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by CrazyDave 2120 days ago
Funding UBI through "printing" money would cause inflation because that increases the money supply. But most UBI proponents plan to fund it through new taxes and consolidation of the current "means based" welfare programs.
3 comments

Which means the productive members of the society will be paying even more taxes, just to feed off people that think living of the UBI is good enough for them, if the UBI is not funded through the printing of the money.

How is that fair to working people with ambitions?

What about unemployed people with ambitions?
They can start their own business.
Ok, and who/what will you tax for the extra UBI money?

Can't tax the corporations and the rich or else they will "move elsewhere and increase unemployment" as we're made to believe so why then do I fear that the middle class worker will be hit yet again?

I'd rather we lower taxes on the workforce than increase them to give away free money.

For simpler math, lets assume someone makes $10k per month pre-tax. Their tax rate would increase by roughly 10%, and they would receive a $1,000 check in the mail. The net cost (and benefit) for most people could be 0.

Well, why do UBI at all?

I think the goal is to simplify our means based well fare system, which can create some economically inefficient incentives.

For example, imagine someone receiving disability checks who could go back to work. Going back to work would mean they stop receiving disability checks, and they could easily end up reducing their income.

> Well, why do UBI at all?

Well, later it's possible to vote for a candidate, which promise to reduce taxes by 3x and increase UBI by 3x, like at Alaska: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/9/5/20849020/alaska-...

Increase taxes on wealthy people and give it to poorer people so that almost everyone is better off. How is this a bad idea again?
Why not to increase taxes on poorer people and give it to wealthy people, so that almost everyone is better off? How this is a bad idea again?
How do you define "wealthy"?
People who make more than the median.
It is a great idea but seemingly impossible to implement successfully. Has it ever been successful?
There are various taxes that work that way. Depending on how high they are (and how high the taxes that work in the opposite way are) it works better or worse. The difference between rich and poor is not the same everywhere on the planet.
Then rape the women and molest the children in the process, then kill them all when you're done; it is as moral as your proposal, just finishing the sentence. "How is this a bad idea again", you say?
Would you please stop posting ideological flamebait to HN? We've asked you before, and you've done it twice in the last 24 hours. Not cool.

The GP comment wasn't great either but this was much worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Sorry, it is not by intention, probably cultural difference interpreting the same words in different ways. What is the second comment that looks out of line?
I forget which one I had in mind, but it was probably https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24259070.
There are 209,128,094 people over 18 in US. Let's assume $1,000/month UBI. It would mean we need to get $209128094000 (~ $210B) a month ($2.5T a year) from somewhere.

Where would we get it from? Are there any extensive papers explaining it? I'm super curious.