The Case Against a Universal Basic Income (vox.com)

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: A prominent think tank founder argues that a Universal Basic Income is more likely to increase poverty than decrease it. Robert Greenstein, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, estimates just in the U.S. the cost would reach $3 trillion a year, "close to 100 percent of all tax revenue the federal government collects... A UBI that's financed primarily by tax increases would require the American people to accept a level of taxation that vastly exceeds anything in U.S. history..."

In a long interview with Vox, he warns that "If you have big, very expensive, and therefore highly politically unrealistic proposals, then I worry that people will look at them and say, 'Okay, we can do one or two pieces,' and too often the pieces that get selected out are pieces where a lot of the money goes to the middle or upper middle class... even UBI's staunchest supporters say we can get there in 15 to 20 years. I am totally not comfortable with any policy prescription that says we wait 15 to 20 years to deal with very deep poverty." He suggests instead focussing on the neediest people first, possibly by subsidizing jobs programs and making housing more affordable.

Comments

Soros?

[Anonymous Coward]

Follow the money. Soros is a big contributor with CBPP. Should raise some eyebrows already.

Re:Makework

[Anonymous Coward]

how many of those jobs are essentially going to be makework?

How many jobs are already makework?

It's been 30 years since Lotus 1-2-3 became cheap, available, accessible, and accurate. What the hell are all of these accountants still doing? I personally think a lot of it is work for idle hands, but makework if you prefer.

Re:Makework

[Anonymous Coward]

Actual accountant here.

The industry has a fuckload less AR/AP. There's a lot less clerks. There's no typists. There are no filing clerks. There is a lot less of anyone other than a handful who run much larger books and much larger payrolls. A billion dollar business has one Director, a handful of managers and a handful of divisonal staff under them, rather than the hundreds that used to be

So there are in fact a HELL of a lot less employed in the accounts department than there used to be. You haven't noticed as Old Mabel who retired was never replaced. The remaining have a lot to do with shit like payroll, applying the lastest rulesets, budgeting doing the work that 10 - 20 people would have needed to do 40 years ago.

Lotus 1-2-3 was a fucking godsend and presented complex accounts simply. It took a whole tho for the mass of jobs the Accounts dept supported to disappear tho but disappear they did. What's left is actually quite minimal and VERY different to when I started.

Re: The Republicans want to make everyone work

[TheMeuge]

That's bullshit. My family came into this country as refugees with almost nothing. We depended on social services while my parents were learning English. I earned my way into school, got a scholarship to go to college. I worked my ass off in college to have a high GPA, worked 20+ hours a week in a lab in addition. I earned my way into an MD PhD program and didn't have to pay for medical school... worked my way into residency and fellowship. In the meantime my parents are earning 5 figures.

United States is the most amazing country in the world, where opportunity is still pretty open. I am so thankful to be here.

For duck's sake, please don't turn it into the country I ran away from.

Re:Makework

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Of course you can give them money forever. You know money is spent, right? That the crops to feed them are a renewable resource? That, as automation takes over more and more jobs, we're rapidly approaching the point where 1% of the population working can support the other 99%?

I mean, why can't we keep unproductive people around? What's the limiting factor? We already give the computers, and internet access, and food and medicine.

Yes it is a straw man argument

[ranton]

You are certainly correct this is a straw man argument, but not really in the way you describe. The US government (federal, state, local) spends just over $400 billion on welfare per year, and $1.2 trillion on pensions and social security (94% of that on SS). That only comes to half the $3 trillion figure, and certainly not all of this would go away. I'd say its reasonable 2/3 of it would go away, leaving $2 trillion of the author's figures left over. Take away another $500 billion by removing children from the calculations, and you still have $1.5 trillion of increased government payments.

Then comes the real problem with the author's argument. No one claims everyone's net income would increase by $10k per year, just that they would all get a $10k check. We already have a progressive federal income tax, so it would be easy to adjust the brackets to ensure only the needy would receive an increased net income from UBI.

To simplify math, lets say 1/3 get $10k extra income, 1/3 pay the same in extra taxes that they get in UBI payments, and 1/3 pay for the lower third. Considering the top 40% of earners already pay 97% of federal income taxes, this wouldn't be much of a change in the status quo.

So now we are down to $500 billion in extra costs, which is a much more realistic figure. The federal government collects $2.4 trillion in income taxes, so the 50% of households and companies which pay any incomes taxes today would need to pay 20% more. I pay a little over $30k per year in federal income taxes, so this would mean almost $6500 in extra taxes for me personally.

But I would get something for this money. Reduced crime is hard to quantitatively measure, but removing the minimum wage would significantly impact the costs of basic services. If my food, daycare, house/lawn care, haircuts, etc. dropped by just 10% that would save me $6000 per year so this would be a wash for me.

These figures are all obviously very rough, but they at least show UBI is not as drastically unrealistic as this article suggests. It may still not work, but it is a very reasonable alternative to a future where technological disruptions make the status quo impossible to maintain.