I don’t know! In my opinion, UPI would be great. Just like Reparations - I’m on board. But I simply prioritize so many other issues more than UPI (and reparations). For example, I’d favor increased spending for our schools, infrastructure, higher ed, environmental problems, and etc.
Perhaps we can gather in support of
my version of UBI. Instead of just cash, I propose that income transfers from the comfortable to the less-so be in targeted goods and services:
- Free healthcare for all. Freeing employers from a healthcare obligation increases their demand for workers, so is win-win.
- Subsidized child-care, job training, higher education, public transit, food, housing, etc.
- Improved infrastructure, incl. parks and recreation.
- Some of these come with a sort of automatic "means-testing". The rich will want their own schools, their own transit, etc. This reduces the demand for, and hence the cost of these subsidies.
It sounds like you and I are largely in agreement.
However you managed to misconstrue almost every point I made!
I like the idea of making it in the form of benefits. No means testing, though--means testing makes sense if you want to provide something only to the poor.
Yes,
and my proposal did NOT involve means testing. It seems you misconstrued my "automatic 'means testing'". The point is that subsidized child care, while available free to the rich, is of no interest to parents who can afford their own babysitters. And so on, down the list of all the free or subsidized services I mentioned.
However, providing it to all but the rich generally ends up with a lot of effort spent on whether they qualify which produces no value.
NO. I am AVOIDING means testing. You misunderstood.
I just have a big problem with what the quality level will be. Medicare is already substantially inferior to good health plans and the disparity grows wider over time.
You get what you pay for. Medicare was NOT designed by legislators who wanted a good health program. It was designed by Joe Lieberman, or whoever the 60th-best Senator was needed to stop a filibuster.
VA Medicine has a bad reputation propagated by right-wing media (whose goal coincides with Ronald Reagan's dictum to make Americans hate government). Actual users of VA Medical brag about how good it is.
But this is all just pipe-dream anyway. As long as QOPAnon retains power -- even 41 Senators plus Joe Manchin -- many efforts would be doomed to failure.
Some of the UBI benefits would be pure cash, but most, while still "universal" in principle, would be targeted as shown.
Libertarians will screech at me to keep gummint's hands off their new-found money: If a couple would prefer to spend this taxpayer largesse on crack cocaine rather than food for their infant, so be it. And the childless who get no benefit from better schools will toss out Marx's "To each according to his needs" and call me a "woke-thinking Jew-loving commie rat inspired by the Khmer Pol Pot." To that I just answer "Calm down, you straw figment lurching and leering inside Swammi's senescent cerebrum!"
We already see far too much of money going to the parent's wants before the child's needs.
So we agree on that!
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Ms. Lake asks if we can afford UBI. There are various ways to address that question arithmetically, but one of the most straightforward is to start with inequality measures like Gini. The following are WorldBank estimates of Gini taken from Wikipedia. I show the U.S., the four highest-Gini countries in Europe, and some other large countries. (I also include Haiti and Laos, as examples of countries with Ginis near that of the U.S.)
I don't see how this is even relevant.
VERY relevant.
The whole idea of income transfers -- taxing (primarily from the high-income people) to provide universal benefit (primarily benefiting low-income people) depends on -- wait for it! -- the high-income people having much higher income than the low-income people! I don't know if I can explain the arithmetic plainer than that.
When asking whether a society can "afford" an income-redistribution program, the quantitative disparity between high- and low-income people is KEY.
The U.S. has higher disparity than Europe. (In part this is because European countries already have programs similar to what I propose: programs which have reduced Gini.)
And it is VERY relevant to see countries like Denmark and Holland with low disparity: These are not socialist shit-hole countries. (I will admit that the richest 1% in Denmark may not be bathing their infants in caviar as some of America's super-rich do, if that's your point.)
And Bulgaria, Laos and Haiti are not exactly capitalist paradises.
Can you explain why you feel these comparisons are irrelevant?
What this list shows is that there is plenty of room for income redistribution without entrepreneurs fleeing for Bulgaria or Haiti in droves. Do UBI's detractors think South Korea, Denmark and Holland are failed socialist states?
It provides no indication of what you say.
Wrong.
And note that the standard of living in much of Europe is well below US averages. There's a price to be paid for their generous benefit systems.
UBI is intended to improve the standard of living
of the poor. I've no idea what statistic you're referencing but it ain't the standard of living
of the poor.
Google is increasingly reluctant to provide me with simple stats I ask for (though happy to point me to paywalls). But I do find crude estimates of wealth distribution. (I'd use income rather than wealth for this comparison, but make do with what Google presents.)
I do NOT propose the following redistribution. Just use it as arithmetic demonstration that the wealth or income gap CAN be reduced without tragic results.
Google shows me that the top 10% of U.S.'s 130 million households have, on average, almost $4 million in wealth. On a "share of the pie" basis this is about double of 50 years ago, I think. We could take away half of that $4 million and the rich would still be as well off, relatively, as during the Boom of the 1960's. If we taxed away a teeny-tiny 2% of that Top-10% wealth and gave it to the lowest 6% (i.e. households in "poverty"), that works out to $133,000 per impoverished household. (I am NOT suggesting we give out that cash along with free transport to the street-corners where crack is sold. I'm just demonstrating that there is huge room for redistribution measures.)
1) By looking at wealth rather than income you neglect the fact that you're consuming wealth.
Did I need a larger font here?:
Swammerdami said:
(I'd use income rather than wealth for this comparison, but make do with what Google presents.)
I've looked up a lot of this before, downloaded tables and what-not. I've so many bookmarks I need bookmarks to them. But I still use Google mainly, and searches don't work well for me now, what with paywalls etc.
If YOU posted a link to tables of U.S. income distribution, then Sorry, I missed them.
Be careful with overly-simplistic tables, however. So much of America's income goes to the top 0.01% (or even top 0.001%) that it's easy to be misled about the extent of inequality.
Taking that "2%" basically halves the income of retirees even if you're taking it from pre-tax money. Take it from post-tax money and it's far worse.
In the "thought experiment" the 2% confiscation was a one-time event. I was certainly NOT proposing a $133,000 annual payment to every poor family.
And again, it was just a back-of-the-envelope example to get a feel for the numbers involved. Emily Lake's claim that such a transfer is unfeasible arithmetically is simply wrong.
2) There's a lot of "money" that can't actually be spent. The economy doesn't produce the goods/services to spend it on, converting it to consumer spending is going to cause an inflation spike.
Take your ill-founded hypothesis to the Inflation thread!
3) You probably didn't do much for those households in poverty anyway--most people in poverty are there because of economic mismanagement and the money won't fix that.
Hunh? My plan offered subsidized housing and food, etc. and specifically NOT "money."