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Comment by throw0101a | Hacker News Reader

> But the real question imo is “does this scale without destroying the country’s finances?”

It depends on how it is implemented and the numbers involved.

One proposal [1] would be to give everyone $US 10K per year starting at age 21, and not having income taxes start until you have an income over US$ 40K.

This allows one to get get enough for the bare necessities (shelter, food) "for free", but if you want to have a life that's more than just subsistence living, you would have to work--but you get to keep a lot of that upfront.

If you want a 'fancy' life, then you'll have to work more, and there would be personal income taxes. Presumably there would be corporate and sales taxes as well.

I don't know enough about the math to know if it is practical.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/08/why-are...

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>One proposal [1] would be to give everyone $US 10K per year starting at age 21, and not having income taxes start until you have an income over US$ 40K.

That sounds a lot like the Fair Tax plan that was all the hubbub a decade ago but never got off the ground.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairTax#Monthly_tax_rebate

Giving everyone $10K/year would just inflate prices until $10K was the zero baseline for income.

I'd expect the opposite. Giving a UBI would suddenly give the poorest people a voice in the market, and industries that are currently bottom-feeder would become inclusive and thriving. Eg payday loans becomes small business loans. Dollar stores get better fresh produce, etc.

> Giving everyone $10K/year would just inflate prices until $10K was the zero baseline for income.

That doesn't make sense. A downward redistribution (which UBI is) is going to inflate prices of goods with disproportionate low-end demand and deflate those with disproportionate high-end demand somewhat, but in any plausible scenario it will still (before considering any effects of reactive production shifts) increase the buying power on the low end and decrease it on the high end, even after the effects of price level changes.

If you tie the amount distributed to inflation like the Social Security does in the US then it would auto adjust.

> Luckily, [[new research]] on a program in Mexico gives us a real-world test case for this idea. And it strongly suggests that giving out cash doesn’t cause inflation — or if it does, the effects are very, very mild.

* https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/9/20/16256240/m...

> If, however, you funded a UBI with graduated taxation, you would effectively be redistributing wealth from the wealthiest to the population in general. Depending on the tax code, people somewhere in the middle of the scale would receive about the same amount in UBI as they pay in tax increases.

* https://www.quora.com/Wont-a-universal-basic-income-raise-in...

For the second article, he notes that if UBI is done via printing money, then it could.

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