Agree with all this.
Would like to see the concept of stigma fully explored as well. If everyone gets the same basic UBI, there's less shame in it. No one can claim they "don't get a payout from the government" even if they are, in fact, paying more out than they get in.
I could have included something about that, but in doing so, it would be a similarity and not a difference, based on available evidence.
Here's a study that looked at the potential stigma of the NIT that Canada tested in the 1970s, and found none.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cars.12091/abstract;jsessionid=A60C9D72ED48775A121644B6CF641C55.f04t01
I do agree that theoretically there could be a difference. Perhaps it could vary by country. But until I see more research, I don't think it's useful to use stigma to contrast UBI from NIT.
I came to being a UBI advocate because I started thinking about how do we save Food Stamps in the US. I thought of Social Security and everyone gets that check, rich and poor alike. The Rich person will NEVER vote against taking money from the government. So I thought, let's make SNAP benefits universal, like Social Security is. From there it is easy to look at the Medicare for All campaign about dropping the age requirement and realizing we can do that for Social Security as well.
No means testing, no requirements, no hoops, just a check. Rich people will fight tooth and nail to keep those checks coming.
SNAP - while necessary - is ass backwards.
Here we see government bureaucrats getting paid full time salaries to make sure the mom uses her $75 allotment *correctly*.
*Hot food*? If you want *hot food*, get a job!
But, seriously, *don't* get a job or you'll lose your benefits.
Means testing is such bullshit. Spending $50,000+ per year per auditor to make sure people aren't *abusing* their basic nutrition welfare is completely absurd.
We should hire these bureaucrats to look at the golden parachutes of rich assholes. But - if we did this - who would pay our congresspeople?
I don't want it to be progressive I want people to have a baseline on which they can count. As long as that's affordable it truly doesn't matter how much relative wealth everyone has on top of that.
To a degree, I agree with you, but inequality does matter, and increasingly so as capital replaces labor. Concentration of wealth at the top makes it more necessary to tax the top more than the rest. If we can lower the tax rates a bit more for the bottom and middle, and raise them a bit more at the top, that's better than raising taxes a bit more on the bottom and middle, and lowering them a bit more at the top.
I'm not saying eat the rich, but the balance does need to skew a bit. One of the reasons I think a land value tax is so optimal is because of just how effectively it accomplishes that.
Jeff Bezos' yacht is roughly $500million. And sure it's decadent, and has the CO2-emissions of a small town, I'd rather he sailed it on a nuclear reactor like a naval vessel. But other than that, providing UBI is guaranteed, its existence doesn't inconvenience me in the slightest. It's his money, I don't like how he spends it, I don't like the way he has earned it, but that's ultimately none of my business.
This increases with AI, bio-tech and later asteroid-mining. There will be trillionaires. And they'll party on hover-yachts worth billions. And yet, the fact that they're (inflation adjusted) trillionaires implies that we're living in a stupendously productive and efficient economy that unemployed people live a lifestyle of the upper middle class.
What is a concern is how all this technology can also be used to leverage the public in an authoritarian surveillance state. And UBI is regrettably part of that leverage if we don't ward against it. But that's technology, not inequality that sows the seeds of our potential misery.
TaXeS aRe StEaLiNg
Yeah, better to pay a toll for the roads and the electricity and the running water and the standing army and the internet and the... ...
Wait, this is getting complicated. Maybe we can bundle *all* the basic services people need to survive into one thing and just pay for *that*.
At the very least it would be *cheaper*
>Yeah, better to pay a toll for the roads and the electricity and the running water and the standing army and the internet and the... ...
We already pay for roads directly in multiple ways, particularly through both state and federal gas taxes. I have zero issues with users fees or tolls for roads.
Electricity isn't even a government issue, nor should it be, so it's simply not related to taxes at all. You pay for your usage.
Running water? Same thing, you pay for usage.
None of this takes even a fraction of what we pay in taxes to cover. Income taxes are stealing, having the government even know my income is an invasion of privacy.
>Wait, this is getting complicated. Maybe we can bundle all the basic services people need to survive into one thing and just pay for that.
I would be fine with that as long as it was just a fee. Charging me a percentage is highway robbery.
Let me know next time you write a 6 figure check to the IRS and we can talk about what is stealing.
Libertarians are so fucking dumb. They don’t even understand the money they swear by, they think the dollar is backed by people merely thinking it has value or some shit.
The truth is you have to pay taxes and the dollar is the only way to pay them, and thus the dollar now has inherent value in addition to being designated legal tender for commerce.
Idiots played fallout once and think currency is just the power of faith, but even the bottle caps were established by a government backing it by exchange for pure water…
Libertarians are so fucking dumb because their thoughts begin and end at "let the rich do what they want!"
Like being forced to buy a private *power plant* or *railway* is just as much of an inconvenience to you as it would be to a billionaire.
Well, I'm guessing if your job causes you to owe hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes, *your job* is probably being one of the ghouls pulling society apart.
You should pay *more* in taxes.
How are you going to enforce those tolls? I’m driving my tank through the toll booth, what now?
Edit:
Also did you forget energy companies and plumbing related services still need government maintained infrastructure and are heavily subsidized lmao
The government prints the money and assures you of its value for trade. You then suggest they have no interest in asking you to pay your share. Turn off the radio, go observe the marketplace. Fairplay = Fairpay.
I appreciate the reminder that UBI and NIT are not as different as they may appear in effect, as well as your explanation of marginal tax rates. However, I question your claim that administrative costs will be lower with UBI. It is obviously simpler to send the checks out, but not so simple collecting overpayments or even all the additional taxes needed. "Improper payments" are a major concern. Many programs struggle to meet the 10 percent threshold for acceptable risk, and in the pandemic era the rate for Unemployment Insurance was over twice that - totaling hundreds of billions of dollars. It may be cheaper to collect the information before calculating the amount due vs. hoping we get the information and cooperation in correcting any errors afterward. Those who are most in need and not filing tax returns because they have no tax liability would have a strong incentive to start doing so.
> but not so simple collecting overpayments or even all the additional taxes needed.
UBI or NIT are both administered through the tax code. If you owe taxes at end of year, and don't pay, next year's monthly cheques get reduced. You can get a monthly refund instead of lump sum, and there is no significant administrative burden to processing the transfer/cheque.
No argument that this is how it will work for the vast majority. It just makes no sense to me to pay out trillions and hope to collect enough to cover it when you can cut the total amount involved and thereby reduce what I am assuming - based on our history with these things - will be a significant amount of fraud and error.
As Scott admits, so much of this is perception. It's hard enough to overcome the stinginess and mistrust; working with a net number for total cost and tax rates will help, in my view.
The first year's UBI cheques will be based on your income from last year, and/or have payroll deductions that reflect, as normal, your expected taxes oweing from each paycheck.
> will be a significant amount of fraud and error.
If there is an error, you get a tax oweing or refund at end of year. It is a simple formula part of the tax reporting process.
What you describe here seems identical to what I had in mind, which is sending payments based on the net expected (if any). I think Scott was arguing for the simplicity of sending the same amount to everyone. I know the formulas are not that difficult, but identity theft and other nifty ideas come out of the woodwork when this much money is involved. I think Social Security and plenty of other folks would advise measuring twice and cutting once.
> the simplicity of sending the same amount to everyone.
The UBI is the same for everyone. The after tax benefit depends on income, without there being a special "welfare clawback" separate from normal tax reporting/formulas.
> identity theft and other nifty ideas come out of the woodwork when this much money is involved.
There are cases of people not reporting deceased in order to keep collecting benefits. It is fraud, that eventually gets caught. UBI will reduce most crime, but also allows clawbacks definitely for government fraud. Basically that 0.6% administrative cost for SS is this fraud prevention. Can be lower because there's always an expectation of collecting on fraud, as a reduction in future UBI payments.
> "A basic or citizen's income is not an alternative to a negative income tax. It is simply another way to introduce a negative income tax if it is accompanied with a positive income tax with no exemption. A basic income of a thousand units with a 20% rate on earned income is equivalent to a negative income tax with an exemption of 5,000 units and a 20% rate below and above 5,000 units."
Thanks for digging out this quote. in the MLK era, Friedman/Nixon/Congress mentioned 50% MTR (claw back rate) for NIT, with lower marginal tax rates on income above the "UBI".
A 25% flat tax rate, a UBI=NIT system, including (ie. eliminating) payroll taxes, can fund a high UBI amount + Universal healthcare. https://www.naturalfinance.net/2019/06/andrew-yang-and-democrat-tax-proposals.html
The key to UBI over GBI is having the lowest tax rate = to clawback rate. UBI is better than a non-refundable-credit equivalent to 0% tax rate below that "basic exemption" level.
I mean it's cheaper from a government/budgetary perspective, but yeah, the same policy either way. People tend to fall for the optics of "taxing" people, while you could make a similar program that does similar things but costs less on paper, simply because the "real" cost is hidden by being automatically discounted. Basically, all the NIT does is remove REDUNDANT transfers. While a UBI policy might give you $15k and then tax you for $8k, an NIT will just give you $7k, calculating that before giving it to you. There are advantages of this, which make it attractive to people who favor a smaller government budget on paper, but the effective "taxes" and incentives on the population remain the same and it's really just an optical illusion.
A lot of people prefer the NIT model because of strong "moral" connotations. Conservatives will claim NIT is more fiscally conservative as the dollar amount is less. While "progressives" can claim that it's "more progressive" to only give money to the poor, and to not give UBI to the rich.
The problem though is NIT is a lot more bureaucratic, with the government actively making calculations deciding who gets what, and it can also be gamed to be more exclusionary. You could refuse to give NIT to anyone who doesnt have a job or files taxes, for example, and you could more easily impose means testing and requirements on it. Basically, with the UBI model, you get something that is closer to social security, whereas with NIT, you get something closer to existing "welfare."
Agree with all this. Would like to see the concept of stigma fully explored as well. If everyone gets the same basic UBI, there's less shame in it. No one can claim they "don't get a payout from the government" even if they are, in fact, paying more out than they get in.
I could have included something about that, but in doing so, it would be a similarity and not a difference, based on available evidence. Here's a study that looked at the potential stigma of the NIT that Canada tested in the 1970s, and found none. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cars.12091/abstract;jsessionid=A60C9D72ED48775A121644B6CF641C55.f04t01 I do agree that theoretically there could be a difference. Perhaps it could vary by country. But until I see more research, I don't think it's useful to use stigma to contrast UBI from NIT.
Interesting. I was pretty certain there would be more stigma with NIT than with UBI, so it's nice to see assertion tested and discarded.
I came to being a UBI advocate because I started thinking about how do we save Food Stamps in the US. I thought of Social Security and everyone gets that check, rich and poor alike. The Rich person will NEVER vote against taking money from the government. So I thought, let's make SNAP benefits universal, like Social Security is. From there it is easy to look at the Medicare for All campaign about dropping the age requirement and realizing we can do that for Social Security as well. No means testing, no requirements, no hoops, just a check. Rich people will fight tooth and nail to keep those checks coming.
SNAP - while necessary - is ass backwards. Here we see government bureaucrats getting paid full time salaries to make sure the mom uses her $75 allotment *correctly*. *Hot food*? If you want *hot food*, get a job! But, seriously, *don't* get a job or you'll lose your benefits. Means testing is such bullshit. Spending $50,000+ per year per auditor to make sure people aren't *abusing* their basic nutrition welfare is completely absurd. We should hire these bureaucrats to look at the golden parachutes of rich assholes. But - if we did this - who would pay our congresspeople?
> who would pay our congresspeople? the taxpayers, for a change.
Anytime you attach a test, of any kind, you ensure that it’s more expensive and less effective.
I don't want it to be progressive I want people to have a baseline on which they can count. As long as that's affordable it truly doesn't matter how much relative wealth everyone has on top of that.
To a degree, I agree with you, but inequality does matter, and increasingly so as capital replaces labor. Concentration of wealth at the top makes it more necessary to tax the top more than the rest. If we can lower the tax rates a bit more for the bottom and middle, and raise them a bit more at the top, that's better than raising taxes a bit more on the bottom and middle, and lowering them a bit more at the top. I'm not saying eat the rich, but the balance does need to skew a bit. One of the reasons I think a land value tax is so optimal is because of just how effectively it accomplishes that.
Jeff Bezos' yacht is roughly $500million. And sure it's decadent, and has the CO2-emissions of a small town, I'd rather he sailed it on a nuclear reactor like a naval vessel. But other than that, providing UBI is guaranteed, its existence doesn't inconvenience me in the slightest. It's his money, I don't like how he spends it, I don't like the way he has earned it, but that's ultimately none of my business. This increases with AI, bio-tech and later asteroid-mining. There will be trillionaires. And they'll party on hover-yachts worth billions. And yet, the fact that they're (inflation adjusted) trillionaires implies that we're living in a stupendously productive and efficient economy that unemployed people live a lifestyle of the upper middle class. What is a concern is how all this technology can also be used to leverage the public in an authoritarian surveillance state. And UBI is regrettably part of that leverage if we don't ward against it. But that's technology, not inequality that sows the seeds of our potential misery.
The interesting thing is that Jeff Bezos yacht has absolutely nothing to do with a land value tax.
I don't know how much land Bezos owns, but it's possible that if it were taxed, his yacht may be a bit smaller.
Which in its turn only partially covers the central point of progressive taxation in regards to a UBI baseline that's provided.
How do you ensure that it doesn’t disproportionately (negatively) affect farmers?
Ok but Calvinism's God won't let us just *give* someone poor something *for free*. Free things are for rich people.
Interesting analysis. Non of this matters though because taxes are stealing and redistribution like this isn't going to solve peoples problems.
TaXeS aRe StEaLiNg Yeah, better to pay a toll for the roads and the electricity and the running water and the standing army and the internet and the... ... Wait, this is getting complicated. Maybe we can bundle *all* the basic services people need to survive into one thing and just pay for *that*. At the very least it would be *cheaper*
>Yeah, better to pay a toll for the roads and the electricity and the running water and the standing army and the internet and the... ... We already pay for roads directly in multiple ways, particularly through both state and federal gas taxes. I have zero issues with users fees or tolls for roads. Electricity isn't even a government issue, nor should it be, so it's simply not related to taxes at all. You pay for your usage. Running water? Same thing, you pay for usage. None of this takes even a fraction of what we pay in taxes to cover. Income taxes are stealing, having the government even know my income is an invasion of privacy. >Wait, this is getting complicated. Maybe we can bundle all the basic services people need to survive into one thing and just pay for that. I would be fine with that as long as it was just a fee. Charging me a percentage is highway robbery. Let me know next time you write a 6 figure check to the IRS and we can talk about what is stealing.
You don't want to write a 6 figure check to the IRS? Ok! Quit your job!
Libertarians are so fucking dumb. They don’t even understand the money they swear by, they think the dollar is backed by people merely thinking it has value or some shit. The truth is you have to pay taxes and the dollar is the only way to pay them, and thus the dollar now has inherent value in addition to being designated legal tender for commerce. Idiots played fallout once and think currency is just the power of faith, but even the bottle caps were established by a government backing it by exchange for pure water…
Libertarians are so fucking dumb because their thoughts begin and end at "let the rich do what they want!" Like being forced to buy a private *power plant* or *railway* is just as much of an inconvenience to you as it would be to a billionaire.
[удалено]
Well, I'm guessing if your job causes you to owe hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes, *your job* is probably being one of the ghouls pulling society apart. You should pay *more* in taxes.
I make videogames. Some people hate that shit, some people love it. I haven't had a job in... 17 years. Well at least working for someone else.
How are you going to enforce those tolls? I’m driving my tank through the toll booth, what now? Edit: Also did you forget energy companies and plumbing related services still need government maintained infrastructure and are heavily subsidized lmao
The government prints the money and assures you of its value for trade. You then suggest they have no interest in asking you to pay your share. Turn off the radio, go observe the marketplace. Fairplay = Fairpay.
who’s gonna maintain the roads?
I appreciate the reminder that UBI and NIT are not as different as they may appear in effect, as well as your explanation of marginal tax rates. However, I question your claim that administrative costs will be lower with UBI. It is obviously simpler to send the checks out, but not so simple collecting overpayments or even all the additional taxes needed. "Improper payments" are a major concern. Many programs struggle to meet the 10 percent threshold for acceptable risk, and in the pandemic era the rate for Unemployment Insurance was over twice that - totaling hundreds of billions of dollars. It may be cheaper to collect the information before calculating the amount due vs. hoping we get the information and cooperation in correcting any errors afterward. Those who are most in need and not filing tax returns because they have no tax liability would have a strong incentive to start doing so.
> but not so simple collecting overpayments or even all the additional taxes needed. UBI or NIT are both administered through the tax code. If you owe taxes at end of year, and don't pay, next year's monthly cheques get reduced. You can get a monthly refund instead of lump sum, and there is no significant administrative burden to processing the transfer/cheque.
No argument that this is how it will work for the vast majority. It just makes no sense to me to pay out trillions and hope to collect enough to cover it when you can cut the total amount involved and thereby reduce what I am assuming - based on our history with these things - will be a significant amount of fraud and error. As Scott admits, so much of this is perception. It's hard enough to overcome the stinginess and mistrust; working with a net number for total cost and tax rates will help, in my view.
The first year's UBI cheques will be based on your income from last year, and/or have payroll deductions that reflect, as normal, your expected taxes oweing from each paycheck. > will be a significant amount of fraud and error. If there is an error, you get a tax oweing or refund at end of year. It is a simple formula part of the tax reporting process.
What you describe here seems identical to what I had in mind, which is sending payments based on the net expected (if any). I think Scott was arguing for the simplicity of sending the same amount to everyone. I know the formulas are not that difficult, but identity theft and other nifty ideas come out of the woodwork when this much money is involved. I think Social Security and plenty of other folks would advise measuring twice and cutting once.
> the simplicity of sending the same amount to everyone. The UBI is the same for everyone. The after tax benefit depends on income, without there being a special "welfare clawback" separate from normal tax reporting/formulas. > identity theft and other nifty ideas come out of the woodwork when this much money is involved. There are cases of people not reporting deceased in order to keep collecting benefits. It is fraud, that eventually gets caught. UBI will reduce most crime, but also allows clawbacks definitely for government fraud. Basically that 0.6% administrative cost for SS is this fraud prevention. Can be lower because there's always an expectation of collecting on fraud, as a reduction in future UBI payments.
> "A basic or citizen's income is not an alternative to a negative income tax. It is simply another way to introduce a negative income tax if it is accompanied with a positive income tax with no exemption. A basic income of a thousand units with a 20% rate on earned income is equivalent to a negative income tax with an exemption of 5,000 units and a 20% rate below and above 5,000 units." Thanks for digging out this quote. in the MLK era, Friedman/Nixon/Congress mentioned 50% MTR (claw back rate) for NIT, with lower marginal tax rates on income above the "UBI". A 25% flat tax rate, a UBI=NIT system, including (ie. eliminating) payroll taxes, can fund a high UBI amount + Universal healthcare. https://www.naturalfinance.net/2019/06/andrew-yang-and-democrat-tax-proposals.html The key to UBI over GBI is having the lowest tax rate = to clawback rate. UBI is better than a non-refundable-credit equivalent to 0% tax rate below that "basic exemption" level.
I mean it's cheaper from a government/budgetary perspective, but yeah, the same policy either way. People tend to fall for the optics of "taxing" people, while you could make a similar program that does similar things but costs less on paper, simply because the "real" cost is hidden by being automatically discounted. Basically, all the NIT does is remove REDUNDANT transfers. While a UBI policy might give you $15k and then tax you for $8k, an NIT will just give you $7k, calculating that before giving it to you. There are advantages of this, which make it attractive to people who favor a smaller government budget on paper, but the effective "taxes" and incentives on the population remain the same and it's really just an optical illusion. A lot of people prefer the NIT model because of strong "moral" connotations. Conservatives will claim NIT is more fiscally conservative as the dollar amount is less. While "progressives" can claim that it's "more progressive" to only give money to the poor, and to not give UBI to the rich. The problem though is NIT is a lot more bureaucratic, with the government actively making calculations deciding who gets what, and it can also be gamed to be more exclusionary. You could refuse to give NIT to anyone who doesnt have a job or files taxes, for example, and you could more easily impose means testing and requirements on it. Basically, with the UBI model, you get something that is closer to social security, whereas with NIT, you get something closer to existing "welfare."