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Comment by djrobstep | Hacker News Reader

If you make $160K a year, your tax increases to fund the basic income program will be a lot more than the $1K you'll receive, so there won't be extra for rent at all.

And this is the way it's supposed to be: High earners will be net losers, people with low/sporadic/zero market income will be net gainers.

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But I'm saying the effect could be a net transfer from taxpayers (people with medium to high income) to landowners especially real estate companies. Since much housing stock is owned by a business which may even be operated at 0 net income... which means the business would be paying no corporate income tax. And the property taxes are incredibly low in CA since prop 13 applies to commercial real estate as well. So it's likely to mean the personal taxpayer (income tax and sales tax account for the majority of the revenue) subsidizing the real estate companies.

I don't know how strong the effect would be, but if true, the effect of basic income would be a strong subsidy from taxpayers to real estate companies.

> your tax increases to fund the basic income program will be a lot more than the $1K you'll receive, so there won't be extra for rent at all.

This will never happen (through government legislation). If it does happen, then the policy will encourage individuals not to work, since the income to work ratio is better if you make less money. This would be a disaster for a country's economic development.

Having the choice to work a bit less is actually good. And the economic gains from increased distributive efficiency would be huge.

In reality, there is already a large basic income program, it's called Social Security.

I'm sure you probably think that giving millions of elderly the freedom to retire is terrible for economic development, but it is no doubt a great advance for human decency.

You're assuming a 100% taxed marginal rate after some income level. That seems extremely unlikely. As long as the marginal tax rate is <100%, there will be incentive to work.

But who says income tax is the only type of tax? You can use a progressive consumption tax (no tax under $x item, y% tax from $x to $z, etc) to raise the funds. Economists much prefer this type of tax because it disincentives consumption rather than production.

Can you explain why this will not happen? A UBI is an income redistribution scheme. Higher income brackets must necessarily pay more than they receive, one way or another. Is it problematic? Sure, but so are all sorts of programs already in effect.

Exactly. It is basically an adjustment of the tax progression curve, with a new starting point at -1000 for zero-earners.

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