why does this sound familiar?

This is part of my problem, and what I was hinting at with my final bit about government as a potentially dangerous tool. UBI may be a gateway for a new breed of authoritarianism if it requires a certain level of fiscal participation which capital won't willingly agree to. If they have the option of leaving they'll bugger off.

I always wonder if more gentle and sophisticated coercive measures might be tried. For our own local Alberta oil industry, I've always mused that some sort of high tax and lenient grant option might be effective - a "we tax you very highly, then give you almost all of that money back in grants which are to be spent on (insert up and coming industry) in Alberta" - meaning that high taxes are paid, but it is largely funneled back into the expansion of a local business economy. Instead the popular stance on the Left is to tax the job creating people/groups into the ground but expect them to stay and continue creating the jobs when they can very well just leave for other resource markets. The political approach on the Right is to lower their taxes and provide very limited incentives for the companies to do anything but the single thing they've always done, and leave the economy largely oil dependent. The Left drives the golden goose away and the Right lets the golden goose run free to shit all over the coop. Neither seems like a really effective approach.

Of course, as stated above, I'm not an economist, nor am I a businessman, nor am I a politician. I just like to muse about things I have a poor understanding of.

 

[WhiteMousse]

Here come all the finance majors

 

[Corn Pop Hombre]

Interesting. Could you break down why the Bloomberg article's numbers are incorrect and the numbers from ITEP's tax model are for me? I'm not an economist or anything, and this stuff is a bit out of my area of expertise. I wasn't really endorsing those numbers so much as displaying some of the types of talking points that I can neither verify or deny in an informed way.

Also, noted on the corporations. Any idea how corporations fit into the whole scheme? That was one of my original questions.

I can't read the whole article, its behind a pay wall and I'm not giving billionaire bloomberg a cent.

Without being able to look at the whole article, I would just say consider the source. Mike Bloomberg is a multi billionaire pushing corporate propaganda to pursue his own economic best interests.

While I'm not too familiar with them, ITEP on the other hand is described as

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy is a non-profit, non-partisan think tank that works on state and federal tax policy issues.

I have always heard the talking point that "the top 1% (or 2% or 3%) pay 90% of the taxes!" or some variation of that talking point. Like usual when you dig into it that's not the truth.

On corporations the Tax Policy Center has the following to say

The corporate income tax raised $297.0 billion in fiscal 2017, accounting for 9 percent of total federal revenue.

So, these multinational corporations that constantly get hundreds of billions of dollars in handouts and only employ a minority of the American workforce, contribute a paltry 9% to federal revenue. The entire economic system is set up to serve their interests.

 

[scorpipede]

Of course they would. I would. If you hand everything to everyone, what incentive do they have to go out and earn anything? I'm not going to my 9-5 job anymore if I'm getting a couple of grand a month to sit on my ass.
I could live pretty comfortably off of two grand a month. On top of that, I would probably qualify for other social assistance as well.

Someone else handling your basic needs would eliminate your own desire to strive for success?

 

[Corn Pop Hombre]

Better a clown than a leech with no pride or work ethic.

I'm educated, make a good income and pay my fair share of taxes.

Try again

 

[Starman]

It will never work. It’s a stupid idea put forward by stupid people. If you don’t believe me, wait and see which idiots from this forum come and argue for it.