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Comment by mchanson | Hacker News Reader

Hope we start experimenting with this in the US also. Maybe at a state level.

It would have to be in an extremely liberal area. Socialism is still a four letter word in the US, and this is the epitome of socialist initiatives.

Actually I think a red state like Mississippi could be the proving ground. The argument from right-leaning groups like the Cato Institute is that BI would replace existing social welfare programs (SNAP, SSDI, HUD, etc.) and reduce the incentive for special interest groups to lobby for special programs and transfers. Everyone gets a check for the same amount, if you're wealthy then you owe more in taxes than your check is worth.

Those programs can get really costly in states with low economic growth and high poverty rates. The idea that we should just give poor people money instead of funding huge government programs (often with no metric for success beyond "number of people enrolled") would play well in many red states.

In the States it should be called a "negative income tax". It's basically the same thing with a different name, but it's the name that Milton Friedman and other leading right-wing economists use.

Milton Friedman created a reasonable argument for conservatives that this program is in-line with conservative economic principles.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/23/business/23scene.html?_r=0

It seems like reducing socialism to me. Instead of the gov't hand-picking (centrally planning) benefactors of tax dollars, e.g. defense contractors or oil/ag subsidies, it's being returned to the people (and all the people - not just some according to their need or whatever).

True, but if I pay $60,000 in federal taxes each year, and only receive $25,000 in "mincome", then it's still "socialism" (as Americans seem to define it).

It seems that any tax plan that is remotely progressive is immediately labeled as "socialist" by the right.

It's probably an ever bigger problem than that. Regardless of liberal or conservative, if you want to raise taxes essentially across the board (which you'd have to do--even taking all of the wealth of "the 1%" would fund this project for maybe a year) you're going to have a really tough time convincing people that their taxes are going to be raised 500% or whatever it would end up being.

Just back-of-the envelope numbers, if 300 million Americans received $30k/yr, that's $9 trillion dollars per year that has to come from someplace. My guess would be that the majority of people would end up handing that $30k right back in the form of taxes. And at that point, it becomes an exercise in the government giving people money, then having to get it back via taxes, so then what is the point? Is it easier to give 10 people $10 or to give 100 people $10, then take $900 of it back?

Is it easier to give 10 people $10 or to give 100 people $10, then take $900 of it back?

If 100 people is the totality of the population, the cost of bureaucracy for monitoring which of those 10 people actually get the $10 (specifically ensuring a low fraud level) is near or greater than $100, and the social stigma of getting that $10 in the first place is reduced or eliminated, then yes, it could be "easier".

In other words, would it make sense to give everyone the same amount, and take it back from some in taxes, when weighing the cost of the current levels of enforcement and the possible social good done through reduced stigmatization of the poor.

Well, not all 300M are adults - I would assume this hypothetical program would only give to people past a certain age. And I don't think it'd be $30k - it would probably be just enough to survive, but not enough to live a lifestyle you'd enjoy. Maybe it'd scale a little with your age, so you don't end up with a windfall on your 18th birthday.

I'm not sure how'd you account for different costs of living in different areas. But I think the number would be closer to $20k.

Also, it could just be an untaxed amount, no need to muddy things up with that.

It's still a big chunk of money: $4-5T. But You could cancel out a lot of existing services if this was implemented. We're spending $1.2T for pensions ands $0.5T for welfare [1], so some of that could go towards this. But yeah, that's still a lot of money. Not sure where it'd come from. Maybe start with a low amount and scale upwards, hoping to reap some economic benefits from the improvements?

[1] http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/breakdown

BI is NOT socialism at all. We still have private property and capitalism based economy, just like now.

If anything this is the pure form of the mixed capitalism/democratic economy/government model that every Western nation already has.

BI is a way of reconciling capitalism with the "post-work" work world we are moving into.

Strong arguments can be made for the necessity of basic income, but as a concept it is weakly socialist. The ideal that people have some fundamental right to sustenance beyond what the market value of their labor provides as income is by definition socialist, given that the corresponding capitalist ideal is that, if you're not worth paying enough to live, you die.

The modern mixed economy that every Western nation has is called that because it is a mixture of capitalism and socialism.

Its true that BI is consistent with that mix, but that's not a counterargument to it being from the socialist side of the capitalist/socialist divide. (Of course, the utility of that divide and the breakdown of arguments over economic arrangements into "which side of the divide does that fall into?" followed by "if capitalist, good; if socialist, bad", or vice-versa, is dubious.)

Like Alaska http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund

Actually, both economic liberals and progressives seem to like it.

Yes, I'm sure socialists are the only ones who could ever possibly accept a basic income.

Oh wait http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax

It's a weird one, actually; lots of socialists like the idea, but so do lots of libertarians. Alas, conservatives hate it.

Socialists hate the idea because it's still based on capitalism.

Some socialists hate it, some don't. Lots of libertarian socialists are in favour.

Socialists and neoconservatives seem to hate it, but economic liberals and progressives seem to like it.

I'd take issue with your description that socialists seem to hate it. Plenty of socialists (especially libertarian socialists) like it a lot.

There's the Permanent Fund Dividend in Alaska, though it only hit $3269 its peak year, and that was with a bump from a budget surplus.

yeah, but that one was neither designed as a social safety net, nor is it big enough to function as one. It's neat, but it's so small that it's basically apples and oranges.

That's one of the problems with practicality of such plans - the numbers are never "big enough".

People take into account today's income and capital gains revenues, and assume that they can safely increase those rates by a wide margin causing no change in underlying behavior.

In reality a top-income earner who made eight digits or above can safely take the next 2-3 years off without driving his family into the soup kitchen situation, and as far as capital gains goes, people become more cognizant of harvesting capital losses before they sell anything that appreciated in value (or simply sell a smaller chunk of their assets, if we're talking highly liquid investments).

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