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While the feel-good aspect is immediate it exasperates a problem exponentially. That being if people don't have to work, they won't. The ball-and-chain may be 5lbs today, 50lbs tomorrow, and 500lbs 20 years from now.
When the reward for working more, working harder, working smarter, falls far short of the reward and tradeoff for doing so, the working class will content themselves with merely working enough. This isn't how healthy economies grow.
While the feel-good aspect is immediate it exasperates a problem exponentially. That being if people don't have to work, they won't. The ball-and-chain may be 5lbs today, 50lbs tomorrow, and 500lbs 20 years from now.
When the reward for working more, working harder, working smarter, falls far short of the reward and tradeoff for doing so, the working class will content themselves with merely working enough. This isn't how healthy economies grow.
You mean like how our current welfare punishes you for working harder? And where a UBI wouldn't?
We have a huge welfare class that gets income without working, most of its in the top .01%
You work pretty hard to have enough stocks to not need to work. Even the top 10% of millennials don't make more than 1-2g a year in dividends.
There's a reason why most people who don't have a public sector job don't retire until they're 65 or one of the few remaining corporate lifer jobs that at least has continued health benefits. They haven't accrued enough wealth to be able to do it without an enormous drop in standard of living. The more you make, the bigger the drop. I look at this math every day. Yep. 65 it is. You need 10x your income in net worth to do it at age 60 and more like 15x at age 55. That's 85th percentile to 90th percentile household net worth at that age bracket. I'd bet it's 99th percentile for the oldest of the Millennials.
I've already written in this thread that capitalism is the reward/penalty motivator. If you adopt basic income, the penalty is gone and easily half the population will correctly conclude that they're better off doing the bare minimum.
There's a reason why most people who don't have a public sector job don't retire until they're 65 or one of the few remaining corporate lifer jobs that at least has continued health benefits. They haven't accrued enough wealth to be able to do it without an enormous drop in standard of living. The more you make, the bigger the drop. I look at this math every day. Yep. 65 it is. You need 10x your income in net worth to do it at age 60 and more like 15x at age 55. That's 85th percentile to 90th percentile household net worth at that age bracket. I'd bet it's 99th percentile for the oldest of the Millennials.
I've already written in this thread that capitalism is the reward/penalty motivator. If you adopt basic income, the penalty is gone and easily half the population will correctly conclude that they're better off doing the bare minimum.
Capitalism rewards those who are born with intelligence and good upbringing if you working a job that does not even pay enough to live on their is no motivation. There is no evidence that people given a basic income would do bare minimum that is just your wrong opinion. So what if people want to do the bare minimum that is up to them why should you care if they want to do nothing and just get basic income then all they get is basic income. I do not know many people who would only want to have enough to live on and not have money to go out to eat or go to movies or have cable tv. Seems you only want to see the worse in people.
Capitalism rewards those who are born with intelligence and good upbringing if you working a job that does not even pay enough to live on their is no motivation. There is no evidence that people given a basic income would do bare minimum that is just your wrong opinion. So what if people want to do the bare minimum that is up to them why should you care if they want to do nothing and just get basic income then all they get is basic income. I do not know many people who would only want to have enough to live on and not have money to go out to eat or go to movies or have cable tv. Seems you only want to see the worse in people.
What about an 18 year old who inherits 50k and it just rises to
Be enough to retire on? This doesn't seem to coincide with intelligence or hard work.
Last edited by Perma Bear; 06-16-2016 at 04:13 PM..
There's a reason why most people who don't have a public sector job don't retire until they're 65 or one of the few remaining corporate lifer jobs that at least has continued health benefits. They haven't accrued enough wealth to be able to do it without an enormous drop in standard of living. The more you make, the bigger the drop. I look at this math every day. Yep. 65 it is. You need 10x your income in net worth to do it at age 60 and more like 15x at age 55. That's 85th percentile to 90th percentile household net worth at that age bracket. I'd bet it's 99th percentile for the oldest of the Millennials.
I've already written in this thread that capitalism is the reward/penalty motivator. If you adopt basic income, the penalty is gone and easily half the population will correctly conclude that they're better off doing the bare minimum.
But most people want luxuries, big houses, new smartphone every year, nice car and so on. The basic income would just be a bare minimum amount of money to survive off of.
I've already written in this thread that capitalism is the reward/penalty motivator. If you adopt basic income, the penalty is gone and easily half the population will correctly conclude that they're better off doing the bare minimum.
I don't think most of the population will conclude that living below the poverty line is their best option in life. Any more than now.
The BI is being talked about precisely in response to tech unemployment. It is the most efficient way to deal with a growing unemployable population, so some people choosing not to work isn't a problem in the slightest.
In your scenario half the population must be driven by fear. If that is true, it certainly isn't something we want to support. Most civilized countries essentially abandoned the monetary carrot and stick system a long time ago.
"People can make up to $30,000 in earned income without losing a penny of the grant. After $30,000, a graduated surtax reimburses part of the grant, which would drop to $6,500 (but no lower) when an individual reaches $60,000 of earned income. Why should people making good incomes retain any part of the UBI? Because they will be losing Social Security and Medicare, and they need to be compensated.
The UBI is to be financed by getting rid of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, housing subsidies, welfare for single women and every other kind of welfare and social-services program, as well as agricultural subsidies and corporate welfare. As of 2014, the annual cost of a UBI would have been about $200 billion cheaper than the current system. By 2020, it would be nearly a trillion dollars cheaper."
There won't be a sensible UBI that is *cheaper* than our current welfare system, because it is impossible.
People who are truly disabled and unable to work should get more than the meager starter UBI. It's only enough for someone to live in poverty, with the intention that they would still be able to earn money doing something.
Social Security and Medicare could be eventually phased out, but they will not be replaced by a UBI at the beginning.
And the surtax for higher earners seems like a slippery slope. Just give everyone a UBI and tax it as income.
If I were in charge of the tax code, I would get rid of a complicated income tax and replace it with a sales tax. Tax normal sales at like 25% and luxury goods at ~40% marginal rate above the 2x the median price. (i.e. if the median price of a car is $35,000 and you want to buy a $300,000 Ferrari, you'd have a sales tax of 25% on the first $70,000 of the car and 40% on the remaining $230,000 for a total sales tax rate of 36.5%)
Get rid of corporate/business taxes and capital gains taxes completely, to encourage businesses to invest in income production here. High marginal income taxes are going to discourage the production of income more than sales taxes will after the income is already produced.
Install a UBI of around $10,000/year for adults, and $4,000/year per child(to the guardians) and get rid of most welfare programs.
In effect this policy would be like a more graduated version of the fair tax with a UBI replacing the prebate. I think it can provide a more balanced approach to "spreading the wealth" in an era of technological unemployment without damaging the capitalistic incentive model critical to innovation.
Also like to add that the inheritance tax above a certain level would increase drastically. There is a growing danger of a permanent godly-rich aristocracy forming with growing technological unemployment. If a huge portion of the economy is technologically unemployed, then they cant get income, and obviously cannot save what they can't make, and larger and larger portions of the capital pool would be "earned" through genetic lottery.
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