What's your plan for when the rich run out, either because you've taxed them down to a low-income level, or because they packed up their bags and moved to Monaco?
I've done manual labor (not much, I'm short and when I was young enough to do it I was very slightly built). I've done retail, food service, janitorial, and home health work.
Just so we're clear, you're taking the position that "hard work" only means physically demanding work.
Something that takes the entirety of the country's government revenue isn't "sustainable" to any rational person.
The reference went by you. A child is very much the benefactor of a lot of other people's labor.
Exactly. In Europe as a whole, tax revenue is around 40% of GDPList_of_sovereign_states_by_tax_revenue_to_GDP) In the USA, it is about 27% of GDP. The European economy is proven sustainable which suggests that my example is sustainable.. Whether my example of an UBI is achievable or desirable is a different question.
Apparently Greece, Portugal, and Russia are no longer part of "Europe as a whole" when it comes to sustainability. And of course, it seems that inadequate medical services with unacceptable wait times doesn't have any impact on your view of "sustainability".
Yes it is. Which is why I've said MULTIPLE TIMES that one of the most important things we need to do is restructure corporate taxes, including how we handle salary and non-wage compensations with respect to what's considered taxable.
No one is advocating doing any such thing.
Sigh, "Europe as a whole" explicitly means the entire region as a group, so your response has no relevance whatsoever. But at least you now understand that without an agreed upon definition, "sustainability" depends on the eye of the beholder.Exactly. In Europe as a whole, tax revenue is around 40% of GDP
Without a rational explanation, this appears to be mental diarrhea to me.
Look at it this way, in 2010, the top 1% took home $1 of every $6 collected as income. The top 0.01% of the nation collected $1 in every $30 made in income. These percentages are around 6 times larger than they were in the 1970s.
Call me crazy, but I have a bit of an ethical objection to people charging abusive rates for necessary services where the customer doesn't have an alternative. You are unfamiliar with the term "working poor"? Reducing personal taxes on the poor to make their salaries sustainable would be like trying to fill an automobile with jello. It makes no sense! How do you make the working poor not poor by reducing their tax rate?
You mean like SNAP, food assistance, housing assistance, health care assistance? How much money do we spend on these programs? SNAP alone was over $100 billion!
The trouble is, you are using a colorful bandage, but just don't see it. Shifting tax law doesn't fix poverty. It doesn't even begin to address it.
Oh, you mean kind of like how I said
In the bit that you selectively trimmed out for a mysterious reason?
Why are you so big on some economic things, but issues like supply and demand seem a bridge too far? Specialists are specialists because they are good in a field not many are good in. That means they have a skill that has a very high value.
Well, glad you agree with the socialists (publicly owned utilities) on that one.
You ever going to vote for the party that'd move in that direction?
So are you now against changing the judicial system that allows the uber-wealthy to get away with violating the law?
It didn't go by me, it's just completely irrelevant to the topic. Children are benefactors of their parent's labor. Complete strangers half a continent away aren't being obligated to see to their every need. It's not a relevant analog in any rational way, and there shouldn't be a need to point that out to any of you. Because every single one of us in this thread knows goddamned good and well that parent's footing the bill for their children's journey to adulthood is not at all in the same realm as every adult in the country being entitled to a stipend that covers all their basic needs with them not being required to work at all.
Nah, you're making a mistake here. I want a system that allows for equal opportunity and avoids undue hardships, and that is fair in both its application and its funding, and is sustainable. I want something that is actually going to be a long-term viable solution... and I don't see UBI as being that solution.
Tell us again how your plan is supposed to work out then? Your poverty level UBI will take $5T, and the entire US Government Revenue is $5T. But you're NOT advocating that we use the entire government revenue to fund UBI. So... fill in the blanks because your math doesn't math.
Only if you blindly increase the corporate tax rate without changing the structure of that taxation. I'm not talking about hiking corporate taxes to the stars here. Mostly, I'm talking about 1) placing a cap on the level of employee salary that can be counted as pre-tax administrative expenses reduced from operating margin, 2) placing a cap on the value of non-wage compensation provided the employees that can be counted as pre-tax administrative expenses reduced from operating margin, 3) shifting corporate goodwill and charitable investments to explicitly be treated as after-tax expenses - actually an act of goodwill as opposed to a tax dodge. Personally, I'd like to see stocks and shares be disallowed as vehicles for compensation completely, but that starts to drift into views on the stock market overall which is a bit out of scope.
You're right - only the very richest can afford it. But you NEED those rich people to be taxable, otherwise you lose the taxes completely. That results in you having to continuously raise taxes on people with lower levels of income. You squeeze the middle income brackets more and more as a result... and eventually you're going to have to start squeezing the low income brackets too. Unless you structure it very carefully, you risk turning it into a race to the bottom.
