I have not properly expressed what I'm trying to say. I'm not sure what I got wrong, but I lost certainly was not trying to describe anything that you would even be able to calculate the tax rate from. I'll try to come back later and give it a shot.
Universal Income.
- Thread starter RolandRat
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I have not properly expressed what I'm trying to say. I'm not sure what I got wrong, but I lost certainly was not trying to describe anything that you would even be able to calculate the tax rate from. I'll try to come back later and give it a shot.
In Europe and places like Australia the government does pay pensions and people are arguing the UBI replace pensions. This will not happen in many of these countries because the pensions are relatively generous.
It’s nice to have Utopian dreams. I dream of winning the lottery, but then reality kicks in. I think I have more chance of winning the lottery than a UBI being introduced here.
You want the an entire country put on the equivalent of the pension? In Australia that would be about $300 billion a year, or about a quarter of our GDP. Each year. The economy would likely collapse.
Will......not......happen.
Yes, about right. For married couples it is about $2900 a month, which is a pretty good safety net.
Its only about a quarter of your GDP. To be clear, I want someone else to try it first and see how it goes.
Ok, so an alternative. Oldster keep their pension, the rest of folks get some lower number for UBI but don't get a pension on account of having the UBI their whole life.
arthwollipot
Limerick Purist Pronouns: He/Him
You give it to millionaires because you give it to everyone. As others have said, this is the least administratively costly welfare scheme ever. You don't means test people, you don't scale it; if they're a citizen they get the money. It's as simple as that. Milliionaires won't even notice it. For people of lower socioeconomic privilege, it would be life-changing.
Yes. Without hesitation, yes. The whole point is that you pay them the minimum amount they need for food, housing, clothes, education and average health expenses. Pay below that and it isn't a UBI because you would need to supplement it in order for someone to survive.
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
The whole idea of UBI is that every adult gets it. As soon as you start having some people entitled to it, and some not, you need a way to administer that.
- determining edge cases
- those who apply for it but aren't eligible
- those who are not eligible and try to defraud the system
- those who don't get it but suddenly need it
- those that receive it but no longer need it
- special cases and circumstances
All of this means you need layers of administration in order to administer it. Such administration requires computers and communications, staff to manage databases, staff to make decisions, managers to manager staff, buildings to house the administration, etc etc.... and all that costs money.
It is thought that the additional cost of simply paying UBI to everyone, the relatively small amount paid to millionaires, billionaires, people on high incomes etc, will be offset by saving on the cost of administering a non-universal system of payments where administrators have to decide who is eligible and who isn't.
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arthwollipot
Limerick Purist Pronouns: He/Him
Here's the thing. No-one really knows if it will work, or if it will be affordable. Not yet. There have been a few small experiments in this area, but all of them have so far failed to replicate the exact requirements of a UBI. A lot of maths has been done to suggest that it probably would work, but up to now, no-one has actually tried it. So if it is implemented, it would be a large and radical change. It's a lot easier to change society in small incremental ways than to completely redesign how income works, and implementing a UBI properly would require one of these redesigns. It's not going to happen overnight.
The Atheist
The Grammar Tyrant
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I don't know whether you and other non-Kiwis are aware, another insanity of this place is that age pensions aren't means tested, so NZ's richest man, with wealth of almost $US10 billion, receives the same payment each week as my in-laws, whose assets are less than zero.
Ho hum.
By giving money to both those who need it and those who don't, you take away the necessity to differentiate between them. That can be good when you might sometimes make errors about who is in need and who isn't. As an example: when my sister was going to university her student loans were limited because of the income that my father made. But he refused to help her pay for university. Luckily for her she made up the difference with scholarships and a par t time job. This also prevents some perverse incentives, such as happens when someone realizes that taking a job would put them above a threshold for getting that check and leave them with less money, so they're incentivized not to take that job.
You also just take away the cost of having people who do the work of checking who is eligible for the check and who isn't.
psionl0
Skeptical about skeptics
You don't have to just go BANG! No more pensions - just UBI.
You just reduce pensions by the amount of the UBI and nobody is worse off. As time passes, you could phase in more UBI and less pensions.
xjx388
Penultimate Amazing
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The whole idea that you would be giving money to people who don’t need it is a wash, IMO. You also don’t need to pay a whole department of government bureaucrats AND you get to take a lot of the money back through the tax system.
The key is to make the payment meaningful for the people who need it and meaningless for the people who don’t need it. To that end, make it taxable income. Boom! Problem solved. Sure, we might have to tweak brackets a little, but it’s doable.
The key is to make the payment meaningful for the people who need it and meaningless for the people who don’t need it. To that end, make it taxable income. Boom! Problem solved. Sure, we might have to tweak brackets a little, but it’s doable.
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
"A wash"? Do you mean "being of no use to either side of the debate"? If so, then I agree
psionl0
Skeptical about skeptics
That problem is already taken care of by lowering tax-free thresholds. There is no need for this added complication.
ThatGuy11200
Muse
It's the same in the UK. Originally, it was just for the poor. Then the Conservatives whined and complained that it wasn't fair for the poor (figuratively speaking) millionaires.
It is still means tested though, so the poorest get more. I just used to scoff, when doing people's tax returns, seeing a millionaire receiving a paltry £90 - or whatever it was back then - every month.
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
If you think it should be means tested, then everyone who is entitled to the pension will have to be means tested every year, and who is going to pay for this? Why, the government of course (and that means the taxpayers will pay).
In reality the cost of paying the tiny fraction of people who would not be entitled, or who would be entitled, but would receive it at an abated rate would be massively outweighed by the cost of the administrative bureaucracy needed to do the annual means test.
Squeegee Beckenheim
Penultimate Amazing
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Spain actually introduced a scheme similar to UBI last year. You've actually chosen to illustrate your point with perhaps the best example to disprove it.
Squeegee Beckenheim
Penultimate Amazing
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Why not? They're both examples of the lowest-paid getting more money and the effect that that has on inflation.
This is exactly the same as the example discussed earlier in the thread - of money earmarked for a specific purpose being used for that purpose. This is a worse comparison than raising the minimum wage.
Squeegee Beckenheim
Penultimate Amazing
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Except you should, because it contradicts the actual data. For example, this paper which looked at data from 1978 to 2015 and found that a 10% increase in minimum wage led to a 0.36% increase in prices.
psionl0
Skeptical about skeptics
Not necessarily. We might expect that the price of low end items that only poor people buy might rise while the price of higher end items should be unaffected.
However, that should attract more suppliers of these low end items (or even middle end items since more people might be able to buy these as well) which acts against the price rises. If economies of scale kick in we might even see prices fall.
"Brother's keeper".