🎓 Dr. Freemo 🇳🇱 @freemo@social.cleverlibre.org

@Pat yea so now youve ruined the advantges of a UBI to the point it doesnt resemble one at all. You now need administration since there is a means test in place , and it isnt universal either more generally.

Plus the cost is just off the charts anyway... i cant support anything about a UBI even when its an actual UBI, let alone this.

@sapphire Welcome to block list for being a piece of shit human.

@Pat

@sapphire

Right you have the option to file, if you want or if it benefits you. But you do not have to file. Many of the people in poverty do not file as they either dont work or get paid under the table.

@Pat

@sapphire

The minimum ammount needed to file a tax return with the irs is 12,500, below that you need not file at the end of the year.

@Pat

@Pat So now ther eis an application test, a means test, and a team that needs to somehow verify their income... There is nothing remotely resembling UBI at this point.

@Pat People in poverty do not file taxes and owe no money in tax. Therefore they are not in the IRS system. So it cant work for your intended purpose.

@Pat if they are sending checks through the tresury system then that is administrative costs. Someone needs to manage that system, send out the checks, handle cases for appeal, etc.

Also keep in mind the 20% poorest people usually dont need to file taxes at all. so the vast majority of those people wont be in the system.

@Pat If you arnt checking a persons income level yet setting it below 20% then how are you ensureing the people who are actually below 20% are the ones getting it? Someone who is middle class would be more than happy to get $1000 free a month if they are just handing them out.

For that matter if there is no administration how do you even ensure a single person can collect a check multiple times.

collecting taxes that way doesnt change the numbers at all.. It still means they would have to pay upwards of 10% of their total income to support it. It just means your getting that money from their income but rather sales tax or whatever else you get it from. Your taking the same amount of money out of their pocket (10% of their income) regardless of how you play with the numbers.

So the fact is your still reducing everyones effective income by 10%.

Sorry but worst idea ever.. 10% is huge to support a system that ultimately only enables the poor and does nothing to get them out of poverty.

@Pat We have gotten tot he point where the semantics are just too polluted.. You are still calling it a UBI and arguing that it avoids administrative costs, but then effectively not implementing a UBI at all and only giving it to the 20% lowest class of society, which means you havent avoided the administrative costs at all, your back to needing a means test and all the administration of traditional ways. So right off the bat you destroyed the one argument for UBI you could have had."

Second redefining tax as being on all money passing hands and increasing the taxable number figure 10 fold only serves to make the percentage appear lower when in fact its still costing the average american in dollars and cents the same amount in taxes as if 10% were taxed witht he current system.. .so while it create a nice small number by the sound of it in reality it changed nothing. You are still talking about taking 10% out of everyones income to support it, 5% if you dont do UBI at all and just target the 20% poor but then that 5% goes back up since its not a UBI and you have admin costs so its probably closer to 7% or 8% of everyones entire income to pay for it. Getting the tax from other means doesnt lower the amount of tax coming out of peoples pockets so that is a moot and confusing distortion of the situation.

@Pat That would be an improvement over a UBI. But I dont think it will solve the problem. Throwing money at problems blinding almost never solve problems.

I'm usually all for minimal government and simple is usually the way to go. But I've seen sooooo many in poverty waste money in some of the worst ways that I just cant support sending them a blank check. I just dont think money is what people in poverty need to get out of poverty nearly as much as education, skill training, and access to mental health. None of which do people in poverty tend to spend their money on except for a small percentage.

@Pat by the way to be clear discretionary budget is not the complete spending of the USA. I used it because its usually what people talk about.

If we talk about full spending of the USA government then its around 6.5 trillion a year. So a $400 UBI at a cost of 1.7 trillion plus whatever the administration costs would be be at a cost equivelant to 1/4or 25% of **all** spending of the us government in a year.. again this is absolutely insantely expensive.

@Pat Let me put this another way. The entier discretionary budget of the USA in 2015 was 1.11 trillion. The cost not including administrative cost for $400 UBI is 1.7 trillion. Significantly more than the entire discretionary budget of the USA.

I'm not sure you realize just how **massive** an expense UBI is... You would nearly have to double **all** taxes collected int he USA. On average people pay about 13% tax across all forms of tax in the usa.. a 10% increase is nearly doubling that.

UBI is far from "a few percentage points"... it is an absolutely phenomenal expense.

@louisrcouture

Yea they could. But these kids know the brands and the specific makes. There is usually one very specific brand and model of shoe that is the cool one that month and people know full well if you bought that one or some cheaper model.

That said the shoes are even just one example. I have seen countless examples of bad money management not just from those in poverty but even just the lower-middle class and middle class in some cases. At least in america. Everyone buys a house 3x bigger than they need or own more cars then they need. Very few people outside of the well-to-do have anything that approaches good money management skills honestly.

@Pat

@Pat except that isnt how we tax money. The number I gave is all taxable income. So no the number is exactly the correct one. It would require 10% of taxable income to support a $400 UBI. So the statement that to support it we would need to raise income tax by 10% is a correct one.

Even if you get the money from something else like sales tax the point is the amount of tax you'd need to increase by any measure is absolute huge to support UBI.

So no the idea that you only need a fraction of a percent is absolute false. The number is 10% increase in income tax for a $400 UBI.

@louisrcouture

Yes, they would often brag about how much they spent on their shoes. Buying really expensive shoes is a coolness factor among these communities and they would let you know just how much they spent and even be proud of it.

@Pat

@Pat

> A big problem with having conditions, is that it requires a whole bureaucracy to verify that folks are meeting the conditions, and bureaucracies are a super-wealth destroyer.

Not a super wealth destroyer at all, they are a wealth generator. These beuracrecies, while costing money, ultimately ensure that the money spent goes to the people who are using it wisely to gain skills and become wealth generators themselves. So while their existance costs money ultimately that money is generating wealth rather than destroying it.

Giving a person $400 dollars to everyone with no beuracracy where 98% of them will spend it on wasteful things at a cost of 10% to the tax payer destroys economies. On the flip side giving $2,000 dollars but only to people who are using it for skill-building, while adding a beuracracy on top of that may look like it costs more but since that $2,000$ is going to a small fraction of the population rather than everyone AND ensured that it is spent only on the right things (like education) ensures that it is causes wealth to be more plentiful in the long run, and doesnt destroy wealth like the UBI option does.

> I just don’t like huge government bureaucracies, which is why I think just a plain UBI-type system targeted to the poor would work better than the current welfare system.

There really doesnt even need to be huge government bureaucracies at all. It can be relatively cheap and require very little bureaucracy if the process and rules are simple.

@louisrcouture

I am talking about the poor, describing the people I grew up with anew well. These people had no jobs, mostly sold drugs to make what money they did have. They had homes paid for by the government with section 8, got their food with food stamps (or sold their food stamps for money) their children went hungry and couldnt afford their child support. Meanwhile what little money they did make from drugs or something else was wasted on shoes or a pimped out car.

I know they were poor because despite the shoes I have been in their homes, been friends with them, and knew well their situation.

@Pat

@louisrcouture

Attached is a picture example of the sort of sneakers inner city kids in poverty are often seen wearing... You cant justify a $1,000+ expense on shoes as "it will last longer".

@Pat

@louisrcouture

Yea this isnt the case here. We arent talking about utilitarian shoes or cars. We are talking about shoes that are "cool" that cost 4x more than they need to and are in no way particularly high quality in terms of the their wearability. They are usually fashionable. In terms of cars these arent cars they need to go to work or practical cars. They tend to be "pimped out" and really serve them no purpose as they live and work int he city anyway.

I am specifically refering to expenses that are obviously wasteful and not good purchases by any measure.

@Pat

@louisrcouture

> 1) isn’t cancer the biggest cause of bankruptcy

First off, bankruptcy is not the same thing as poverty. There are millionairs who file bankruptcy and still take a shit on a solid gold toilet every morning.

Second off, even if it was, no, being born into poverty would overwhelmingly be more the cause of poverty than cancer.

> 2) doesn’t that mean we should do something about it?

Of course we should do something about it. I never suggested we shouldnt try to do something about poverty. What I said is UBI does not solve poverty it makes poverty worse. What we shouldnt do is things that make poverty worse, we should, instead, as you point out do things that actually help eliminate it instead.

@Pat