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Yeah, and this would be even more so the case, if more people received a guaranteed $1,000 supplement per month, or some amount like that. Most would use it to help offset some things.
The average US household income is I think close to $70,000, and I'm sure that's higher in the blue states. So it's not like having a universal modest social security is going to cause most folks to hugely shift their lifestyle or cause most people to not seek employment or be productive.
We're not talking about some unworkable utopian socialism vision. We're talking about standard capitalist society like always, with just a bigger and better safety net. For the purposes of anti-poverty and anti-extreme wealth inequality/curve/distribution. Which in turn means a healthier market economy, because more people have more money and ability to participate in it.
They already do this by virtue of the tax code and tax credits. UBI is not happening in my lifetime. Maybe when there are no jobs because the world is run by AI and robots something changes.
They found that the COVID pandemic money sent to "struggling" families ended up being used for vacations and frills, not for household expenses. It's a fallacy to think that people will judiciously manage a $1000 supplement every month. What's to stop them from blowing it?
You are wasting the taxpayers' hard earned money. Ripping them off and sending it to other people who are not managing their job situations and money properly.
I still hear young people quitting jobs on a dime without any backup plan. That's on them. Don't steal MY hard earned money to give to them just because they're too lazy to work.
I feel the average person who will receive this money is not going to save it for a rainy day, i.e. a car repair bill or a leaking roof or a dental bill. Nope. I know people right now who received the COVID pandemic money and spent it within a short period of time. These people (who are supposedly struggling) are still spending on what I consider to be "frills": Christmas gifts, getaways/hotels, dining out, takeout from the pricey seafood store, massages, new clothes, etc. If they're hurting so much, why are they blowing their money? I continually hear complaints from 2 people about their dental bills and car and house repair bills yet they both received the COVID pandemic money and could have saved it for such bills. Not spent it on frills.
Because whether we're talking about a UBI/GMI or NIT system or whatever, it would be a small amount of money. The point would be to keep more people from being homeless/hungry/without a change of clothes so that they can go to interviews and get jobs that would all pay a lot more than any UBI would pay.
Giving people more money does not:
1) make stupid people smarter
2) make irresponsible people act responsibly
3) does not make the mentally ill want to take their medication so that they can function somewhat normally and actually hold a job and not be homeless
4) does not make substance abusers want to stop abusing substances so they can hold a job and not be homeless.
Seeing how you dodged the hard questions, this is not much a of a debate, rather it's the foisting of untenable ideas on unsuspecting people.
I simply cannot imagine anything of the sort actually improving the lives of people, not to mention the gyrations it could take to craft any sort of implementable program with rules, enforcement, and measurement of outcomes. No doubt there are responsible people out there who would benefit from such a program but we'll never hear about the successes, we'll only get sensational political propaganda by whichever party hates the idea and wants voters to kill it. For me, overall, the idea is just a non-starter, in part due to the difficulty defining such a program, not to mention all those who will find a way to game the system. It means well but does not end well. I shudder to think of the fights in Congress over this.
What I would like as a way to raise incomes is to require employers pay a living wage. This incentivizes people to take jobs, especially the jobs deemed undesirable. This is much more of a free enterprise solution that incentivizes people to seek their own solutions; they know best what works for them. The sad cases of addiction and mental illness will always be with us, no need to spend tax dollars on giveaways where no benefit is discerned.
If we're going to spend tax dollars, lets spend some on publicly funded 2-year trade schools to teach our non-college kids some skill sets so they can have an actual trade to support at least a basic middle class existence. We need to stop importing immigrants to do the construction trades and work in the agricultural sector and start investing in our own people. This would go a long way to ending the generational poverty seen in this country.
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Last edited by Mike from back east; 02-26-2023 at 11:23 AM..
Yeah, and this would be even more so the case, if more people received a guaranteed $1,000 supplement per month, or some amount like that. Most would use it to help offset some things.
The average US household income is I think close to $70,000, and I'm sure that's higher in the blue states. So it's not like having a universal modest social security is going to cause most folks to hugely shift their lifestyle or cause most people to not seek employment or be productive.
We're not talking about some unworkable utopian socialism vision. We're talking about standard capitalist society like always, with just a bigger and better safety net. For the purposes of anti-poverty and anti-extreme wealth inequality/curve/distribution. Which in turn means a healthier market economy, because more people have more money and ability to participate in it.
How about provide some real specifics:
a. How many people would get it?
b. How much would they get?
c. What's the total amount per year?
d. Where does it come from?
e. Who pays for it?
f. What happens to the current various welfare programs? Do they stay in place too?
You're asking a lot of people to pay for something. Real numbers are needed to justify your position, not assumptions and generalizations.
I simply cannot imagine anything of the sort actually improving the lives of people, not to mention the gyrations it could take to craft any sort of implementable program with rules, enforcement, and measurement of outcomes. No doubt there are responsible people out there who would benefit from such a program but we'll never hear about the successes, we'll only get sensational political propaganda by whichever party hates the idea and wants voters to kill it. For me, overall, the idea is just a non-starter, in part due to the difficulty defining such a program, not to mention all those who will find a way to game the system. It means well but does not end well. I shudder to think of the fights in Congress over this.
What I would like as a way to raise incomes is to require employers pay a living wage. This incentivizes people to take jobs, especially the jobs deemed undesirable. This is much more of a free enterprise solution that incentivizes people to seek their own solutions; they know best what works for them. The sad cases of addiction and mental illness will always be with us, no need to spend tax dollars on giveaways where no benefit is discerned.
If we're going to spend tax dollars, lets spend some on publicly funded 2-year trade schools to teach our non-college kids some skill sets so they can have an actual trade to support at least a basic middle class existence. We need to stop importing immigrants to do the construction trades and work in the agricultural sector and start investing in our own people. This would go a long way to ending the generational poverty seen in this country.
Hear! Hear!
Also, if this resulted in no more fast food companies is that a bad thing for anyone's health and those workers could also do something more meaningful with their time (and earn more).
Also, if this resulted in no more fast food companies is that a bad thing for anyone's health and those workers could also do something more meaningful with their time (and earn more).
Part of the fast food problem is corporations have foisted on us a biased point of view that McJobs are a way for kids to enter into the wonderful world of work. Bah humbug. I worked fast foods for $1.25/hour back in the day and it was dreadful. They'd be happy to pay middle aged adults these minimum wage jobs with no benefits, it has nothing to do with entry level work, it's all about profits for them.
Part of the fast food problem is society tends to view this and much other restaurant work as menial labor, unfit for a living wage. My point of view is that all honest work is worthy of a living wage while we expect most people to strive to better themselves up the ladder. Most of us do that. But McJobs and minimum wage should be limited to those under 21 years of age, beyond that McFat would have to pay a living wage with health care benefits, no matter how many hours a week a person works. THAT would upend the fast foods business and if a lot of the trashy stuff goes away the better off we'll be, especially in light of obesity and diabetes. A PBJ at home is far more nutritious (and cheaper) than a fist full of cheap fatty meat and fries with a sugary drink full of high fructose corn syrup that is truly poisonous to human livers. But I digress.
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Last edited by Mike from back east; 02-26-2023 at 01:56 PM..
1) make stupid people smarter
2) make irresponsible people act responsibly
3) does not make the mentally ill want to take their medication so that they can function somewhat normally and actually hold a job and not be homeless
4) does not make substance abusers want to stop abusing substances so they can hold a job and not be homeless.
Seeing how you dodged the hard questions, this is not much a of a debate, rather it's the foisting of untenable ideas on unsuspecting people.
Where did I ever say that a basic income or negative income tax, would do any of those things? Of course it wouldn't. But that doesn't mean that it wouldn't be helpful or a good thing to have in place, or do other positive things. By no means would I (or anyone) ever claim that any type of thing like this, would fix all the various ills and challenges of society, including all of that listed. That's just, a total straw man.
And if, "it doesn't make stupid people smarter", is your bar for whether a program is a good idea, then, uh, how would anything ever meet such a bar, exactly? Magic, I guess? lol.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike from back east
What I would like as a way to raise incomes is to require employers pay a living wage. This incentivizes people to take jobs, especially the jobs deemed undesirable. This is much more of a free enterprise solution that incentivizes people to seek their own solutions; they know best what works for them. The sad cases of addiction and mental illness will always be with us, no need to spend tax dollars on giveaways where no benefit is discerned.
If we're going to spend tax dollars, lets spend some on publicly funded 2-year trade schools to teach our non-college kids some skill sets so they can have an actual trade to support at least a basic middle class existence.
Yeah, of course, definitely. I'm 100% all for all of that. Regardless of whether a UBI or NIT of some kind would also be in place, we need a much higher national minimum wage, which, hasn't even been touched in forever.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tnff
How about provide some real specifics:
a. How many people would get it?
b. How much would they get?
c. What's the total amount per year?
d. Where does it come from?
e. Who pays for it?
f. What happens to the current various welfare programs? Do they stay in place too?
You're asking a lot of people to pay for something. Real numbers are needed to justify your position, not assumptions and generalizations.
All the specifics would depend on all the specifics of a given implementation of something in place. All kinds of possibilities exist with different models and concepts of things. From a more recent Andrew Yang-advocated UBI type of monthly check sent to everybody either below a given income (sort of like a permanent version of the pandemic stimulus checks), or, the same type of flat check sent to everyone, even regardless of income, or, either to more of something like what Milton Friedman advocated back in the 1960's, negative income tax model that would pay out a sum annually to those below a threshold.
And, same with the funding possibilities. Different progressive/wealth type taxes could fund it, different cuts in other areas, etc. It would be a matter of getting the numbers to work out. Politically, very difficult, of course. But theoretically possible, at least. I'm more focused on the theoretical argument, for now.
I know if I'm designing it though, absolutely I'm getting rid of most (not all) of the other existing welfare programs. Because, that would be a way to help justify it, and also offset some of the cost. And in a way that would kind of be part of the whole point, too.
I have a copy somewhere of Milton Friedman - Capitalism and Freedom, and read that a long time ago, and liked a lot of his thinking about it. He argued that cash is actually better for the poor, than most of the various welfare programs and benefits. Because, then everyone could just use the amount for whatever they most need it for, based on whatever their individual life situations.
Also it would save the taxpayers on bureaucratic overhead. The IRS would simply print everyone a check to help everyone out, instead of half of these various departments and organizations that do whatever.
Friedman argued for the NIT model on the grounds that it wouldn't increase people's effective taxes as the lowest incomes started to make more money, or related disincentives like that. You wouldn't have the choice of taking a job or staying on welfare, etc. He made points around most of the current welfare models being more disincentive to work, than if a simpler NIT model were in place.
In the Friedman NIT model, those who work (at any job) would always make more money than the unemployed.
The way his proposal would work, would be that there would be an income cutoff threshold (say, $40,000 for example), and you would receive a set percentage of the difference between your income and that cutoff. So if that % is set at 50%, then the result would be, somebody with a $20,000 would receive $10,000 from the government, and someone receiving $35,000 would receive $2,500.
So you would have an incentive to earn an income, and earn a higher income. You would just get a helping boost in the form of the negative income tax, at a flat rate, relative to a set income cutoff point.
A windfall of money is often seen by those who don't have enough money as the solution to their problems. The lure of easy money is what feeds the gambling industry and what drives many young people to focus more of their energy on activities and actions to become famous rather than focusing on their on their eduction. Few score the big jackpot or become the music star but many who get a good education, are used to working hard, and make good choices become productive, contributing and self-sufficient members of society.
I favor a graduated flat tax over a defined poverty level so that everyone has an incentive to work. For example 0% on the first $20,000, 3% on $20,001 to $50,000 and 5% on $50,001 to $100,000 and $10% on 100,001+. No deductions, no credits, handled through payroll taxes or direct quarterly filings by self-employed and corporations (requires a revamp of deductible business expenses). Capital gains, interest, 401k distributions would be subject to the same rates as they would be included in the income brackets.
I think this is a simplified version of what the current Federal Income Tax is. Not sure why you would want to get rid of the standard exemption for wives, kids, or other qualified dependents.
Where did I ever say that a basic income or negative income tax, would do any of those things? Of course it wouldn't. But that doesn't mean that it wouldn't be helpful or a good thing to have in place, or do other positive things. By no means would I (or anyone) ever claim that any type of thing like this, would fix all the various ills and challenges of society, including all of that listed. That's just, a total straw man.
And if, "it doesn't make stupid people smarter", is your bar for whether a program is a good idea, then, uh, how would anything ever meet such a bar, exactly? Magic, I guess? lol.
Yeah, of course, definitely. I'm 100% all for all of that. Regardless of whether a UBI or NIT of some kind would also be in place, we need a much higher national minimum wage, which, hasn't even been touched in forever.
All the specifics would depend on all the specifics of a given implementation of something in place. All kinds of possibilities exist with different models and concepts of things. From a more recent Andrew Yang-advocated UBI type of monthly check sent to everybody either below a given income (sort of like a permanent version of the pandemic stimulus checks), or, the same type of flat check sent to everyone, even regardless of income, or, either to more of something like what Milton Friedman advocated back in the 1960's, negative income tax model that would pay out a sum annually to those below a threshold.
And, same with the funding possibilities. Different progressive/wealth type taxes could fund it, different cuts in other areas, etc. It would be a matter of getting the numbers to work out. Politically, very difficult, of course. But theoretically possible, at least. I'm more focused on the theoretical argument, for now.
I know if I'm designing it though, absolutely I'm getting rid of most (not all) of the other existing welfare programs. Because, that would be a way to help justify it, and also offset some of the cost. And in a way that would kind of be part of the whole point, too.
I have a copy somewhere of Milton Friedman - Capitalism and Freedom, and read that a long time ago, and liked a lot of his thinking about it. He argued that cash is actually better for the poor, than most of the various welfare programs and benefits. Because, then everyone could just use the amount for whatever they most need it for, based on whatever their individual life situations.
Also it would save the taxpayers on bureaucratic overhead. The IRS would simply print everyone a check to help everyone out, instead of half of these various departments and organizations that do whatever.
Friedman argued for the NIT model on the grounds that it wouldn't increase people's effective taxes as the lowest incomes started to make more money, or related disincentives like that. You wouldn't have the choice of taking a job or staying on welfare, etc. He made points around most of the current welfare models being more disincentive to work, than if a simpler NIT model were in place.
In the Friedman NIT model, those who work (at any job) would always make more money than the unemployed.
The way his proposal would work, would be that there would be an income cutoff threshold (say, $40,000 for example), and you would receive a set percentage of the difference between your income and that cutoff. So if that % is set at 50%, then the result would be, somebody with a $20,000 would receive $10,000 from the government, and someone receiving $35,000 would receive $2,500.
So you would have an incentive to earn an income, and earn a higher income. You would just get a helping boost in the form of the negative income tax, at a flat rate, relative to a set income cutoff point.
So basically, you can't define what problem it will solve; what it will cost; who it will benefit; where the money will come from; or pretty much anything.
Your plan is to provide an undefined amount of free money to an undefined group of people somewhere between zero and 350,000,000. If you can't define anything about it, how do you think it will work?
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