this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2023
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Give artists a basic universal income, and I guarantee every single person on earth will suddenly discover their "inner Picasso" to qualify.
The biggest issue with UBI is that it will never work, the math just doesn't add up.
How's that National Debt looking?
Debt is not a reliable money source, in the long run it is a huge money sink with payments and interests. So yes, the only money source for governments are taxes.
I like the idea of a "Citizen's Dividend" funded from taxes on pollution, carbon Emmissions, etc. We can throw a wealth tax for billionaires in there too.
Taxes on pollution, carbon emissions etc. would raise the costs of living and would therefore mean that the UBI would need to be higher to accommodate for the higher costs. Which means that a huge part of these taxes would be payed in proxy by the government. Rendering it useless as a method to fund the UBI.
The costs for a UBI are just so enormous, and all on the shoulders of the working class, because those are the majority of tax payers.
If you have a million people, old, young, in between, and a working rate of 60% (because the other 40% are too old or too young or can't/doesn' t want to work) and pay everyone 1000$ as UBI. That would mean that a billion dollars has to be payed by 600.000 people, so every working citizen has to pay 1667$ to receive 1000$ in return. This means that working people don't get a UBI because they have to pay more then they get.
And those 1667$ taxes would only be for the UBI, meaning that the taxes would be much higher to pay for all the other costs that the state has.
This is a vast oversimplification. A UBI could replace a vast amount of existing welfare programs in a much more efficient way which would have a fraction of the overhead. There are tons of other proposals to fund a UBI such as a negative interest rate. Likely there would be many sources of funding, including money which now goes to existing wasteful welfare spending.
Ok, negativ interest rate sounds interesting and maybe doable. It is something I have to read more about, I see a few issues but have not enough information yet.
Tax doesn't finance spending. That national debt is owed to no one. Money is created out of thin air, my friend, and always has been since fiat money was introduced. When the government spends, they just adjust the number on their account; they've come right out and admitted this.
"We can't afford that" is a lie. They can afford absolutely anything, because they own the money, and they own the debt in that money - it's a constructed fiction.
Printing large amounts of money out of thin air is a great way to turn a valuable currency into worthless Monopoly® money via inflation. That is basic economics. There are lots of examples for that in history.
Inflation is not a guarantee, that depends on the actual economy. Japan is massively in deficit and yet is seeing deflation.
Beeing deficit doesn't have to mean that they print money, they can be deficit by taking higher and higher loans. Which comes with it's own problems.
I didn't say printing money.
Yes, but I did in the text that you answered too. By the law of inference your answer was about printing money too, because my whole text was about that printing money out of thin air will create inflation.
"I mentioned printing money so now you're talking about it too"
No
It doesn't need to be printed. They just add the number to the digital bank account.
Adding money to a digital bank account is equal to printing money. You don't have to physically print money to print money