Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jltsiren 628 days ago
With UBI, the job effectively pays more, and the incentives to take it are stronger.

A hypothetical example with arbitrary numbers:

You get $20k/year in benefits. You are offered a job that pays $30k/year, but then you have to pay $5k in taxes and you lose the benefits. The job would effectively pay you $2.5/hour after taxes, which is not very attractive.

With UBI, you get to keep the benefits, but you pay a 40% tax for all earned income. Your after-tax income would be $38k/year, and your effective wage would be $9/hour after taxes. Still not very good but much better than the $2.5/hour.

1 comments

Yes. Moreover, all prices will jump 3-100x, so UBI will be useless anyway: you must go to work or die in poverty. UBI is also known as "true socialism".
If UBI is revenue neutral, whether by increasing taxes or cutting other programs or some combination of both, then it would not increase inflation. You should brush up on your macroeconomics.
Any income, that is not backed up by a product or service, changes the equilibrium, thus accelerates inflation. I saw this multiple times already in my own country.