| > Well, the money has to come from somewhere. Sort of. > If you have a homogenous group, all with the same income/wealth, then UBI would do nothing. True. In this scenario, demand is already as elastic as it's going to get. It would basically be impossible for the economy to be operating below full productive capacity. A basic income would either cause inflation or indirectly cause people's incomes do decrease by the same amount in some other way (e.g. taxes or monetary tightening). > You need a group of people with diversified income/wealth. Yes. In this case, basic income would actually benefit us because it can increase quantities demanded at current prices thereby incentivizing producers to produce more stuff for people. > The wealthier contribute more than they get from UBI, the poorer contribute less (if any) than they get from UBI. Hmm. Not really. I'm going to push back on you here a little bit. The value of a UBI does not come from people "contributing" to it. It comes from the capacity of the economy to produce more stuff in response to the additional spending. I think you're talking about taxation here. But I don't think it's useful to think of basic income as being funded by taxes. The amount you tax does not have any direct effect on how much basic income you can afford to provide. > But it will never happen in America, land of absurd tax code complexity. And certainly not with a name like Universal Basic Income. It would have to be called something else to avoid triggering people. Yup. At least politically, taxes and government spending are hopelessly intertwined. But it doesn't have to be this way. And there's nothing stopping a startup from offering a basic income. I'm skeptical that Circles is the start up to do it, but I fully believe that it can be done. |