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Comment by osigurdson | Hacker News Reader

The top 1% globally is 60K USD for a single earner. Should taxes go up for anyone above this level?

Currently, US taxes are primarily used inside the US, the exception being foreign aid, which relatively is a small amount.

Are you suggesting the US should fund a global UBI?

The logic extends flawlessly so it's difficult to say "I'm all for UBI, but only within our borders".

The US has used cheap labor globally for decades, why would the blue collar worker in Indiana qualify more than the blue collar worker in Indonesia? Both are making goods for American billionaires and both are struggling.

From a moral perspective I agree and that should be the long-term goal. Practically, however, the notion of national sovereignty makes it infeasible to implement a global UBI. Within the borders of a country, that country's government can do what is needed to make it work (e.g., punish scofflaws). Across international borders, that's much more difficult. We see this already in that many countries that are "poor" overall have ludicrously high levels of inequality, because a small elite controls all the flows of foreign investment, etc.

To take a simple example: within a country, if you send the UBI money to a local government for disbursement and the local mayor/governor just pockets it, he's still ultimately subject to the legal system of that country and can be jailed, etc. There's no international equivalent of this. If you send some UBI money to Poor Country X for disbursement and the local governor pockets it, there's nothing you can do except not send any more money.

Thank you for explaining this.

OK, so just send UBI to countries as corrupt or less than western ones.

I wasn’t making a moral statement. It’s a matter of practical reality.

Humanity doesn’t really know how to do global policy, even if there are massive potential benefits.

What? Why would US taxes have anything to do with people in poorer countries?

It seems that UBI arguments are all about "fairness". So it naturally should extend to other countries it seems. Otherwise you are just creating another greedy / protected group.

Of course people usually try to draw the UBI Venn diagram such that they are a net receiver of funds.

As soon as those other countries join the US it should extend to them as well.

It's sounds like you are trying to draw it to be as absurd as possible to reduce the proposition to something ridiculous.

What would be absurd about a global UBI? It's amazing how fast people jump off the high horse of equality when you point out that on a global scale they are incredibly rich and privileged.

Equality to them means them getting more material goods, not them giving up more material goods.

It's about impracticality, not morality. It doesn't make feasible sense to fix the whole world's economy in one go. And we shouldn't let imperfection get in the way of progress.

Just identify one poor country that isn't very corrupt and start sending UBI money to it first.

It is hard to say "I want UBI because inequality" and then fail to recognize this.

What they are really saying is "I don't want anyone to be richer than I am but fine with people being poorer". So the default human position on things.

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