Who Pays For Basic Income?

[Martin Hash]

The dichotomy of logic exhibited by people who are against Inheritance & Income Tax but support Basic income has no explanation other than deep subliminal self-interest. They want Free Money & don't want anyone taking it from them. Where do they think the Free Money comes from? One plan was to tax machines. What? Machines have no money, and are they talking about my wristwatch & every other technological labor-saving device? Essentially, everybody else would be taxed so the Basic Incomers don't have to work. They don't want to tax people who inherent their wealth, or have an inordinate amount of it; that's magical money for special people, part of the aristocracy. Instead they want to take money from people who invest in the future, to give to those who don't.

[Speaker to Animals]

Depends how you implement it. It's kind of a meaningless question.

[Martin Hash]

Yeah, as long as you get the money, and your neighbor is paying for it, you're all good. Just don't take it from the aristocracy.

[Speaker to Animals]

The concept of basic income is that everybody gets it.

How you fund it is another matter.

I don't think we have a sufficiently advanced economy to support something like this yet, so it's theoretical. But I'd rather abolish all confiscatory taxes and fund the entire government via a consumption tax. There would be no minimum wage because there would be no wage. Workers get paid a percentage of profits. No profit, no income. The interests of the workers and the owners would more align. Workers would have an incentive to look for work at businesses that are profitable, and poorly-run businesses would struggle to find workers. Younger workers might find an incentive in riskier jobs at start-ups. Businesses would not have to pay for health care, social security, or really any income taxes. They would still have to pay a consumption tax on goods and services they purchase, however.

A basic income would provide bare minimum to survive. If you want more, then you need to find a job or start a business. A basic income would also provide incentives to marry and have children as opposed to the tax and welfare systems we have today. Since there would be no welfare, a woman would be better off staying with her husband. Single motherhood would be more costly than remaining married, since you will have only one basic income to work with. I would make basic income totally nonassignable in courts of law to prevent the kinds of chicanery we see today in the family courts that steal money from men to give to ex-wives.

Basic income could potentially solve quite a lot of problems we have today. The problem with it is that we do not yet have enough economic efficiency to support something like this. Last I ran the math, I think I came out with our needing somewhere around three times our current GDP at the current population.

[Martin Hash]

I don't need your Communist explanations. I certainly know what Basic Income is, better than you. I was pointing out your bizzare loyalty to the aristocracy. You're no republican: you're a parasite with no concept of liberty.

[Speaker to Animals]

Get cranky and call it whatever you want. The fact is that, decades hence, there won't be enough jobs for everybody. You have to deal with that somehow.

[Martin Hash]

Damn, I thought I was trolling you, and you came back on-point. Good for you, dude.

p.s. Doesn't change my position on Basic Income though.

[boethius]

I'm for basic income once automation hits a level where only 10% of the population is needed as labor.

At that point, you can tax the 10% and/or print money. Inflation is not a problem when you can make more with your nanobots and Star Trek replicators than the population can reasonably consume.

EITC + welfare sort of creates a very inefficient basic income regime as is. We might as well just scrap that system and start paying people National Dividends like they do in Alaska off of oil money.

But, you need to have advanced automation and production first.


UBI without advanced automation is just 20th century commie-nism.

[Martin Hash]

I agree.

[Fife]

Good luck getting to post-scarcity with the superstate around.

Of course, the (intelligent) nanobots may be our only hope against the superstate.

Them and Obi Wan. I think I'll write a story about about that. :goteam: