It’s funny how people don’t realize this is the actual solution and are downvoting. In reality lowering taxes for everyone achieves the exact same thing. Yet people would rather have a set of money each month given to them, despite the incredible bureaucracy that it requires, with it probably eating up 30% of the funds then.
How does this work for the disabled, the partially disabled, those who can barely get by on low income etc? Honestly we’d be better off with universal healthcare and removing employers from the health insurance system. They often pay tens of thousands of dollars in premiums, and the employees still have to pay premiums often.
That would give companies way more freedom to hire, less incentive to force near full-time part time jobs, and would allow people the freedom to move from job to job without any effect on medical services. The companies may very well not pay more. Plus the government would have the buying power to essentially price fix most medication and care.
Edit, addition:
This will never work though because of profit incentives. If I’m CEO of a fortune 500 I’m going to do absolutely whatever it takes to be profitable, and more profitable each quarter. Literally the legal obligation of a publicly traded company. It’s a fiduciary duty under law. When most of the investment is top 0.1% plus other publicly traded corporations and private equity firms the people will never benefit proportionally. Even well of working class tech workers making bank, really aren’t when you look at how little they actually have of the overall pie. If taxes go down for me, yeah I’d have more money to spend, so everyone has more money to spend, but 30% of crumbs are still crumbs, plus we lose a bunch of social services and things like Medicare and Medicaid which are already essentially damage control. Fundamentally, the incentives determine the outcomes. Capitalism, especially or current chrony implementation, is fundamentally tied to incentives that benefit wealth accumulation at the top.
Maybe… Do both? Lower the taxes and give stipends for the disabled and those who can barely hold their income? So those same people can buy things cheaper?
No it’s not, the money you have monthly might be the same for a lot. But there’s a big differences psychologically and socially, that you don’t have to work just to survive. I can quit my job without having to fear how I’ll survive. I can decide to get further education without having to think about how I’ll do that financially (at least in Europe). Etc.
It’s very big difference compared to just lowering taxes (granted we’re not talking about negative income tax which may indeed result in the same thing as UBI).
Let’s just have 0% taxes! Then everyone will be rich!
No one’s road will get paved and their house fires won’t get put out, but lowering taxes is the solution, so eliminating them altogether must be the ultimate way to lift everyone out of poverty!
It’s funny how people don’t realize this is the actual solution and are downvoting. In reality lowering taxes for everyone achieves the exact same thing. Yet people would rather have a set of money each month given to them, despite the incredible bureaucracy that it requires, with it probably eating up 30% of the funds then.
How does this work for the disabled, the partially disabled, those who can barely get by on low income etc? Honestly we’d be better off with universal healthcare and removing employers from the health insurance system. They often pay tens of thousands of dollars in premiums, and the employees still have to pay premiums often.
That would give companies way more freedom to hire, less incentive to force near full-time part time jobs, and would allow people the freedom to move from job to job without any effect on medical services. The companies may very well not pay more. Plus the government would have the buying power to essentially price fix most medication and care.
Edit, addition:
This will never work though because of profit incentives. If I’m CEO of a fortune 500 I’m going to do absolutely whatever it takes to be profitable, and more profitable each quarter. Literally the legal obligation of a publicly traded company. It’s a fiduciary duty under law. When most of the investment is top 0.1% plus other publicly traded corporations and private equity firms the people will never benefit proportionally. Even well of working class tech workers making bank, really aren’t when you look at how little they actually have of the overall pie. If taxes go down for me, yeah I’d have more money to spend, so everyone has more money to spend, but 30% of crumbs are still crumbs, plus we lose a bunch of social services and things like Medicare and Medicaid which are already essentially damage control. Fundamentally, the incentives determine the outcomes. Capitalism, especially or current chrony implementation, is fundamentally tied to incentives that benefit wealth accumulation at the top.
Maybe… Do both? Lower the taxes and give stipends for the disabled and those who can barely hold their income? So those same people can buy things cheaper?
I agree, UBI is silly to discuss until universal healthcare is achieved.
No it’s not, the money you have monthly might be the same for a lot. But there’s a big differences psychologically and socially, that you don’t have to work just to survive. I can quit my job without having to fear how I’ll survive. I can decide to get further education without having to think about how I’ll do that financially (at least in Europe). Etc.
It’s very big difference compared to just lowering taxes (granted we’re not talking about negative income tax which may indeed result in the same thing as UBI).
Let’s just have 0% taxes! Then everyone will be rich!
No one’s road will get paved and their house fires won’t get put out, but lowering taxes is the solution, so eliminating them altogether must be the ultimate way to lift everyone out of poverty!
Yeah so instead of paving the road and putting out fires, let’s give everyone universal income, so that they can do both themselves.
Weird that they can manage to do all three in Alaska.