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Comment by nullsmack | Hacker News Reader

The very first argument in the article is flawed which leads me to wonder how much of it is or isn't flawed. It talks about a Universal Basic Income for everyone over 21.. then it complains that would cost 3 trillion dollars for all of the 300 million Americans. According to the Census Bureau as of 2015 there were 321 million Americans and 24% were under 18. No clue how many were under 21. But that still takes it down to 244 million people. If we left Social Security alone then that would cut another 46 million people out as well. The article doesn't even attempt to explore cost savings by eliminating excessive management of all of the existing programs.

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Also: "A universal basic income has many undesirable features, starting with its nonnegligible disincentive to work."

I can think of two responses to this:

(1) Perhaps work that doesn't pay more than a UBI can provide is not work worth doing --

(2) Except for charity work, which is extremely valuable, and which would be greatly incentivized because having a UBI would free up people's time to work on it.

> Perhaps work that doesn't pay more than a UBI can provide is not work worth doing

This is a frequent argument invoked in favor of a higher minimum wage, and the answer is maybe.

But then you find out that some fairly useful work, such as running a convenience store or a corner bodega in a low-income neighborhood involves significantly lower margins than operating a Whole Foods or organic juicery in a ritzy residential neighborhood, and people start decrying "food deserts" http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2015/02/03/food-deserts-contin...

Grocery stores in general, even large supermarket chains, have incredibly low margins (5%, typically). They survive on volume. So it's not about margin as much as it is about income.

At any rate, a UBI could possibly make these low-income operations sustainable by providing a helpful boost to the owner's income.

its almost as if hiring a low income neighborhood worker for an extremely low wage isnt particularly beneficial to the neighborhood.....

> Perhaps work that doesn't pay more than a UBI can provide is not work worth doing

Work doesn't have to pay more than a UBI provides to be worth doing in a system with a UBI -- the idea that it does is a failure to recognize the central difference between UBI and means-tested benefit programs. Because UBI doesn't get reduced for additional income (beyond the effect of regular income taxation), there is little to no disincentive for additional work; additionally, most UBI proponents favor UBI eventually eliminating minimum wage (though in an early-stage, not-yet-adequate-for-independent-support UBI, the UBI might merely reduce the minimum wage by some amount), so that UBI reduces the structural barriers for low-money-value work that remains mutually beneficial getting done.

(1) Perhaps work that doesn't pay more than a UBI can provide is not work worth doing

I largely agree with you here, coal mining being a notable exception. As much as I want to be only on renewables, coal makes up 33% [1] of our current production. They talk about how gas prices are a drag on the economy, I dont want to find out what happens when 33% of power becomes much more expensive!! And fwiw, I do not share the optimism/pessimism that all jobs will be obsolete in 5 years. I dont agree with people who are saying, "just automate it!" Easier said than done(which is a good thing).

1. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3

oh no! the most pollutant form of energy will become more expensive! whatever shall we do!? /s

this is only a bad thing to people heavily invested in coal. There are other sources of energy which are nearly competitive on price already, with a labor hike Solar would become drastically more competitive (IMO more in line with costs of externalities)

Yep, and it doesn't even bother talking about the $21–32tn of untaxed assets(http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/upload/pdf/Price_of_Offshore_R...). Or that we tax the rich too little while we tax everyone else too much to keep public perception focused on taxes being too high(https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Historical_Marginal_...).

Or that we tax the rich too little

The top 3% of income earners pay 51% of all income taxes.[1] You think that's too little? What should that number be?

[1]http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/13/high-income-...

Not sure that is a relevant measure. Those people will also be paying a relatively low percentage of their income to taxes overall thanks to taxes which are flat or capped, so I'm not sure why it's meaningful what percent of tax revenues they contribute.

As an admittedly extreme example, if the population consisted of 100 people who make 2$ and pay 1$, and one guy who makes $1000 and pays $100, he's responsible for half the tax income but probably still isn't paying his fair share since he's only paying 10% instead of 50%.

Well, considering ~40% of Americans pay no income tax, I'd say the top is paying more than their fair share?

Because total tax expenditures are far from just income tax. There's property taxes, vehicle taxes, gas taxes, "christian sin" taxes, lottery (which is a tax on stupid people), social security tax, medicare tax, sales tax, specific item/service sales tax, city taxes, county option taxes.

And that's not even remotely the amount of taxes on businesses that raise the price of goods secretly to compensate the taxes hidden.

And also, even illegal immigrants pay these taxes. They aren't even exempt. And many use fraudulent SSNs, so taxes are taken an applied to those SS accounts, but the illegals never use them. Yet more money for the coffers.

But some percentage isn't paying any of one specific tax.

Whatever.

Income taxes still make up a near 50% of total tax dollars, right?

So the only response to that 'fair share' argument is still only "take more from those that have/work and give to those that don't/can't".

I mean fine, but let's call it what it is.

> lottery (which is a tax on stupid people),

The lottery is a tax on hope

How is that relevant?

Incomes taxes (not including payroll taxes) make up ~47% of all federal dollars coming in. Payroll taxes (Medicare, SS), make up 34%, but half of that is paid by the employer, so it's really 18%.[1]

So income taxes represent almost 3x the income stream that payroll taxes do. So I'd say not paying income taxes is a pretty big break in my book.

[1]http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-are-source...

That's just for the Federal system, it ignores all state taxes.

The top 3% do pay their fair share. More than their fair share really. It is the .1% or even .01% that draw far more from society than they pay.

I think Buffet should pay a higher tax rate than his secretary. http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/04/news/economy/buffett-secreta...

And I think Mitt Romney should pay a higher rate than me. http://money.cnn.com/2012/09/21/pf/taxes/romney-tax-return/

The problem is that we treat capital gains differently than we treat income. Most of the top 3% work and pay income taxes, but the top .1% don't really pay income tax.

Are you proposing we eliminate the charitable tax deduction? That's one of the main drivers of Romney's low rate.

Perhaps my comment wasn't clear enough: I'm proposing we treat capital gains as income. From the article on Romney:

"The reason Romney's rate is so low -- despite having one of the highest incomes in the country -- is because his income was derived almost entirely from capital gains and dividends from his extensive portfolio of investments. And that form of investment income is typically taxed at just 15%, well below the 35% top tax rate for high earners."

I'll take your bait: I do think 51% of all income tax is too little for the top 3% of earners, because they are paid such a large piece of the pie; you're looking at it in terms of number of people paying tax and not percentage of total income made.

Think of it this way: "The top 10% (in my country) pay 74% of all taxes," really translates to "This group makes 90% of all income and but only pays 74% of taxes."

That means that those who make 10% of the total income (again, in my country) pay 26% of taxes. It's not the top that are hurting because they're paying tax in excess of their means, they're getting off lightly.

That is one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is that taxes on the richest brackets are at their lowest point in like 50 years, while simultaneously those people have accumulated an even higher portion of the total wealth/income in the economy. Taken out of context, what you are saying seems significant. Looking at it historically, the rich haven't really had it better regarding taxes and their share of the country's wealth in the last century. Put this way, raising taxes or adding new higher tax brackets seems pretty reasonable.

The percent of all income taxes paid by the wealthy has gone up over time, not down.

As mention before on HN, yes rates were higher a while ago, but so were deductions. Nobody actually paid a 90% marginal rate.

Income taxes... You realize there are more taxes than just income, yes?

Seriously, the whole "but rich people pay all the taxes, and poor people pay no taxes..." myth needs to die a horrible death.

But I live in a state which just lowered the income tax. And increased every other tax, as well as created a variety of taxes on services that were previously untaxed. And they then tell us our taxes have gone down. But somehow, the vast majority of people seem to be have less personal profit than the year before (assuming all income and costs sans taxes remain the same).

Whatever percentage it needs to be ratcheted up to in order to ensure that everyone is fed and has shelter.

Seems like we can work backwards to determine that?

what if it's more than 100% of their income :)

are YOU prepared to pay let's say an 80% income tax and a 25% sales tax for example ?

I'm prepared to pay whatever is necessary, while also contributing to whatever tech is needed to drive costs down to reduce the monthly government-wide nut needed to pay for entitlements.

Food too expensive? Robotics farming. More energy needed? Scale up solar, wind, and utility scale battery storage installations. Moar cheap transportation? Scale up bicycle and electric self-driving car manufacturing.

It _can_ be done. We simply need the will to do so. Work backwards, first principles style. We have lots of atoms and electrons, lets organize them efficiently for everyone's benefit.

I can buy the tech side of things and if you think about this - just about everyone's standard of living today, including the poor, is way higher than in the past which can in part be attributed to technological advances.

On the monetary side of things - it's very easy to 'proclaim' that you're willing to sacrifice your standard of living for the benefit of the others. When it comes to concrete implementations however, things typically don't work that way, ppl tend to bust their asses when there's concrete material compensation involved, otherwise - not so much. And if you take any material incentive to work away by providing free money you get multi-generation welfare families which we have in abundance as is. One can argue that these folks would be better off without the free money killing their will to work - to 'organize atoms and electrons' for ANYONE's benefit, yours included.

Point taken.

not sure about the top 3% but the top 1% have 34.6% of the wealth(measured in net worth) and the top 5% have 61.9%. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Unite...)

So yes! I do think its too little, especially in the top 1%. I think some moderately more progressive tax rates would be an improvement.

One of the things that appeals to me about UBI is that it is a dramatic simplification of welfare bureaucracy. I would love to see something similar to the way we calculate taxes. Simplifying and closing tax holes would help extract more taxes from people who should be paying more while not punishing wage earners who have most of their taxes preempted out of their paycheck.

Or, we could revise corporate and capital gains taxes, tax currency exchanges out of the country, and then tax everyone at 50%... from there, that would be enough for a "basic income" where everyone is taxed the same on what they earn.

I don't think corporate taxes work, what's needed is systems and taxes in place to encourage keeping money more local, as well as diversifying or paying out dividends, which would in turn be taxed (assuming adjustments in capital gains). I'd just assume get rid of corporate taxes with the above adjustments and also get rid of corporate personhood and significant campaign reform.

I guess the right amount would be, if you're democratically inclined, to whatever reduces political influence of the wealthy over the less wealthy. The current US distribution and it's political and economic destabilizing effects seem in favor of higher taxation on the top incomes.

You are arguing about specifics that do not make any difference to the overall argument the author is trying to make. UBI for 244 million is still unfeasible.

UBI is just a bad idea, jobs in themselves have nice externalities that UBI wont give. People that have jobs generally don't commit crimes. Also a UBI will disincentivize working jobs that are undesirable but are necessary for a functioning society.

> Also a UBI will disincentivize working jobs that are undesirable but are necessary for a functioning society.

That's kinda the point. You drive up the cost of undesirable jobs until you find someone who'll work it. If no one wants to work it, you'll need to automate it or do without.

Yes, this! I hate the "But who will pick up the garbage?" argument so much, the lazy thinker who says this is implying that our society only functions if there's an explicit hell waiting for those who fail it. And that's kinda fucked up, eh? If UBI fixed just that it would be worth it, IMHO.

Also, have you ever talked to the people who pick up your garbage?

Another option is that people deal with their own garbage and maybe learn to reduce and re-use and demand less packaging.

How about people who want to serve society with "jobs" that don't pay well (or at all) but are incredibly valuable, like charity work? Wouldn't a UBI free them up to do that?

Look, this straw man has been beaten to death. I don't think anyone who has seriously considered UBI is arguing that all working age people should have +${UBI_AMOUNT} extra dollars. Most people would have extra taxes roughly equal to their income from UBI.

If you want to argue against redistribution, then do so, but don't throw out this we can't afford it lame horse anymore.

Why do they not talk about the tax increase that pays for it? It's supposed to be closer to neutral. I.e. people making $100k get an extra $10k tax burden to cancel out the $10k they just got. Pretty important factor to include in the discussion, yeah?

Don't they actually get more like an extra 30-50k burden to cancel out the 10k they got and pay 10k to several other people?

The people who make under 10k outnumber the people making good money by a factor of 3-5?

I'm not sure that's the right ratio to look at - someone making under 10k isn't going to pay taxes at all. The average income in the US is just over 50k - I would expect that's about the income where your UBI would be 1 for 1 - your taxes go up 10k and you get 10k from UBI.

obviously someone else is going to have to pay for people making under 10k.

Yes. Obviously. So the "cost of UBI" is clearly not $10k times (number of humans in the USA), but more like $10k times (number of eligible people making under $10k). The article omitting this pretty important thing basically discredits it and probably its parent site

>So the "cost of UBI" is clearly not $10k times (number of humans in the USA), but more like $10k times (number of eligible people making under $10k).

It is "$10k times (number of humans in the USA)," because the "number of eligible people" IS the number of humans in the USA.

You left out the "making under $10k" part, which is the whole point.

I didn't leave it out because UBI isn't means tested or income based.

They're not explicitly eligible, but rather implicitly eligible, because of the tax increase on the top end to cancel out the $10k they don't need and to pay for any gap that still needs closing after we redirect money from existing systems.

The people who as a result of this policy and the taxes net money is small, and that is the real cost. Not $3T which is a bald faced lie.

He's calling the veracity of the article into question by citing an example, not "arguing about specifics."

When you can't get the simple things right, why should we think you got the harder things right?

Are you saying that people commit crimes because they have too much time on their hands?

It's an unfounded assumption, the reality is (and you can prove this with data) most people committing crimes today do it as an act of desperation. Professional criminals are definitely a real thing, but they'll exist with or without a basic income. However, if a basic income eliminates poverty, it may have a real impact on crime.

>Are you saying that people commit crimes because they have too much time on their hands?

Partially, yes. Why do you think after school programs are so good at keeping kids out of crime?

What about drunk/intoxicated driving? Ive seen a couple comments saying its ok if people smoke pot and play video games, but what about those who want to go out and drink? 33% of all traffic fatalities are alcohol related[1], and that adds up to be quite a few people. Ok, self driving cars will fix that eventually, but what about domestic abuse?

1. http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impai...

people generally don't commit crimes for want of a job.

and a better way to look at it is that it incentivezes changes in society that reduce the undesirable work that's necessary for it to function.

Notice that people do undesirable jobs because they probably don't have many other options. UBI gives them another option. This would either make pay for undesirable jobs increase, OR people would be forced to automate them. Seems like a win win.

>OR people would be forced to automate them

as if it were that easy. Why don't we worry about UBI once we actually reach the post scarcity economy?

Because it's not the post-scarcity part that's the driver, it's the post-jobs part, which is a very real problem for a small but growing part of the population.

If we start excluding groups, can we stop calling it a "Universal Basic Income" and admit that it will be yet another political weapon to wield?

UBI will be yet another political weapon to yield, just on the taxes side rather than the payout side. Where do we draw the line between who nets positive on UBI after their tax increases, and who loses money? That would be an enormous political weapon to yield.

Absolutely, as soon as you introduce ANY means testing at all, it is not longer UBI.

> eliminating excessive management of all of the existing programs

There are really just three - Social Security, Medicare+Medicaid, and EITC. Above you mentioned keeping Social Security around, so that really leaves just two programs, and it feels like the elephant in the room - Medicare - has been scrutinized by both parties so often, that one might wiggle a few percentage points of savings here and there, but nothing critical, especially in light of baby boomers retiring in larger numbers.

If you have a good plan for drastically cutting down the costs of Medicare, those are worth hearing about, whether or not UBI is involved.

He also haven't looked into the strong philosophical arguments for BI, dating back to Paine in the 18th century. Justice and freedom are keys to all of these arguments, e. g. that of Van Parijs, where if one looks at work as a fundamental resource, you should be free to take or not take a job.

There's so much literature on this—why not look into it?

I did some back of the envelope math several months ago here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10172397

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