Split UBI - Split From Breakdown In Civil Order

[Elixir]

their starting salaries are higher than almost anyone else

So’s their insurance. Among other things.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I showed that an UBI of 15K appears sustainable.

No, you never addressed the problems.

You’ve never shown that it cannot possibly be sustainable.

I simply showed that the numbers presented weren't realistic--and that was assuming poverty line UBI.

I was not attempting to show that UBI is inherently impossible. You're arguing like a Republican--blaming me for failing to disprove your unsupported position.

How the economy operates after an UBI is put into effect depends on the specifics of the UBI amount and how it is financed. The notion that companies could effectively reduce salaries by the UBI requires the implicit assumptions of strong market power on the part of employers and no change in the supply of labor.

You seem to think you can stick the employers with a huge cost increase and they'll just have to take it.

Sorry, but few industries operate at the profit margins required to be able to absorb the additional costs. Wages will either crash or the jobs disappear entirely.

Your assertion of huge cost increases for employers is a cherry picked assumption. There is no necessary reason why an UBI would generate “ huge cost increases”.

The money has to come from somewhere. And there isn't anything like sufficient profit to fund it no matter how much you like to eat the rich.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Not only have you pretty much halved our income

Your income wouldn't change.

You would receive less of it directly from your employer, and more of it from government; But the net change should be close to zero.

There is a point where that would apply, but it's fairly low down the ladder. I was looking at our numbers--our tax bill is appreciably above the UBI amount and since he was saying the UBI amount is taxable that means we would get only a quarter of it, anyway. (Or half, if it's not considered income for social security purposes.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

People who are earning near SSI pre-retirement are not earning much money at all—and likely the work they are doing is unpleasant. Most people who have had to live that way are happy to give up that work and have more free time.

Agreed. UBI would take out a decent chunk of the labor pool.

But here I burst everyone’s bubble. Once you retire your life is most emphatically NOT nothing but leisure. Written as a retired person. And whatever you do takes at least twice as long as you anticipate which is at least three times longer than it did when you were in your 50’s.

How is this relevant?

Or: it would force businesses to pay decently in order to attract workers.

Or allow small businesses to employ people who would not have to try to live on starvation wages. Same thing with people who want careers in less financially remunerative industries—such as teaching, social work, etc. ( another solution would be for some city to decide to pay social workers and teachers and childcare workers and nursing home workers and those who provide needed support to the sick and dying or just injured or elderly.

It would provide subsistence for people while they are trying to launch a business, or write a novel or do art or care for a sick family member or small child or start or finish a degree or recover from an illness. It would help take some of the financial pressure off of parents of young children.

People do not exist to serve business. Business exists to serve people.

Once again, you are making the fundamental mistake of thinking money has value.

Yet again, no! Money represents value, it does not have value independent from what you can do with it. Fewer people working fewer hours = lower productivity = fewer things to buy with your money. The average standard of living has to drop.

 

[Toni]

Tuition is not the entire cost of medical school. One requires housing and food and reliable transportation, a cell phone and computer, books, supplies and a lotbb ch if other things.

ANY graduate program has those same costs. This isn't something unique to med school. The tuition costs, as well as all the ancillary costs, are comparable.

$200K is a nice salary! But it’s hardly luxurious if one is also paying off student debt, and almost certainly consumer debt and other debt accrued while arming little income. and it is insufficient to pay fur 2 mortgages( the second mortgage being student debt) in addition to other middle class accouterments: transportation, wardrobe, decent housing, etc. it’s just not lavish, particularly compared with the hours worked.

It's no different than the reality faced by anyone with any sort of graduate program. I didn't even complete my masters, and I still ended up with close to $150K in debt - and my starting income was a LOT lower than a doctor makes. My current income is lower than the median for a PCP, my spouse doesn't work, and I managed to pay off my debt 10 years early. Of course, I did that by having a small starter home that wasn't on a golf course, and by purchasing used cars instead of new BMWs or Mercedes, but hey - priorities differ I guess.

Of course, I'm also not in a position where I can charge exorbitant hourly rates to ensure that I get huge income... and to obtain my current income I work 40 hrs a week consistently, with periodic bouts of overtime as needed.

My point is that there's this persistent myth that doctors just *have to* charge really high rates for their services, because of the *crushing debt* they are *forced* to incur to become a doctor... and it's just not true. Yes, they have debt, but it's not much higher than any other graduate degree, and their starting salaries are higher than almost anyone else coming out with a freshly minted masters is going to get.

I know enough people who have graduate and professional degrees to state categorically that getting an MD is more expensive than getting a Ph.D. in terms of what you are expected to purchase. Getting an MD, a PhD, a JD, a DDS or a DVM is considerably more work and more expensive than earning a Masters degree. It's also more years of deferred income. While it is possible to go to law school part time, that's extremely difficult and takes more time.

The myth you are propagating is that doctors are the ones who determine charges for services. No, they have business offices who do that and charges are based on what major insurance companies will pay, especially and increasingly Medicare but also Blue Cross/Blue shield. Also reimbursement rates depend upon geographic location. In my corner of the state, an income of $200K would put you up very, very high (although we have a few billionaires who 'earn' their billions by vastly underpaying employees and by screwing over their suppliers in ways that would make Amazon blush.

Do I think that physicians should earn more than bus drivers or (most) accountants or most lab workers or most nurses? Yes, because the risks/liability/training/years training is much more extensive than it is for any of those and a great many other jobs.

 

[Elixir]

The general principle being put forth by UBI opponents is “we can’t afford it because we need poor people, and if they don’t stay poor, it will cost the rest of us”. And that’s probably true. It will cost the rest of us - and it will cost the wealthiest the most, if structured equitably. And IMHO it will be well worth the cost.
The rest of us will survive just fine, we’ll have less crime and a more stable society. YMMV, but the hair-on-fire contingent’s warnings seem really hollow to me.

 

[Toni]

Not only have you pretty much halved our income

Your income wouldn't change.

You would receive less of it directly from your employer, and more of it from government; But the net change should be close to zero.

There is a point where that would apply, but it's fairly low down the ladder. I was looking at our numbers--our tax bill is appreciably above the UBI amount and since he was saying the UBI amount is taxable that means we would get only a quarter of it, anyway. (Or half, if it's not considered income for social security purposes.)

So?

I'm pretty certain that if there was UBI, we likely would have the full amount taxed. I'm ok with that. I don't need the extra money in order to live a decent life. But I know plenty of people for whom a modest UBI of $15K/year would make a tremendous difference.

I think that's a basic difference between you and me. If I am understanding you correctly, you don't see how something would benefit you if you got less of a financial benefit than someone else and I don't care if it financially benefited me at all: to me the benefit would be that more people would be able to live decently and more securely.

Now, the societal benefits could be very significant. Being poor is extremely stressful. Stress causes and exacerbates a host of medical problems resulting in a drain on medical resources and in productivity for those who are working but experiencing high levels of stress. Stress also dramatically affects personal lives, and often leads to increased consumption of controlled substances, which has its own set of costs to medical resources, and other community resources. Children of stressed out parents, particularly those who deal with stress by using/abusing controlled substances are less well prepared and less able to do well in school, and are less likely to graduate or go on to post secondary education. People who are low income often cannot afford basics like cookware and so they rely on easily prepared food which comes with a huge environmental cost plus a lot of extra calories and sodium and preservatives, further adding to the drain on health care. That's just off the top of my head.

 

[Toni]

You are correct that there are not enough generalist in the medical profession, but you seem to lack any grasp of why that is. The fact is that it is extremely expensive to become a physician in addition to being difficult and taking a lot of time. Generalists are compensated at levels so low that it is difficult for them to be able to pay back their student loans —and do normal, age appropriate things such as marry, have children, buy a home. Graduating med school with hundreds of thousands in student debt, it is unsurprising that a lot of newly minted or about to be minted docs go into specialties which help them to be able to do all of those things.

Why do you think this?

What's the Price Tag on Medical School in 2024? | Bold.org

This article gives students info about medical school costs in the United States to help them make an informed decision about where to attend medical school.

bold.org

Harvard Medical School
Full-time tuition: $63,400

John Hopkins University, Baltimore
Full-time tuition: $54,900

University of Pennsylvania
Full-time tuition: $59,910

New York University Grossman School
Full-time tuition: $53,308 - awards all accepted students a full tuition scholarship

Stanford University School of Medicine
Full-time tuition: $60,234

https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Primary-Care-Physician-Salary#:~:text=How%20much%20does%20a%20Primary,%2Fweek%20or%20%2418%2C120%2Fmonth.

How much does a Primary Care Physician make?​

As of Jan 4, 2024, the average annual pay for a Primary Care Physician in the United States is $217,445 a year.

Just in case you need a simple salary calculator, that works out to be approximately $104.54 an hour. This is the equivalent of $4,181/week or $18,120/month.

Medical school is 4 years. Annual tuition in your examples exceeds 50k, si 4 years is at least 200k.

It's not really any different from the cost of any graduate work in terms of tuition. My masters work was just under $45K per year back in the late 90s/early 00s. On the other hand, starting salaries for ANY doctor are higher than they are for nearly all masters degree jobs, certainly higher than for academia.

Sure, a Primary Care doc might leave med school with $200K of student loan debt... but they're also starting out at $100K in salary. It's manageable even if it's high. It's certainly not any worse than any other person who had to take loans to get through a graduate program, and their starting pay is higher.

Few jobs in academia are accessible to those who only hold a master's degree, even at small obscure universities. Certainly there are plenty of jobs in supporting roles available at universities which require only Masters but very few that involve teaching students.

Yes, it is true that a newly minted MD or OD will outearn a newly minted Ph.D. who likely spent as much time in graduate school as a doctor spent in med school. So what? An MD will almost certainly outearn a DVM by enormous amounts and it's much harder to get into medical school. FFS, I earned more in my job for which I needed a BS degree than some newly minted Ph.D's hired at local universities did. Which says a great deal about how we value education as a profession.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There are two fundamental problems with UBI:

1) The numbers don't work. Eventually that will change.

The numbers do work. Total productivity is far more than adequate to feed, house, and clothe everybody; The reason people are hungry, ragged, or homeless is that the fruits of that productivity are unequally distributed.

The fruits are also unequally produced.

Yup. High income households average 4x the labor hours of low income households and that's not counting the indirect hours of time spent acquiring skills. (A college degree takes out ~10% of your career--you would need 11% more per hour just to break even even if school was free. Jobs with the highest training requirements can take out a quarter of your career.)

I'm all for making massive changes to corporate tax laws, as well as strengthening and simplifying our assistance programs. But I am quite strongly opposed to this notion that everything should be equally distributed, or that everyone's survival needs should be seen to (by someone else) just because they got born.

Being born doesn't entitle you to the fruit of someone else's labor.

Partially agree. I believe society owes an acceptable standard of living to those who can't do it on their own. I do not believe it owes people anything if they simply don't want to work.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I used to be opposed to UBI but life happened and I know a number of people who are barely—barely hanging on. I see the effects of poverty reflected in my community and have seen enough to see the major culprit being very low wages, and very high profits for a handful of people who work hard to starve public education and who don’t get tooth and nail against anything that might increase their taxes or increase their liability for environmental damage their business causes or in any way inhibits their ability to do exactly what they want, when they want.

I have zero problem taxing UBI payments to millionaires or even to very comfortably middle class people like myself.

The problem is real. That doesn't mean UBI is the answer, though. I much more favor things like the EITC.

 

[Elixir]

If I am understanding you correctly, you don't see how something would benefit you if you got less of a financial benefit than someone else and I don't care if it financially benefited me at all: to me the benefit would be that more people would be able to live decently and more securely.

^THANK YOU!!
***Best said synopsis of the overall disagreement***

I wouldn't care if I never one dime of it; I'd trade a forego any more for a kinder gentler, more artistic, more musical society. The one we've got is none of those things, and it mystifies me that truly wealthy people aren't rallying to invest en masse to address that. It really wouldn't have to cost trillions per year to relieve the desperation and helplessness that besets the homeless and working poor. Whether it's "their fault" or not, is irrelevant. It's "our benefit" to help.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Under the current system, being rich certainly seems to entitle you to the fruits of other people’s labor—and it seems that you’re just fine with that, I guess.

Except that for the most part that's not what's happening. It's a matter of scaling. Making 1,000 people 1% more efficient produces a benefit 10x what simply doing the same thing yourself would. Most of the high income people are in some way optimizing other's output, or they are providing something with a high initial cost but a low marginal cost. (For example, most entertainment.)

 

[Elixir]

I much more favor things like the EITC.

I'm sure you do. You associate earned income with worthiness, right?
EITC neatly avoids addressing the plight of homeless or unemployed people if I understand it correctly. And that's where a lot of the real societal rot happens. And there's no reason it (or something like it) couldn't be assimilated within a form of UBI.
The good thing about UBI, IMOis the U.
ETA: Maybe I don't really understand UBI. I see it as a guarantee, not a payment schedule. People who don't NEED it shouldn't get it.

Most of the high income people are in some way optimizing [their reward from] other's output

FIFY
They're mostly just maintaining the existing profit machine, leveraging it to their advantage and to the disadvantage of those others.
Not many people have the skills to manage the managers who can manage tens or hundreds of managers that manage hundreds of thousands of employees. And you can't go to school for it, you almost have to be brought up with it. If your parent or uncle is a first or second level manager (e.g. Regional VP of XYZ dept) in a huge multinational corporation, your path to hundreds of millions in "earnings" is pre-cleared if you want to go that way.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Not only have you pretty much halved our income

Your income wouldn't change.

You would receive less of it directly from your employer, and more of it from government; But the net change should be close to zero.

Okay. Seriously. HOW IS THE GOVERNMENT GOING TO GET THE TAXES TO PAY OUT THE FREE MONEY ONCE THE WAGES HAVE CRASHED?

The infinite pool of profit that's supposed to fund all leftist dreams.

Note there is always a proclamation that they can afford it, either with zero evidence or with totally inadequate evidence. That's because it's a matter of faith.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I showed that an UBI of 15K appears sustainable.

The hell you did. Your poverty level UBI would cost the ENTIRE GOVERNMENT REVENUE to fund!

Do you have a rational point?

And that's not a rational point she made??

 

[Toni]

I used to be opposed to UBI but life happened and I know a number of people who are barely—barely hanging on. I see the effects of poverty reflected in my community and have seen enough to see the major culprit being very low wages, and very high profits for a handful of people who work hard to starve public education and who don’t get tooth and nail against anything that might increase their taxes or increase their liability for environmental damage their business causes or in any way inhibits their ability to do exactly what they want, when they want.

I have zero problem taxing UBI payments to millionaires or even to very comfortably middle class people like myself.

The problem is real. That doesn't mean UBI is the answer, though. I much more favor things like the EITC.

That doesn't help people who don't earn much or anything.

 

[laughing dog]

You are correct that there are not enough generalist in the medical profession, but you seem to lack any grasp of why that is. The fact is that it is extremely expensive to become a physician in addition to being difficult and taking a lot of time. Generalists are compensated at levels so low that it is difficult for them to be able to pay back their student loans —and do normal, age appropriate things such as marry, have children, buy a home. Graduating med school with hundreds of thousands in student debt, it is unsurprising that a lot of newly minted or about to be minted docs go into specialties which help them to be able to do all of those things.

Why do you think this?

What's the Price Tag on Medical School in 2024? | Bold.org

This article gives students info about medical school costs in the United States to help them make an informed decision about where to attend medical school.

bold.org

Harvard Medical School
Full-time tuition: $63,400

John Hopkins University, Baltimore
Full-time tuition: $54,900

University of Pennsylvania
Full-time tuition: $59,910

New York University Grossman School
Full-time tuition: $53,308 - awards all accepted students a full tuition scholarship

Stanford University School of Medicine
Full-time tuition: $60,234

https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Primary-Care-Physician-Salary#:~:text=How%20much%20does%20a%20Primary,%2Fweek%20or%20%2418%2C120%2Fmonth.

How much does a Primary Care Physician make?​

As of Jan 4, 2024, the average annual pay for a Primary Care Physician in the United States is $217,445 a year.

Just in case you need a simple salary calculator, that works out to be approximately $104.54 an hour. This is the equivalent of $4,181/week or $18,120/month.

Medical school is 4 years. Annual tuition in your examples exceeds 50k, si 4 years is at least 200k.

It's not really any different from the cost of any graduate work in terms of tuition. My masters work was just under $45K per year back in the late 90s/early 00s. On the other hand, starting salaries for ANY doctor are higher than they are for nearly all masters degree jobs, certainly higher than for academia.

Sure, a Primary Care doc might leave med school with $200K of student loan debt... but they're also starting out at $100K in salary. It's manageable even if it's high. It's certainly not any worse than any other person who had to take loans to get through a graduate program, and their starting pay is higher.

Graduate school tuition varies greatly. Most programs that I know, annual tuition is around $20K.

I think graduating with 200K of debt is daunting. After medical school, there is internships snd residrncies which around here are 60K.

 

[laughing dog]

I showed that an UBI of 15K appears sustainable.

The hell you did. Your poverty level UBI would cost the ENTIRE GOVERNMENT REVENUE to fund!

Do you have a rational point?

And that's not a rational point she made??

No, and it doesn’t surprise me that you fisagree

 

[Toni]

I much more favor things like the EITC.

I'm sure you do. You associate earned income with worthiness, right?
EITC neatly avoids addressing the plight of homeless or unemployed people if I understand it correctly. And that's where a lot of the real societal rot happens. And there's no reason it (or something like it) couldn't be assimilated within a form of UBI.
The good thing about UBI, IMOis the U.
ETA: Maybe I don't really understand UBI. I see it as a guarantee, not a payment schedule. People who don't NEED it shouldn't get it.

Most of the high income people are in some way optimizing [their reward from] other's output

FIFY
They're mostly just maintaining the existing profit machine, leveraging it to their advantage and to the disadvantage of those others.
Not many people have the skills to manage the managers who can manage tens or hundreds of managers that manage hundreds of thousands of employees. And you can't go to school for it, you almost have to be brought up with it. If your parent or uncle is a first or second level manager in a huge multinational corporation, your path to hundreds of millions in "earnings" is pre-cleared if you want to go that way.

People who don't need it would have their UBI taxed at 100%---which would almost certainly be me and I'd be quite fine with that.

 

[Toni]

Under the current system, being rich certainly seems to entitle you to the fruits of other people’s labor—and it seems that you’re just fine with that, I guess.

Except that for the most part that's not what's happening. It's a matter of scaling. Making 1,000 people 1% more efficient produces a benefit 10x what simply doing the same thing yourself would. Most of the high income people are in some way optimizing other's output, or they are providing something with a high initial cost but a low marginal cost. (For example, most entertainment.)

Oh, bullshit. Most of the obscenely high income people got that way and maintain their obscene wealth by vastly underpaying their workers, by screwing over their suppliers and by owning enough politicians to ensure that laws and the tax code keep them rolling in more money than any one has any use for. Honestly, if Bezos and Musk lost 99.99% of their wealth, they would still be vastly more wealthy than almost all Americans.