[nitrogen]

You don't actually need all $6T, because most people will be paying taxes that equal or exceed what they receive from BI.

You mentioned earlier that BI disincentivizes work. How so? It seems to me that it would not, because the basic income doesn't disappear the instant you start working even a little bit.

[thaumasiotes]

This one is pretty straightforward. BI disincentivizes work because it stays with you if you stop working. On the common assumption that people are working for the money, not for the joy of showing up, this reduces the penalty for not working, which will cause a rise in... not working.

[dllthomas]

It's certainly true that BI will reduce incentives to work, 1) on paid projects, 2) first order, 3) amongst those who are not currently receiving assistance.

Regarding each of these caveats in turn:

1) There are plenty of projects that we individually may deem socially worthwhile that we don't pay for. Parents raising their children being probably the strongest example, but there are other places where value is simply hard to capture. Incentive to work on these is not decreased by BI.

2) Incentive to work depends on what people are willing to pay you for your labor. If BI ultimately means people are willing/able to pay for more things then the total incentive to work may rise. So far as I'm aware, this is not a settled question (it seems a probable second-order consequence but possibly drowned by inflation, &c...)

3) Anyone currently receiving disability or welfare payments is not merely being paid despite not working, they're effectively being paid not to work. Transitioning to unconditional support will clearly increase their incentive to work.

What all this does in aggregate is not at all clear to me.

[nitrogen]

The arguments for BI that I've read here on HN assert that this isn't a problem, because people who don't want to be working are a net drain on the systems in which they work, and/or they will be replaced by people who want to work a little bit but can't because they will lose disability.

The incentive to continue working even if you receive BI is that BI won't be enough to have a luxurious lifestyle, just enough to meet basic needs and educate oneself.

[ThomPete]

With BI it always is beneficial to work. Even if you only work for a couple of months a year (for instance picking strawberries) you will make more money than not doing anything.

So if anything BI incentives people to work even if only for once in a while.

[dllthomas]

All this shows is that BI doesn't entirely eliminate existing incentives to work. That's uncontroversial. It could still very well be that BI provides a disincentive relative to an identical system without BI.

[ThomPete]

No that is actually one of the major claims from opponents of BI and thus controversial. That it removes the incentive for someone to work.

But there is nothing that indicates this at all. In fact the Canadian experiment mincome although not conclusive did not show people in general stopping to work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome

[dllthomas]

You think a major claim of BI opponents is that there is zero remaining incentive to work, as opposed to simply a substantially reduced incentive? Show me anyone (who understands that BI isn't lost when someone works) making that claim anywhere.

I agree with you that the evidence shows there is not even substantially reduced incentive. In the case of Mincome in particular, it did show a decrease in hours worked, which is consistent with the claim that you were objecting to - that BI reduces the incentives for work (relative to the same system with no BI). Asserting that the global disincentive is small and that conditional assistance provides far more disincentive would have been entirely appropriate. Asserting that there is zero disincentive - without an explanation for why we saw one in Mincome - is not, and your earlier comment was arguing that by asserting remaining incentive was not zero which just doesn't make sense as an argument.

[ThomPete]

I think you should read what I wrote again and perhaps you will realize that i did not make any claims about zero disincentive.

What I said was that it always will pay off to work and therefore incentives people to work.

Thats a very different argument than the one you are arguing against.

[eanzenberg]

You will cause entrepreneurs and job-creaters to leave the country. The U.S. isn't in a bubble. Why would someone making 6 or more figures want to be taxed 60%+ for their work?