We should take it away for the wealthy elderly, though. And we should also not give it to people who are not in need. Ever. Instead of that we should fund government projects that private companies can’t/won’t do, and hire the people who can’t find jobs.
I can see where this is coming from, but there are several reasons not to do it that way.
I mentioned the cost of determining eligibility above, so I won’t say much more about that here, other than that wasting money figuring out who to give money to seems much worse than taxing people and then giving it back to them (the latter is very common in the US tax system; about 65% of tax filers got refunds in 2024).
Another important reason is that “people who are not in need” is not a fixed set of people. People move into and out of poverty over the course of their lives. A person near the edge of poverty may flip back and forth year-to-year or even month-to-month. If you’re on the edge of poverty, an unexpected expense could make you effectively destitute for only one month, too short for government to act, but long enough to kick off a downward spiral of debt. Giving money to everyone means that no matter what happens, you’re still getting the UBI, no paperwork, no delay.
Perhaps more importantly, a cutoff creates an economic ‘cliff’: if you are earning just less than the poverty line, and you are offered a better paying job, you might turn it down if it means you’ll lose your dole. That’s bad because people generally learn more useful skills in higher paying jobs, and get access to higher paying career paths that will significantly increase their earnings over the course of their lives. For society, it’s better for people to work in the highest paying job they can get, because they’re presumptively creating more value when they do that (probably not true toward the top of the income distribution, but true anywhere we’d reasonably set the cutoff for a dole). So discouraging people from taking higher paying jobs is bad for them (because a higher paying job now is likely to lead to even higher paying jobs later), and it’s bad for society (because people’s talent’s are under-utilized). A UBI to everyone that continues no matter what avoids this problem.
And then there’s just the shame of begging the government for help, and even of accepting that help. It creates government-defined classes of haves and have-nots, adding a stigma to people who need help, and that discouraging people from getting the help they need. Give everyone the money, and everyone who needs it has it and anyone who doesn’t can save it for when they do or use it.
So reassess every year when they do their taxes. Didn’t do taxes? Not getting dole. Income too high? Not getting dole. Plus everything I said before.
Better to make having the dole suck than not having a cutoff. Better to hold businesses accountable to NOT pay just less than poverty wages, by allowing them to grow at the same rate they appropriately compensate their employees.
“Income…”, not including from certain favored sources or amounts deposited into tax-sheltered accounts, minus interest payments, plus disability payments and withdrawals from tax deferred accounts, and the portion of any investment proceeds attributable to the applicable tax year unless rolled over into an … etc. etc .
“…too high”, i.e. higher than a fixed and uniform amount adjusted once a decade based on an arbitrary basket of goods that doesn’t reflect modern spending habits, much less the diversity of different individuals’ spending habits or the cost of living in their area; that isn’t pegged to inflation or wages or the cost of living; that’s adjusted for being married and having kids but not for caring for siblings or parents whose needs are at least as expensive; that is maybe adjusted for certain medical expenses/conditions, but not others; and that in any case depends on an ability to work the system that is least accessible to the people who most need help.
Like that?
Why? What is your response to this:
Everyone making more than the cutoff is paying taxes, what’s the difference between
- Not getting the dole and paying X in taxes and
- Getting the dole and paying X+dole in taxes?
Other than all the benefits I mentioned of not having a cutoff.
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including… including the value of all your assets which are not liquid
Yeah ‘cause I actually know what I’m talking about. Just kidding.
Every dependent would have to qualify for their own money the same way. Whoever holds their power of attorney or guardianship would receive the funds.
That made absolutely no sense to me. People who need the dole should not be paying taxes. People who are wealthy should not get tax breaks. That is white collar panhandling. But there will be less people who even need the dole if the wealthy people actually paid them a living wage—and so they wouldn’t need to collect so many taxes (if you only help those who actually need help, and let private companies do what can be done privately). No wealthy people should be getting things like Social Security, disability, etc. People able to work who can’t find jobs should be given them for government funded projects that private companies can’t or won’t do.
Universal basic income is the stupidest idea in the universe of ideas.
Just because you get a refund doesn’t mean you don’t file your taxes. So readjusting as needed every year would work.
I’m trying to understand why it’s important that the wealthy not get the dole. I agree the wealthy don’t need the dole, but I’ve also described a few ways in which a cutoff would have bad effects. I don’t understand why you would oppose giving everyone the dole provided that taxes on the wealthy are increased so that the net effect is zero: they get the dole but pay the same amount more in taxes.
The wealthy would have exactly the same amount of money at the end of the day, but we avoid the bad things about a cutoff. Isn’t that better?
Even though they are wealthy, if they have to pay back money the government has given them, and there isn’t a predictable way to determine how much money that is, and the laws are not evenly enforced, that could either present an extreme hardship on the wealthy (especially depending on how wealth is assessed), or an extreme hardship on the national debt (some people still think that’s an actual thing). Folks with good lawyers are always finding loopholes.
Willing to bet whether or not certain people pay their taxes is about as enforced as the abortion industry’s rules.
I think that the only way they would distribute a universal basic income is if it was implemented through the quantum dot tattoo that Bill Gates developed.
That’s why they don’t want it to be only for the poor people. The poor people will realize they’re being branded like cattle if it isn’t universal.
Might sound conspiratorial. But when you have as many apparent land mines as there are in the common ground, so does global public health. Which is how they mostly implemented the Covid VAX.
“And we would’ve got away with it, too, if it weren’t for those pesky … [ __________ ].”
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apparent=obvious
This is selective rigor: those are problems with any tax system, including the one we already have. They are not specific to UBI or related to what we’re discussing. If the marginal tax rate goes from 22% to 23%, nothing changes whatsoever with respect to predicting or enforcing taxes. And because by hypothesis the tax increase would cover the dole, there’s no hardship on the wealthy or the national debt.
You don’t have to sell me on the idea that we do taxes poorly, I’ve said as much earlier in the thread. But a UBI would be good for society even without fixing our tax system.
There is a lot going on in this post and I’m going to ignore most of it for obvious reasons (though I’d be happy to discuss it in its own topic).
I take your point that a UBI requires a reliable form of individual identification, but that’s no different from Social Security or even taxes. We already have many ways in which individuals are identified by the government, and we use them for many interactions with the government. We will almost certainly have more sophisticated forms of identity going forward because of how society is changing. But again that’s unrelated to UBI.
Let’s assume receiving UBI ends or pauses for someone when they stop gainfully contributing to society, and that we can OPT OUT as conscientious objectors if the quantum dot tattoo & any “global public health” measure becomes a mandatory part of it without our informed consent.
How will it be “sustainable” & what will be the criteria by which one (dis)qualifies to receive it? Would one have to apply for it or will it be automatic (unless opted out)? Compare:
The U is for ‘universal’, i.e. everyone gets it (I’ve also seen it as ‘unconditional’, with much the same effect). It doesn’t stop based on contributions to society, and it is automatic.
Opting-out is a possibility I had not considered, but I can’t imagine enough people would do it that there would be a measurable effect on the effects of the program.
A big question is who counts as everyone. I know you’ll hate this suggestion, but ideally it would be every single person on earth. Done globally, UBI would eliminate global poverty, save millions of lives, and activate the human potential of the many millions more who can’t contribute to society because of the circumstances of their birth.
And a global UBI could have significant impact at very low levels. $100/year might not seem like much, but in the 5 poorest countries, with a combined population of about 150 million people, it’s 10% or more of annual per capita GPD. Global per capita GDP is only about $20000/year; for at least half the population of earth $500/year would be significantly more than 2% increase in pay, and for millions it would be an absolute windfall.
But that’s a pipe dream.
If the US federal government implemented it, I would have it as broadly granted as possible: no less than all citizens, even better to include all residents.
One counterargument to UBI is that it would make immigration even less popular, but the net contribution of even low-skilled immigrantion is significantly positive, and a broadly accessible UBI would complement a permissive legal immigration system by encouraging immigrants to come legally and participate in the legitimate economy.
Excellent! I can’t believe I forgot about Alaska as an example, particularly as it is both low and funded from revenue on natural resources, quite similar to my LVT (which treats land as a natural resource).
It’s also an interesting case on the question of immigration, as there are open borders between states and it is paid to all residents – I assume that includes permanent resident non-citizens? Not a perfect comparison to the continental US because Alaska’s climate and remoteness are dealbreakers for many, but a datapoint nonetheless.
$1000 globally, regardless of cost of living at their location, would not make a dent in poverty, because cost of living would rise to match or exceed it, as it does when you increase the minimum wage.
Y’know. Jesus offers grace without expecting perfection, but only if you opt in. And he is not shady about the cost (your cross)… you gotta opt all the way in, man. You don’t give UBI to domestic terrorists, for example. You shouldn’t even give ‘em 3 hots and a cot. Believe their actions that say they opt all the way out.
I don’t believe you (or anyone) actually think UBI is a good idea.
Inflation is a concern with UBI, and in my opinion one of the strongest counterarguments, so it’s worth discussing. Ultimately, I don’t think it is a compelling counterargument for two distinct reasons, one economic and one moral.
The Economic Response
(This depends on how the UBI is funded; if UBI was funded by printing new money, the price of all goods would obviously increase. I’ll assume that the UBI is funded by either increasing taxes or cutting other government spending, and the money supply doesn’t increase more than it currently increases year-over-year, because that’s the version of UBI I’m defending)
It isn’t a simple question how much UBI would increase prices. It seems obvious that it should increase prices in the short term, because it presumptively transfers wealth from people who won’t spend it to people who will (e.g. from people with more money than they need to survive to people with less money than they need to survive). That increase in demand will raise prices for certain goods, and in particular the goods that those with too little most need.
But even in the short term, prices wouldn’t increase on all goods. Different people need different things, so demand for a particular good increases only to the extent that the increase in spending is used on that particular good. The price of high-end cars, for example, would probably fall: to the extent that the UBI effectively transfers wealth from the top to the bottom, spending on luxuries should fall at the margin. By contrast, the price of staple goods would likely increase, since those whose cash flow increases under a UBI would primarily be people who are unable to buy as many staple goods as they’d like.
In the longer term, the effects are less clear, and depend on how we think the market will respond. If, as I have argued, a UBI would enable people to change careers, continue their educations, address deferred health issues, get a good rest and a hot meal etc., it would increase productivity, which would make goods cheaper.
It would also change how investments in services are made. Business target their efforts towards the money, so moving money from rich to poor will create opportunities for business to offer services to the poor. For example, a person living in a poor neighborhood may face an additional expense to acquire goods of needing to travel to a rich neighborhood where the stores are located; if everyone in the poor neighborhood is given money, at the margin it will increase the number of business that open locations in that neighborhood, thereby decreasing costs on goods, even if the price of goods goes up.
More generally, a UBI would target the ‘expense of being poor’. Consider payday lending, which those who live hand-to-mouth rely on to weather fluctuating cashflows, but charge a high interest rate. A UBI would make those services less necessary. There are hundreds of small expenses like these that an unconditional additional cashflow would reduce or eliminate. That compounds the return on a UBI to be greater than the money actually transferred.
So not only is it unlikely that a UBI would have zero effect on poverty (which I take to be your claim in saying that it “would not make a dent”), it’s quite possible that the effect on poverty of a UBI would actually be greater than the value of the transfer, particularly over the longer term.
The Moral Response
Even if prices do increase, so what? Currently, part of what keeps the prices of certain goods and services low is the desperation of some part of the labor force, and the inability of the very poor to access all the goods and services they need. In that sense, prices are currently artificially low. Giving poor people the power to leave an abusive employer, or to satisfy their needs, may mean that employers need to pay their workers more, or that the price of goods goes up, but only because the value of that work and those goods was actually higher than the market price.
Take slavery as a reductio: forcing slave owners to pay for the labor they used to run their plantation increased their costs of doing business; newly freed slaves increased demand for the goods and services they were denied during captivity. If freeing slaves caused massive inflation, that would be zero argument against slavery.
Similarly here. If today’s prices depend on economic exploitation, we should raise prices.
A related line of argument is that a UBI would increase the marginal utility of the average dollar of spending. Because the very poor would be buying things they badly need (like clothing), and the very rich would have used that money to buy things they merely want (like designer clothing), a transfer from rich to poor would tend to be spent on things that the consumer values more.
Price increases could be a result of the market undervaluing the labor poor people contribute, and the goods and services poor people need, because those peoples values are not correctly priced in. Correcting that mismatch may mean higher prices, but in that case prices should increase.
This is a silly objection. You’re talking about a few hundred arrests per year. How much less efficient should we make a program just to be sure that .0001% of the population don’t benefit from it?
You’re wrong.
Efficient is NOT doing UBI.
Efficient to what end?
Preventing fraud, waste, and abuse.
I mean, if that’s all you care about, ‘do nothing’ is a great solution: no program → no waste, fraud, or abuse of the program.
If you care about things like helping the poor, taking care of each other, treating everyone fairly, enabling human flourishing, etc., UBI is much more efficient than ‘do nothing’.
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