But that's the problem. Every solution to pay for it has a whole host of problems, and UBI advocates just gloss over that. That is the fundamental problem that has to be solved. I mean, if we could just figure out how to pay everyone $1 million each every year, we could eradicate all poverty for ever too. Why don't we just propose that? Just raise taxes on the wealthy if that's the goal. It's much simpler, requires much less political capital, and can be done without restructuring the entire US economy. That's what Obamacare did - it created taxes on the wealthy to pay for health care subsidies for the poor.
Apparently if Gen Z and Millenials have figured out an alternative to reality of math, then yes, this is just a paradigm of the old. Beyond that, you're just repeating catchphrases like "velocity of money" without understanding what those terms mean. You're making the mirror image of same flawed logic the trickle down theory people use when they argue lowering taxes pays for itself with economic growth because it will cycle money through the economy faster. Math catches up to you real fast in both cases.
I suggest you take the time to watch listen to this: https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2020/0...-deficit-myth-with-economist-stephanie-kelton As an elder you shouldn't scoff at me but teach me what I'm wrong in. I believe the middle consumer class has more "headroom" for spending. For example, someone with a median wage might have limitations of eating out 1 time per week. An increase in wages for that individual means they can afford to eat out 2 times a week which increases foot traffic to local restaurants. There is a certain amount of wealth someone has where they have no limit to the amount they eat out. Having a year of higher income for them doesn't increase their likely hood of eating out more because they already could always afford eating out. Therefore they are more likely to hold on to any tax breaks or handouts. Corporations also don't increase productions of goods or services which is what is needed to create jobs based on tax savings or subsidies. They increase productions based on consumer demand. So yes, I think throwing money at the regular joe consumer class stimulates the economy more than throwing money at the capital owners.
I would like to add that we need to make a distinction between UBI and welfare. Welfare rewards people for not working because if folks start to work (even though they just break even), it is logical that folks will choose not to. If you work, you lose government assistance. UBI does not have this requirement.
Quick takes - the real problem is income and wealth distribution and it's implications and interactions in a capitalist system. - minimum wage, UBI and similar programs are not solutions to the real problem. Such programs should be used to catch the stragglers not be used a tool to fix income distribution problems. - need to fix the main problem before deciding on how best to deal with stragglers/outliers. - people should never be incentivized not to be productive.
UBI is not a proposal to solve all the problems. Its a start to provide some assistance to everybody . The problem with raising taxes for the wealthy is they will find loopholes to rig the system. VAT will prevent that from happening
No offense, but I've had much deeper conversations on the math of all of this - this is not new stuff to me. I'm having a discussion with *you* here. I want to see your understanding of the math. When you claim that other people just don't get it, I want to see what you know - not what people on one side of the issue you can offload me to. Let's get back to the basics. I assume we can agree on this: $1200 / person / month x 250 million (estimated) eligible people = $3.6 trillion dollars. For the government to fund that in Year 1, it has to generate an additional $3.6 trillion dollar: from increased revenues, reduced spending, or borrowing. There are no other choices here. I assume the above is non-controversial. Neither side of the UBI argument should disagree with that part. So the next step - give me some concrete numbers of where that comes from - it can be spending cuts, taxes hikes, borrowing, whatever else you can come up with. Once we have some estimates, we can look at the impacts from pulling money from those places.
If there was enough will power, we can remove those loopholes. There has to be a way to threaten businesses with denied access to the United States consumer market if they avoid taxes. Any tax savings from avoidance is overwhelmingly outmatched by the loss of revenue of not having access to one of the most lucrative markets on the planet.
You bring up a valid point on the impact to the poor. I would argue that you can see greater benefits from direct payments to tax payers. Compare it to the payroll tax breaks and corporate bailouts implemented in the past. Consumers drive the economy. If the government is handing out payments it should go to the people. Yang's response:
Wouldn't VAT be a more simple solution? It seems that our current taxation system very complicated as it and it is just a cat and mouse game
You really haven't had any deeper conversations. You can't do simple arithmetic for mathematical modeling of complex dynamic systems. This doesn't take physical assets into account. Land, infrastructure, technology. The legal rights to collect taxes on 300m inhabitants. Natural resources. Whenever people talk about the deficit they forget this. We have ~270 trillion in assets and ~150 trillion in grand total debts. That is what they call the US' "financial position". It also leaves us with a net worth of 130 trillion. It doesn't mean that we'll suddenly sell California to settle a debt with China; but the earning power of a country is in part predicated on assets. A country which is large, geographically isolated and secure, with high technological development and many ports and rich natural resources is always going to have a strong earning potential. It's like looking at a man with 50k in credit card debt and only 5k in the bank. But he has a mansion worth 1 million that he owns in its entirety. 1m in equity, well in excess of its debts. These realities make the deficits pale in comparison. Look at how favorable the US Federal Governments borrowing rates are. Why do you think countries are willing to lend to us for such low interest rates? Because the prospects of our future earning power are incredibly strong. Our deficits are just one tiny drop in our potential future earnings, and like any creditor, countries with available liquidity are more than happy to lend, and therefore make money, to a country with robust earning power, and a net worth well in excess of our current debts. In fact, just to hit home how strong the US' position really is, the US owns thirty four percent of the global total wealth. Let that sink in. We own a little over a third of all the wealth in the entire world. There's 200-some odd countries, and if you put every single one of them together over us, they only double our wealth. China only owns 9%. The United States can afford to house and give healthcare to all its citizens if we had the willpower.
(Also for @ryan_98) Sorry - this is going to get unwieldy to have lots of separate conversations going in lots of different tangents I tried to reset the discussion with fchowd so I'll point you to that response and if you want to go through the math there, I'm happy to. Each route runs into its own series of problems - I'm not arguing that UBI is not workable (in small scales, it's essentially demand-side economics which does work in many cases). But UBI proponents routinely gloss over the *massive* problems that come with it, especially on a large scale. It's the same as Medicare-for-all proponents. They solve one very real problem while creating a dozen new ones but don't want to ever talk about the latter.
This is very long rambling way of saying you can't or won't explain where the $3.6T in Year 1 comes from. That's exactly the answer I expected - you can talk about it in glowing macro terms, but you have no idea how to address the actual realities of it. It was a super simple and straightforward question.
This is a very important point. People worry about being disincentivized not to work but we need to accept that there will always be thousands of people who are just plain lazy as **** who will coast through life. As a foil there are thousands of uber ambitious people who are the true job creators like the Bill Gates of the world. Most of us fall in the middle not lazy and not full bore ambitious. UBI keeps one end of the curve from homelessness and poverty. And yes it enables them to be lazy but they were always going to be otherwise. UBI doesn’t change that. Same with their foil. This isn’t communism where why should I work harder as a Doctor when I make as much as a poet? You can still be ultra rich and there is still an incentive to earn money through innovation and invention. However I believe the truth is the true innovators don’t create because of a desire to make money they do it because it’s a passion. Point is I don’t believe the whole UBI will disincentivize is as big of an issue as people think.
We already have problems NOW without UBI. This is an out of the box proposal that has some legs. 1K a month frees you from worrying about cost of childcare which allows a working mom to go back to the workforce. It will help retired people who does not have a lot of savings. Medical insurance for most people who can't afford. The beauty of this is that it all goes back to the economy pool because that 1K will most likely be spent. if you have 4 young adults and they all pool their money to start a business, how many startups can this produce? Take Houston for example, there are approximatelyt 27M adults. Multiply that by 1K and that is how much money is going to the economy per month. That is the simple math.
This is an excellent starting point and shows the numerous problems with the math. So this is taking money directly out of the hands of the poor to give it back to the poor. There's a net effect of zero here. We could do this independent of UBI and jettison all the endless social programs we have for the poor and dump it into a lumpsum payment to people under a specific income level. And it might not be a bad idea. But right now, for numerous reasons, we have chosen not to do that and instead distribute that money by need. This is the mirror image of the trickle-down economics theories, though with more merit. $100-$200B out of the $3.6T seems reasonable here. If you're going to generate $800B in revenues per year, that's going to be a massive tax increase on everyone - there's no way to do that just on the wealthy. So that has to come out of the money you just gave people. So the majority of that is just going out one and into the other. This is the mirror image of the trickle-down economics theories - these estimates never hold up and are always put together by people who want a certain outcome. It's no different than a business owner going to a bank with a business plan - they have no value because both sides know the numbers on paper are what is needed to justify the request. All of this is nice, but notice that he doesn't give numbers for this. There's a reason for that. Even if you add up ALL his numbers at face value, you don't get the $3.6T needed.
We have problems with climate change. An out of out the proposal to fix that is launch all the nukes in the world and end humanity. Sure, it causes other problems, but it solves this one, so we should look at it, right? That *is* simple math. It's not remotely the full math. That's the problem. You're only looking at the money coming in - not the money going out.
I'm not fully convinced Yang's estimates are correct but here's his math. The 3.6T figure you use isn't the right number. Yang is proposing $1000/mo payments and it wouldn't pay out to 250M people. According to the taxfoundation https://taxfoundation.org/andrew-yang-value-added-tax-universal-basic-income/ https://www.yang2020.com/what-is-freedom-dividend-faq/
The proposal to nuke everybody is a solution that only looks at one side..YOURS. So that is a lousy solution What is the money that is coming out? Please expand.Additionally, you keep making assertions about math without providing what is the real problem.
