@TonyStark @MariaHill

Ok cool

@TonyStark @zleap Thanks for the tag. My concern is what are we trading UBI for?

I'm just a political junkie, not an economist. Here's a link to a Vox article by Robyn Sundlee, a fellow at a policy institute (USC).

A few thousand dollars is a lot of money to struggling people, or hell, even those of us who are doing ok but not rich. However, UBI isn't going to be enough that people can really live on. It will reduce poverty, and reducing poverty is a good thing. Right now what someone who isn't working can get is woefully inadequate. $200 in TANF money for 2 years, 5 lifetime? States with no funding for single people? Just wrong.

Sundlee says: "Alaska demonstrates that when you start giving people money, the act may very well eclipse every other political concern and blot out all other missions of government." Spend so much on UBI, there's nothing left for any other programs, and politicians tell people they have their UBI, but who can live on $6k per year?

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/9/5/20849020/alaska-permanent-fund-universal-basic-income

@MariaHill
Thanks, Maria.

My city is in the process of trying UBI on a small scale.

You bring up some important issues to consider. It cannot be an all-purpose cure-all by itself, then.
@zleap

@TonyStark Right. If it's $2000 a month and there is expanded Medicaid with a premiums that fit that income level, a single person who doesn't live in an expensive metro area can probably get by with no other direct social programs. (The fact that it's twice the poverty line is an indictment of the poverty line.) Go down to $600 per month, no one is getting by, though better than trying to live on change you can beg from people outside the train station. Where it starts to get really dicey is when they cut funding from Medicaid because people should be able to live on the UBI. And even worse, when they take from public education and higher education, and then your kids are in classrooms of 50 or are taking out loans for in-state tuition that costs $45k a year because the state portion has been cut to nothing. @zleap

@TonyStark @MariaHill At least with UBI if you are in the so called #gig economy you know how much you are going to earn.

The main question from me is would it count towards your tax free income allowance,

But yes lets try it and share the results far and wide so it feeds in to research

@zleap The gig economy is the biggest scam. I have done some work under that model and I am grateful to not be doing it any more.

I am certainly for getting money to people who need it, just concerned about what it will do to other programs are good for all of us. I don't want it to turn into "No, we can't have Medicare for All because we have UBI." I want us to move much further in the direction of social democracy and I want all of those things: socialized medicine, good free public P-16 education, Social Security that 65+ (or 67+ or whatever) and disabled people can live on, subsidized child care, and I'd like to see UBI. I have a long list of other progressive priorities too. @TonyStark

@MariaHill @TonyStark

Yes you have a good point there, I guess in the UK we don't need to worry about Medicare as we have the NHS which is free (well paid for with Taxes.)

I wonder if what happened in California with the big companies being taxed if the execs are earning 100k + (I think that is the case) will spread elsewhere. and eventually outside the US

@zleap It occurs to me that people who aren't familiar with the USA, and even people in the USA who don't work in education or have kids in schools, may not know that P-16 is preschool through bachelor's degree, not age 16. Most often you see K-12 education, which is currently free to everyone. Free preschool is typically offered to people below the poverty line and in some states, but there aren't enough spots for all children. Unfortunately higher education keeps getting more expensive, as it does for you, but as education beyond high school is becoming more necessary, whether community college, university, or trade school, it's awful not to saddle people with tens of thousands of dollars of debt as they start their careers. I know in the UK your schooling is arranged differently so it may not be clear. @TonyStark

@MariaHill @TonyStark
I think tuition fees for uni is about 9000 a year

The Open University used to charge £140 for a 10 point course, (about six months) that was affordable as you did a bigger qualification bit by bit.
So even OU is far more exapensve