825
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2024
825 points (99.3% liked)
politics
19097 readers
1662 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Brace for all of the explanations why we can't just do this...
because money for poor people is a waste, when we could funnel it all to the handful of giga-billionaires who need to add all money in circulation to their draconic horde, obviously.
The first trillionaire ain't gonna make themself.
Even dragons don't hoard that much. 500,000 oz of gold is only around 1.04-1.1 billion dollars, and only the richest of ancient red wyrms roll that high. Most of those 10,000 year old dragons have less, cause that figure is rolling perfectly on the treasure table
Pretty sure guys like Lofwyr could put that to shame.
I'm just going off the stats in the MM
That's seriously way more than any dragon gets in the 1979 MM. Talk about inflation!
3,500,000 gp - 5,000,000 is 3.5 edition
Why just for low income people?
What do you consider low income and what do you think the cut off should be? Most people aren't exactly in favor of giving rich people money so the line needs to be drawn somewhere.
I don't mind if they get $500 a month but in exchange they need to actually pay their taxes.
Lol right? Sure IDGAF if Jeff Bezos gets $500 with everyone else as long as he pays his millions upon millions of taxes. $500 is a drop in the bucket of what he should be paying. Also Amazon the company should undoubtedly be paying way more taxes than it does (if it even does).
Most UBI models use exactly that model to save a lot of money on the program. They just tax it back from the rich people.
I don't know the answer.
The universal part of Universal Basic Income has always had this sticking point with me. Will Gates, Bezos and Musk also receive UBI?
Yes, but only because it would cost more to exclude them. For no added cost we can just add it to their taxes so it comes out neutral.
Thanks. That makes sense. So you can so do the same tax trick with other levels of earning.
Yup. At the theoretical middle we'd just tax 50% of the UBI, and so on.
Absolutely they would. Everyone would.
Of course taxes would rise to cover it, so the average person would be absolutely no better off than they are now.
In return the really poor get some breathing room, and we can kill all the "money grabbing dolescum" discourse around claiming benefits. People with low outgoings who just want a break from the treadmill can take it.
That's actually incredibly optimistic, imo.
$500 a month is $6000 a year.
If we gave that amount of UBI to all working age Americans (rounded down for easy math, numbers 200 million), that's a price tag of $1.2 trillion, every year.
That's slightly more than the amount the US spends on welfare programs annually. The entire federal budget is about $6.2 trillion, so this would mean an increase of almost 20%. Where could we possibly get that much more tax revenue?
You're getting half that back every year. You forgot that part. So it only cost 600 million a year. In fact that means we could kick it to a thousand a month and still be close to our current welfare budget. Find the number that matches exactly, (something like 928) and we can match our current spending while giving poor Americans ~$11,000 a year.
And the government smaller thing actually works here too. You'd think the conservatives would love this! Unless, it's actually about hurting people isn't it? Was smaller government just code for hurting people?
Depends on implementation but just paying it out to everyone is the easiest option. You can even make a progressive tax system that's nothing but UBI + flat tax, ridiculously easy to administer. If the UBI was, say, 1k and the tax rate 50% (just to have easy numbers) if you earn 100 bucks a month you end up with 1050, if you earn 2000 you end up with 2k, and if you earn 1m you end up with 501000: Under 2k income the effective tax rate is negative, at 2k it's exactly zero, at just over 2k it's very low, over that it approaches 50% in the limit. Much cheaper and easier to just give it to everyone than means-test a gazillion low-income people just to spite Gates.
I love the idea of UBI, but I worry about capitalists slurping up all the money if this is indeed done with the "U" (Universal) in mind.
I think it needs to be paired with a pretty steep tax on the top end, so yes - maybe Mr. Monopoly suddenly raises rent rates as much as the UBI on his tenants, but he's being taxed heavily on that, and the money is being funneled back down to the bottom which will raise UBI. It needs to be a losing proposition for Mr. Monopoly.
We just went through an inflation cycle where most every business decided en masse to raise prices to increase profits and no other particular reason. We need to be taxing corporations as well, so that actual eating & breathing "people" can live.
We already do this. The US spends over $1 trillion (with a T) each year on welfare programs. Very rough math I know, but if you divide that equally among the estimated 39 million in poverty in the US, it's over $25,000 per person.
So why not just give them that money?
It’s not evenly spent. Medicaid makes up the vast majority. https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/
So you're telling me we could institute Universal Healthcare and then pay the people the savings. I'm on board.
Me too but then again I already live in a country with free healthcare.