Replacing welfare payments with “basic income” for all is alluring, but expensive

This analysis doesn&#x27;t seem to account for the savings and increased efficiency from all the policy changes basic income would enable.<p>For example, water and parking spaces could be priced at their actual cost, rather than being subsidized. This would make the water market function properly and allocate it efficiently, and remove a bunch of car-related externalities.<p>Need public housing? Not if you set a high enough basic income level.<p>Street crime? Possibly quite reduced.<p>Massive corn subsidies? Who needs &#x27;em?<p>And think of all the otherwise great ideas that we don&#x27;t do because they&#x27;d effectively be regressive taxation. For example, congestion pricing. We could revisit all those ideas.<p>And what about when the children of would-have-been-poor households grow up with an actual ladder up? Think of the things they&#x27;ll invent, the contributions they&#x27;ll make to society.

The article points out that making basic income available to those contributing to society (working, looking for work or volunteering). That&#x27;s incredibly short-sighted for several reasons: 1) the idle are best being, well, idle - out of the way while everybody else gets on with making the world a better place. Sure they will reap the benefits but their number is likely to no higher than the currently idle. Indeed the numbers are likely to be fewer since everybody is free to do what they want; 2) means testing whether somebody is eligible is going to create bureaucracy and drive up the costs of the system and finally 3) if I wanted to spend a couple of weeks cleaning up my local beach of garbage I should be free to do so - the benefit to society is obviously large but the effort might just be me or a small group of similar minded folks. Justifying that to some authority so I could collect my payment would kill a lot of creativity because of the paperwork involved. As a result of lot of trivial but useful things, cleaning garbage from playgrounds or collecting household vegetable waste for a local compost heap would go undone.

I am going to tell a story about the state I live in: Maine.<p>We have many programs: HUD (to help pay rent), Food Stamps, HEAP (fuel&#x2F;electricity assistance), and others.<p>All of these have complex forms to fill out, and offices filled with staff that don&#x27;t actually understand the complex rules, and the rules seem to change all the time.<p>Hiring these people costs money. Due to the complexity of the rules and forms, many families that qualify for these programs do not apply for them due to the frustration they cause, and when you&#x27;re poor you only have a limited amount of frustration before you curl up and cry yourself to sleep every night.<p>Many consider just getting any aid from the state a full time job in of itself.<p>Not only that, programs like food stamps issue a card, the maintenance of these cards is probably not cheap as they outsource it to some company out of state. The minimum you can get on food stamps here is $15&#x2F;mo (which helps absolutely no one, I&#x27;m sorry, but $15&#x2F;mo could be a day&#x27;s worth of food for a couple with a kid); what is the actual cost of doing that $15&#x2F;mo? I read somewhere that a quarter of a million households qualify for food stamps in Maine, how much are money are we losing administering a program like this that has such little benefit? Could we be feeding another few thousand households with that waste?<p>I&#x27;ve been advocating a basic income program for years purely because of the efficiency of it. Once people no longer have to worry about where their next meal is, or their wife&#x27;s next meal, or their kids&#x27;s next meal, or if they will have a roof over their head tomorrow, or will their car be stolen, I mean, repoed by the bank tomorrow, they can actually focus on being gainfully employed, or go back to school, or just not be a fucking wreck.<p>I live in Maine. I suspect we are the poorest and most forgotten about state in the great experiment that is our nation. A program like this would create all the jobs we don&#x27;t have, would end the constant bullshit people here have to deal with, and probably save lives as well.<p>Life here is so bleak that, as a non-alcoholic, people have assumed that I mean that I&#x27;m just in AA, and quit drinking. &quot;No,&quot; I tell them, &quot;I really don&#x27;t drink. Never have.&quot; They look at me like I have two heads.

<i>A generous basic income funded by very high taxes would be self-defeating, as it would reintroduce the sort of distortions that many of its advocates hope to banish from the welfare system. Loafers could live comfortably without lifting a finger.</i><p>Basically, if there is not enough jobs for everyone - the raison d&#x27;etre of the basic income - then at some point, some aren&#x27;t going to do anything: that&#x27;s the point.<p>In other terms, the basic income is all about how do deal with the people which does nothing since we have reasons to think they couldn&#x27;t do anything anyway according to the situation.

Unvoiced assumption #1: working is good. Corollary: Not working is bad. Unvoiced assumption #2: anyone who wants a job can get one.<p>We know that #2 is false. Coupling the assumptions together produces a group of people who are considered to be bad for reasons that are entirely beyond their control.

I think the ethical arguments and the practical arguments about how other policies could be changed once basic income is implemented are more than enough reason to vote yes. But all of that is ultimately moot: the most important reason why basic income will soon be necessary is that &quot;jobs&quot; as they exist now are already on their way out.<p>The idea that it is &quot;too expensive&quot; just begs the question &quot;too expensive to whom?&quot; Eventually, our practice of giving the richest people more and more money will hit a breaking point, and we will have to figure out a way to take care of all the people whose livelihoods have been automated. Basic income is the best and easiest way to obviate that problem, and the richest can easily afford to pay for it.

The article also doesn&#x27;t seem to take into account that we already spend of hundreds of billions of dollars every year of welfare programs that could be saved. The article just piles BI on as an additional expense.<p>I also think most BI supporters tend to shoot too high. The equivalent income of just a 16hr per week job at min wag would do wonders for the economy without putting a great deal of pressure on people not to work.

Money doesn&#x27;t disappear. If you give people a basic income, they&#x27;ll spend it. On rent, beer, education, their kids, all the things people normally spend money on. And some of it is going to come back to all of us in one way or another. Maybe more people will have money to buy apps or pay for services offered by hn members&#x27; startups. Or they&#x27;ll buy lottery tickets and the additional money that goes to education will be used to hire consultants or custodians for schools. Or they&#x27;ll spend more money at Wal-mart, some of which will be used to purchase some kind of software from a tech startup. Money always trickles back up, especially when it&#x27;s put into the hands of low income people who tend to spend more than they save.<p>This adds up to a discount on the cost of BI. Increase taxes by X% and you get back Y% in increased spending. Of course everyone won&#x27;t benefit equally, but there will be plenty of good times to go around. Don&#x27;t worry about moral judgements regarding who is working and who isn&#x27;t. As long as they&#x27;re spending it will mean more for you.

Having negative income tax brackets for those that:<p>1. Work +<p>2. Declare their income (i.e., file tax returns) +<p>3. Make below X amount<p>... is more financially reasonable <i>and has the benefit of keeping the person working&#x2F;trying&#x2F;moving</i>.<p>In this system, as an example, someone making below 30K year would gets the difference between what they make and the 30K mark given to them.<p>Otherwise, the only other solution is to just have the FED print out the 5-10+ trillion&#x2F;year this guaranteed minimum income program needs - and distribute it each month.<p>Most people are already paying a 40-60% effective tax rate (all use, property, local, state, federal taxes - and other related fees - added up) on what they earn, and you really can&#x27;t tax them more for obvious reasons.

Why not start with something smaller, like providing &quot;basic food&quot; for everyone, and see what the result is? You could reuse existing programs, like food stamps, where the infrastructure is already in place for most grocery stores to accept payment. (except without the application process)<p>That seems like a less risky change than trying to provide enough income to cover housing, utilities, clothing, etc. all at once.

I think what we need is &quot;basic commodities&quot; in terms of foodstuffs that a person could live off of, for example: a 40lb bag of rice, lentils, 3 different kinds of beans, corn meal, canned tomatoes, canned fruit, and a jar full of multi-vitamins. Absolutely no proof of income status should be required only a quick verification that that A. You are a human being, and B. you&#x27;re not abusing the system by taking more than you could actually consume during a given time period.<p>This ensures that nobody ever needs to go hungry, it puts money in people&#x27;s pockets because now they don&#x27;t have to spend as much of their income on food, and it accomplishes this all without prying into the private details of anyone&#x27;s life.<p>The goal in my opinion should not be to &quot;give everyone an income&quot; but rather to give everyone a safety net on top of which they can attempt to build a life for themselves. It trains people to be used to <i>sharing</i> and <i>giving</i> the things that we need to sustain ourselves, which is healthy and nurtures a cooperative spirit among men.

The trick that governments all around the world pull is taxing those who are not wealthy.<p>Taxation should not be a &#x27;membership cost&#x27; for society. It should be a fee levied on the very wealthy, not out of some sense of spite, but in order that the system continues to produce reasonable outcomes for everyone.<p>When you do that, then basic income can be argued for reasonably.<p>Right now, poor&#x2F;working class people fall over themselves to come up with reasons why BI won&#x27;t work because they don&#x27;t want their tax burdens to rise.<p>Land and capital owners should pay tax. Those with zero net worth really shouldn&#x27;t. Why?<p>Because taxation on labour is effectively stolen labour. Taxation on capital is simply an adjustment in living standards. The two are hugely different.<p>The idea that the rich would just go fugitive if wealth were taxed is a total fantasy. Knightsbridge exists as a real place. I can cycle down the road and pop a letter through a letterbox. It might become marginally less attractive with a 1% annual tax. It might be that the economic boom caused by redistribution results in it increasing in value anyway.

How expensive is it to NOT provide a &quot;basic income&quot;?

I don&#x27;t see how this is affordable. With the Swiss amount of $2700 per month ($32,400 p.a) it&#x27;s $32bn for 1m people per annum (8m people in Switzerland). This is 45% of the annual federal budget last year ($70b) &amp; doesn&#x27;t even cover 13% of the population. What about everything else that needs government expenditure: roads, defense, education &amp; research, regulatory oversight, police?

Probably as expensive as giving the homeless free housing... which has repeatedly shown to be cheaper than not

I really like the general idea of basic income, but I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s the right time for it now. The only reason I say that is that we need to address the destabilising effects of the banking sector before money is ready to use as a means of providing a safety net.<p>Control over the money supply ensures that prices can settle, which means that the income you earn (through UBI or otherwise) can give the basic quality of life we want to ensure all have access to. However, at the moment, the increase of money in circulation is largely driven by banks, who serve profit over people.<p>Solve the banking issue, and you&#x27;d have removed a road block for UBI as well as freeing up the capital to do it.<p>Alternatively, I like the idea of &#x27;basic food&#x27; and &#x27;basic shelter&#x27; that were mentioned elsewhere in these comments. They&#x27;d probably be easier to push through, as well as providing tangible benefits for those in need.

I haven&#x27;t really made up my mind about Basic Income, but one thing I never heard advocates of Basic Income talk about is that incentives matter to human behavior. BI will tax people who work more and give handouts to those who don&#x27;t. This disincentivizes working and incentivizes not working. For example, the increasing numbers of people on Social Security Disability Insurance seems like a similar phenomenon and is not a good omen. [1]<p>[1] - <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ssa.gov&#x2F;policy&#x2F;docs&#x2F;chartbooks&#x2F;disability_trends&#x2F;sect01.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ssa.gov&#x2F;policy&#x2F;docs&#x2F;chartbooks&#x2F;disability_trends&#x2F;...</a>

The whole discussion is ridiculous to me. All of the money filters back up to the capitalists anyway. Is that not mind-bendingly obvious?<p>If you are a recipient of the basic income, you spend it all. Every last dollar. You don&#x27;t build net worth and take it out of the economy. (If more than a small hardcore crowd even can, it&#x27;s been set too high).<p>In a country like the UK, that gets taxed at 50%+ (providing the tax authorities are actually doing their job and have not been deliberately underfunded). So half of it almost immediately goes back into the Government coffers.<p>I don&#x27;t understand why people spend so much time doing arcane analyses whilst seemingly missing how the economy works at a very basic level.<p>Government spending can be a net drain in two broadly defined ways, as far as I can see. There may be others that I am missing.<p>1. Giving money to the rich directly who then hoard it. 2. Inefficient allocation of human talent or natural resources (e.g. if the government paid me 200k pa to chew pens, and I gave up my real job).<p>Spending on the poor really cannot cost money unless you have issues with collecting taxes.

2700 per month is 32.4k per year - that&#x27;s awfully high for a basic income. I&#x27;m not surprised it&#x27;s &quot;too expensive&quot;.

In the relatively near-term future it will be literally impossible to employ more than half of the population in nearly full-time positions that produce a net gain for their being filled. At that point there are essentially two choices - let some people not work, or let everybody work less. (There&#x27;s actually a third choice that will probably be the default - make-work for all, so that we can be kept too busy to effect change).<p>The latter sounds more fair, but is inherently less efficient - specialization means that for every doctor to work half as much, we have to train twice as many doctors for the same amount of &#x27;product&#x27; (the practicing of medicine).<p>The math in this article seems to also have inexplicably paired &#x27;basic income&#x27; with &#x27;flat tax&#x27; - while I&#x27;m sure there are plenty of people who would like both, those two systems are completely separate, and there&#x27;s no good reason not to consider the effects in isolation rather than together.

As a big fan of the idea of a basic income I would love some numbers on this. Simplicity is sometimes worth the price.

No one on this thread seems to be aware that basic income has been tried in several trials both in the US and Canada. See, for instance, <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Mincome" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Mincome</a>

One thing that I think doesn&#x27;t come up very often when discussing BI is the fact that many other laws will have to dramatically change to make the experiment successful. Just imagine the enormous increase in things like contribution to open source, creation of art and culture, etc. I don&#x27;t believe that the current environment of hyper-strict IP and patent laws can continue if BI were to be implemented, as many more people would use their increased leisure time to create. Today we can already see conflicts between big IP companies and individual creators, and if BI is introduced it will get much worse.

Inflation is currently controlled by adjusting the amount of new money printed to back up loans given to large banks.<p>Instead of printing new money in this way, we could just give the new money directly to the citizens.<p>Quick napkin math shows that every person in the US would have gotten a check every year all the way back to the 30&#x27;s (some years smaller than others), without needing to raise taxes at all. In fact cancelling some of the welfare programs made unnecessary by this system would likely result in lower taxes.<p>Loans would be more expensive, but more expensive loans seems like a small price to pay for basically ending homelessness and hunger.

<i>n Britain, for example, workers can earn £10,600 ($16,500) before income tax is levied on subsequent earnings (starting at 20%).</i><p>Shortly to increase to £12,500 in George Osborne&#x27;s next budget in July.

Best solution I&#x27;ve come across is a small &lt;1% fee on all financial transactions. Which would work well if all those transactions in the world occurred on a blockchain.<p>This guy is giving the method a shot: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.basicincome.co&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.basicincome.co&#x2F;</a>

Raise tax on capital gains and stop corporate tax avoidance. You&#x27;ll have enough to implement a minimum wage.

sure actually giving everyone 10k a year is going to cost too much. But I don&#x27;t think anyone who is sane is actually proposing that.<p>At the moment, the poor get a mismash of benifits that all require administration.<p>replacing that with a single means tested universal income is far simpler.<p>for example:<p>every house hold is entitled to 10K, if you only earn 5k, you get a top up to 10k. This is no more costly that what already exisits in the UK (housing benefit, out of work, DLA, working tax credits) but is a magnitude more easy to administrate.<p>You get the added bonus of abolishing pensions that cost uber cash to maintain.<p>I think the economist is deliberately grasping at the wrong straws. Either that or the Swiss are batshit insane.

How is basic income even feasible from an economic, realistic standpoint? It would have to be wealthy people taking the hit right? How else would it be possible?

Here&#x27;s some of my ideas: 1. CEO pay cap @ 20x(or some other similarly reasonable #) of the median salary of the employees. Median salary is 30k ? So I can only earn 600k ? Screw that, I&#x27;m going to get everyone closer to 75k, that&#x27;ll put me at 1.5 mill, that&#x27;s way better - and everyone profits.<p>2. Flat but fluid Nationwide Sales Tax (would mean anyone visiting, or staying illegally has to pay taxes -- way better than an income tax.) -- Adjust this yearly as needed to compensate for basic income and other needs. When there&#x27;s a surplus lower it the next year, when there&#x27;s a deficit raise it 1-2 cents per dollar.<p>3. Higher taxes on luxuries like: 4star+ hotels, First Class plane seats, fancy cars, boats, private jets.<p>4. All recipients must have a roof over their head, and an address to mail the check to.<p>5. Congress &#x2F; Senate pay and benefits capped at the national average as well.<p>6. Allow individuals, ceo&#x27;s, etc who have more money to &quot;pay it forward&quot; and actually donate money to the government earmarked for the basic income fund. Some of the .01% may actually want to help out the rest.<p>7. Tax on automation, and companies that use robots to displace workers. The age of the robot worker is coming, this may slow that down if we can make it less of an incentive.