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My opinion having done zero research on the topic is that it would be inflationary negating the basic income.
Nevin said:
My opinion having done zero research on the topic is that it would be inflationary negating the basic income.
My thinking is, it really depends on how you pay for the basic income. If you’re adding to the money supply or creating debt to dole it out to poor people, then yeah, it would probably be inflationary. If you removed it from one cohort of people and shifted it to another, say from uber rich folks to poor folks, as a tax, it would probably be much less so.
Poor people do have a much higher Mean Propensity for Consumption, meaning they spend their money vice stockpiling and saving it, so initially there would be an increase in demand for some items. However, as long as production could rise to meet the demand, the inflationary pressure would likely ease, price stickiness aside.
Edit: as a note, poor people spending their money would result in a higher money velocity and likely a larger GDP. Economies usually function better when people have money to buy things.
@FrancFelix
Could also be a drag on the U.S. economy. Right now it is performing so well because of innovation. If you tax Elon musk or whatever other billionaire at a high rate then they’ll have to sell stock to pay for it. Stock price goes down, company has a harder time raising money.
The lower class buying more necessities probably doesn’t outpace that effect. And I have a hard time seeing how it wouldn’t be incredibly inflationary when we’re sitting on the edge of not having enough supply for many things right now.
Not to say that money going to people who really need it is bad, but I don’t think everything would magically improve in harmony. It’s not the only reason, but you can look at other countries that have a higher wealth tax and see that their innovation isn’t at the same level.
The quick answer is yes.
Here’s an article about how it could work:
And here’s one about how it HAS worked in other places:
The problem is that Americans are too selfish, greedy, and/or individualistic for it to work here.
We just can’t have nice things 
@Quillan
No country has tried it for EVERYBODY long term. You can’t say something works when it’s a tiny blip in the whole economy and doesn’t really affect anything besides giving a few people some extra spending money. These experiments have about as much economic impact as lotteries do.
@Charlotte
Yep. And unfortunately long term and for everyone just wouldn’t work. The reality is there’s crappy jobs out there that need to be done. And the only reason people are willing to put up with it is necessity. My family would’ve 100% pivoted from the jobs they were in if they had time and money for other options and didn’t have to worry about food and roof over their heads.
@Quillan
Finland tried and failed.
Jamie said:
@Quillan
Finland tried and failed.
Finland utilized an undersized sample, implemented other policies during the trial that affected the results, and generally had a flawed execution of the trial.
It did fail there. But one bad result does not mean the idea itself is without merit.
@Quillan
Thing with Keynesian economics is that the solution to money creation is even more money creation.
@Quillan
Let me ask you smth, if you pay people for literally breathing, how could one’s passion objectively reflect as a consequence of their labor? Anything would become nonsense. It’s not greed or selfishness to desire an equal result to the amount of efforts spent for something, it’s just being human and that’s what generates joy.
@Mason
There are an infinite number of passions that generate value without generating wealth.
I’m worried about you.
Roan said:
@Mason
There are an infinite number of passions that generate value without generating wealth.
I’m worried about you.
Give me 1 lmao
Roan said:
@Mason
There are an infinite number of passions that generate value without generating wealth.
I’m worried about you.
Give me 1 lmao
You’re the one trying to prove a point. Nobody’s responsibility to provide evidence but you.
I don’t know, I doubt it, but I’m here for the ideas about how it might work.
I very much would like it, but I’d like it to be based on achievements. For example, if someone graduates from high school, they get a permanent monthly payment of a certain calculated amount for that accomplishment. If they work for a year, maybe they get an extra 25-100 per month added to their ubi payments for life. If ubi were achievement based, it could combat the inflation problem, take away the accusations of laziness, and allow the majority of people to stay active and motivated to improve themselves and participate in activities. It would stop or at least help to prevent unacceptable situations like homeless veterans or elderly people losing their homes. It would prevent people from having to work 30 years in some menial job, instead, they could work 1-5 years, then have the freedom to try other things, also opening up their job to younger people. It would give a sort of permanent rank or level of respect to older people. There could even be achievements or ranks that everyone could view online. People would be less motivated to commit crimes or work in scam jobs like telemarketing because everyone would have some ubi and there would not be the same level of desperation. People who did go down dark paths like drug addiction could earn ubi by completing rehab, so this wouldn’t be only about making everyone get phds, i would hope there would be a variety of paths. If someone had a disability, maybe being in a therapy group for that disability or doing doctor recommended pt exercises would be their path to earning more ubi payments. I might write an ebook about this idea. I have thought about it for a while. Hope you liked it.
Ty said:
@Quinn
Ooo this is interesting. But who decides what’s worthy of being an “achievement” and how much each achievement is worth?
This just sounds like capitalism with extra steps
@Mai
Sounds like social security credits.
Ty said:
@Quinn
Ooo this is interesting. But who decides what’s worthy of being an “achievement” and how much each achievement is worth?
This would certainly be a constant debate to be resolved by everyone in our democracy/republic including elected representatives, economists, unfortunately courts, etc. I can imagine most people would agree on basic things like high school graduation, military service, working full time for a year or period of time, being a fire fighter for a period of time, being selected to compete in the olympics, whatever heroic achievement you can think of would count for something.
There would be a long list, which in my mind would include almost all possible human activity, but yeah, some of these categories would reward a person with more ubi than others. How much people would get paid for each thing would also be influenced by the overall economic situation of the country. Obviously, you couldn’t give everyone 1 million dollars right away, or there would be terrible inflation and less motivation for not only to work, but to even get out of bed in the morning, or go shopping.
In my opinion, We need people to be active, motivated, and healthy. This would be better for the health of the economy than punishing people for being “lazy” or worrying about whether they deserve to exist.
Who exactly decides is definitely a good question. If i got to decide, which wouldn’t happen, I would give everyone who graduated from high school $2000 per month of permanent ubi. But I’d be happy to lower or raise that specific number after it was analyzed by economists. It would become a major part of political debate.
There would also be tiers, but this is too long of a concept for me to explain here. Basically it would encourage people to get promoted or switch to a brand new thing. Like if you bagged groceries for one year you’d get an extra $100 monthly ubi, but do it for 2 years, well, that extra year is only $25. If you get to 5 years at that entry level position, well you have a master tier 1 grocery badge, you can’t earn any additional ubi at that level, but now you’re eligible to work as a tier 1 consultant or trainer, etc, and now you get $100 for doing a year of that next tier. Maybe I’d have levels too. So you could become a master of a variety of skills. Lots of people would just keep switching skills and be jacks of all trades, some would never change and would become grandmasters of one thing. Of course, the jobs would also still be paying people. It’s just that if people decided to do nothing for a year or were injured, they’d have their ubi and not have to be homeless, and still be able to contribute to the economy, at least as consumers. Maybe in these non-working periods of people’s lives, they would go for more minor “achievements” like running a marathon or volunteering, then if they did that for a year they would get $10 extra for that, not $2k or $100 like they would for a major life achievement or work achievement. This is complicated man.