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by misja111 2233 days ago
If UBI is just a redistribution scheme and aggregate income stays the same, how is UBI than different from the various 'social' countries in Europe such as e.g. Sweden and Finland?

Those countries have progressive income taxes and social benefits for those without work. Isn't this the same as what UBI would look like if aggregate income would stay the same?
1 comments
nabla9 2233 days ago
UBI removes high marginal tax rate from poor households.

See my other comment https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=23140692

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misja111 2233 days ago
I don't understand your assumption about a current high marginal tax rate for poor households. I would say that in a progressive tax system, the marginal tax rate decreases when one's income is lower.

In your other post you state that Finnish effective marginal tax rate for poor persons is more than 80%. Do you have a source for that?

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nabla9 2233 days ago
Effective marginal tax rate, not marginal tax rate. EMTR is what how much you actually get when taxes and reduction of welfare with increasing income is taken into account.

>Do you have a source for that?

Yes. https://vatt.fi/documents/2956369/3012213/muistio_50.pdf

It's in Finnish, but if you go to page 13 there is a nice graph. x-axis is wage, EUR/month, y-axis is effective marginal income tax in year 2015 for single person household who pays rent 440 EUR/month. Effective marginal tax rate is the red dotted line.

In page 20 you can see even what single adult with a child can have. I was actually wrong, the effective marginal tax rate can spike above 11% in some cases.

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luckylion 2233 days ago
> UBI removes high marginal tax rate from poor households.

How so? I understand the "it's the same, just with less bureaucracy" camp wants everybody to get UBI, but everyone that's not below a certain threshold will essentially pay all of the UBI back via increased taxation.

So if you get $1000 in welfare now and you earn money, this changes the amount of welfare you receive. I understand that. How does that change if you get $1000 in UBI and for every buck you make, you'll pay essentiall $1 in taxes? You'll still only actually have more money when you're > $1000 on income.

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