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Comment by baby | Hacker News Reader

UBI is honestly the only solution here.

I think targeted redistribution will work better. If you want to protect the economy, take the people with excess wealth — providing no utility right now — and give some of their wealth to those who cannot earn income during this crisis. It avoids the inflationary effects of printing money. You could accomplish this by raising taxes on the wealthy and sending the revenues directly to those who will lose their livelihoods and the small businesses which need to make rent to stay afloat. Obviously the political appetite to do this doesn't exist in the US, but I think it is easily the best solution.

That's why we (US, and much of the world) have progressive tax rates for earned income. Though in the US, we then give lower tax rates for unearned income...

You alluded to this, but in reality effective tax rates in the US are actually flat or even regressive due to the favorable tax treatment of investment income as well as the massive deductions for property ownership:

https://www.nber.org/papers/w20625

>take the people with excess wealth - providing no utility right now

Most "excess wealth" is tied up in business and other investments. It's not like wealthy people just horde cash like Scrooge McDuck. That wealth is currently working to support the economy. It is hardly passive.

Forcing the wealthy to pay increased tax on this value will cause them to close business functions, sell stocks, etc.

Is that really wise at this point in time? To redistribute value from existing, proven formats into unspecific, theoretically useful ones?

Theft is not immoral simply because it is unfair or mean. It's because it causes systemic dysfunction.

How about something a bit more targeted? Do we really need to give software engineers working from home extra cash?

That software engineer would spend it elsewhere in the industry, likely some non-essential.

That hourly worker w/o a job will pay rent and food. Software engineer...a carwash, new lawn equiment, or hell even a vacation.

Giving an airline a tax break won't drive them more customers. Giving their customers more money will give them customers.

What? Nobody is going to be flying anywhere soon, regardless of whether you give everybody $1000.

$1000 a month per person...Trump has announced at least 2 months of it. I have my salary still. My wife and I get $4000 of free money. What do you think we're going to do with it?

You need to think long term what this money can do.

Software engineers are a tiny fraction of the population, and any money given to them can always be recouped via taxes anyways. The added bureaucratic/administrative complexity on such a time-sensitive measure just doesn't seem worth it.

How much are you willing to pay to make sure that it's targeted? 30% overhead is not uncommon for means-tested welfare.

Printing money and giving it to everyone essentially taxes every dollar by the same amount. That's not necessarily the best solution here.

In the end the money for UBI comes from taxes one way or another. Even if every dollar is taxed the same amount, not everyone makes the same amount of dollars.

Shorter working hours is another solution. I think that makes a lot of sense now that the global economy is contracting. More fair that jobs are "shared fairly" rather than that some gets to keep theirs and others don't.

Nah, you could never pay enough (in the short term) to keep everyone going.

Suspend loan repayments and rent collection for 6 months, and print food stamps for the unemployed.

What will UBI do that food stamps etc won't?

It has not worked for every test city that tried it. Why is this different?

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