Discussing Basic Income from Forbes Article
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@penguinwrangler said in Discussing Basic Income from Forbes Article:
So how much a year are we talking about? How much would everyone get? What are the general numbers people suggest?
Number don't really mean much because the economy would shift so much. Money would almost instantly have very different value. And the cost of living would be much lower. Someone earning $40K today shifted to GBI, would only need something like $32K to live at the same level, for example. And that's before we deal with things like inflation or deflation, whatever might occur.
And a lot of things naturally go with GBI, like moving to universal healthcare and education. While not specifically locked conceptually, the only make sense to do together. The cost of healthcare would be expected to be decimated bringing it within global standards. So, again, the cost of living would be far less.
Imagine what you can do with $40K today. Then imagine if healthcare costs almost nothing, and if you didn't need to commute. Now imagine a society that gets far less sick because we've reduced stress and exposure vectors. You need far less money to do just as much.
Now the idea isn't initially to make everyone rich. But only making them "not need to work". And you'd do it by person, not by family. So numbers more like $20K are more likely. But a family would be more like $40K. You don't do GBI and move into the tallest tower on Central Park West. But you can buy a house in a village or get a decent apartment. Enough to feed, cloth, and care for a family.
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@scottalanmiller lol true
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One of the big things we expect to happen in the future is the potential to combine things like self driving cars, Uber-style ride sharing, and GBI. Even in America, suddenly you'd not need to own a car any more. Going to work would need to pay for commuting costs, not going to work would save that. So you can imagine how much less money would be needed in an economy with many fewer cars, much less overall driving, less wear and tear on roads (reducing the number of road workers needed), etc. Individuals on GBI would not need to own cars, pay car insurance, or even deal with getting licenses. All things that would be available to them if they wanted, but totally unnecessary. Reducing cost of living even further.
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Okay, so this is how I see it.
The population of the US over age 18, approximately 252,063,800
The population of the US under age 18 approximately 73,655,378
Source: https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/99-total-population-by-child-and-adult#detailed/1/any/false/871,870,573,869,36,868,867,133,38,35/39,40,41/416,417Social security budget for 2018: $992,500,000,000.00
Medicare Budget for 2018: $588,400,000,000.00
Medicaid Budget for 2018: $551,700,000,000.00
Other Welfare for 2018: $358,900,000,000.00
Total of these benefits: $2,491,500,000,000.00
Source: https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_welfare_spending_40.htmlSo let's say because of GBI you can now live on $25,000.00 a year. plus $500.00 for each child (That is what I pay in child support).
So total cost for GBI for adults and children added together would be $6,336,827,689,000.00
Universal Health Care would have to factor into that. Estimates range from 1.3 Trillion to 2.8 Trillion and higher. So I took the average of 1.3 Trillion (Bernie Sanders' plan estimate) and the higher 2.8 Trillion number that his opponents say is more likely. It comes out to: $2,050,000,000,000.00 just over 2 Trillion dollars.
So Adding all this up it comes to:
$6,336,827,689,000.00 Total Money for GBI
$2,050,000,000,000.00 Universal Health Care system
$-992,500,000,000.00 Social Security can be subtracted because everyone would get GBI
$-588,400,000,000.00 Medicaid and Medicare can be subtracted because everyone gets Universal Healthcare
$-551,700,000,000.00 Medicaid and Medicare can be subtracted because everyone gets Universal Healthcare
$-358,900,000,000.00 Other welfare can be eliminated because again everyone gets the GBIWhich leaves a total cost of $5,895,327,689,000.00
Not mentioning any other expenses the Federal government has Military, personnel, etc. which would be:
Military: $866,000,000,000
Other: $766,000,000,000
Source: Source: https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_welfare_spending_40.html
Total US Budget would be: $7,527,327,689,000.00Federal revenue for Tax Year 2017 was $3.32 trillion, the savings would have to be astronomical for this to work.
Source: https://www.thebalance.com/current-u-s-federal-government-tax-revenue-3305762Gross Domestic Product for the US in 2017 was $19,485,400,000,000
Assuming it doesn't plummet the tax rate would have to be at 39% or higher to cover the cost. So if the coming job apocalypse happens due to automation, maybe we need to do this, until we have proof I really don't want to throw a wrench into the engine that has moved more people out poverty than any other single thing ever in the history of the world. There are three basic rules in the USA for staying out of poverty that is proven to be true for all people, and races:
- Graduating from high school.
- Waiting to get married until after 21 and do not have children till after being married.
- Having a full-time job.
Doing those three things your chances of falling into poverty is just 2% and you have a 74% chance of being middle class. (Source:http://www.jacksonville.com/opinion/editorials/2012-01-27/story/three-rules-staying-out-poverty) So personal decisions are the biggest factor where you will end up. So if #3 does become a problem we can address and we might very well need to in the future.
However, I also want to point out unless you will be willing to manage people's GBI for them there will be people that won't spend their GBI Money wisely and will still be dirt poor. What do we do then, because the other social welfare programs are now gone. Do we just let them starve to death?
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@scottalanmiller said in Discussing Basic Income from Forbes Article:
One of the big things we expect to happen in the future is the potential to combine things like self driving cars, Uber-style ride sharing, and GBI. Even in America, suddenly you'd not need to own a car any more. Going to work would need to pay for commuting costs, not going to work would save that. So you can imagine how much less money would be needed in an economy with many fewer cars, much less overall driving, less wear and tear on roads (reducing the number of road workers needed), etc. Individuals on GBI would not need to own cars, pay car insurance, or even deal with getting licenses. All things that would be available to them if they wanted, but totally unnecessary. Reducing cost of living even further.
I find the "not needing to own a car" to be a little ridiculous especially for people in the rural areas. There won't be any ridesharing happening in the far-flung rural areas. Heck most of them can't even get cable because the cable company doesn't see them as enough of a profit to run the cable out to them.
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@penguinwrangler said in Discussing Basic Income from Forbes Article:
@scottalanmiller said in Discussing Basic Income from Forbes Article:
One of the big things we expect to happen in the future is the potential to combine things like self driving cars, Uber-style ride sharing, and GBI. Even in America, suddenly you'd not need to own a car any more. Going to work would need to pay for commuting costs, not going to work would save that. So you can imagine how much less money would be needed in an economy with many fewer cars, much less overall driving, less wear and tear on roads (reducing the number of road workers needed), etc. Individuals on GBI would not need to own cars, pay car insurance, or even deal with getting licenses. All things that would be available to them if they wanted, but totally unnecessary. Reducing cost of living even further.
I find the "not needing to own a car" to be a little ridiculous especially for people in the rural areas. There won't be any ridesharing happening in the far-flung rural areas. Heck most of them can't even get cable because the cable company doesn't see them as enough of a profit to run the cable out to them.
People on GBI probably won't get the luxury of living in isolated areas. At some point, you have to likely compromise somewhere. Or you have to save up and make getting a car a priority. But really, once there are self driving cars, there is no reason that rural areas won't have ride sharing. It's the need for humans, not cars, that keeps that from existing today. Even where I grew up, seven miles from the nearest crossroads and ten miles from a village, it would be obvious that ride sharing would be way cheaper than owning your own car.
Ride sharing cost less than current situations, even in rural areas, unlike cable where it costs far more than current (nothing) scenarios.
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@penguinwrangler said in Discussing Basic Income from Forbes Article:
Not mentioning any other expenses the Federal government has Military, personnel, etc. which would be:
Military: $866,000,000,000
Other: $766,000,000,000You have overlapping costs here. Most of the cost of military is in salaries. So you are counting all of that twice.
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@penguinwrangler said in Discussing Basic Income from Forbes Article:
Universal Health Care would have to factor into that. Estimates range from 1.3 Trillion to 2.8 Trillion and higher. So I took the average of 1.3 Trillion (Bernie Sanders' plan estimate) and the higher 2.8 Trillion number that his opponents say is more likely. It comes out to: $2,050,000,000,000.00 just over 2 Trillion dollars.
Both are very high.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita
To be on the top end for world health care costs would be 1.65tn. Coming even close to that means we are paying for corruption, not healthcare.
To be more in line with world standards would be closer to $1tn.
Assuming 330m US pop, $5K per cap for cost on high end, $2.5K+ for average.
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But again, MOST of the cost of healthcare is in salaries, not hardware. So a significant portion of that budget as well is overlap "being counted twice." You don't pay GBI to people with salaries elsewhere and/or you reduce their salaries by the amount of the GBI. So the military and medical budgets would be dramatically lower given how you are using them here.
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Or the GBI number would be lower if you did it in a different way. Either way, you are double dipping in the numbers.
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@scottalanmiller said in Discussing Basic Income from Forbes Article:
@penguinwrangler said in Discussing Basic Income from Forbes Article:
Not mentioning any other expenses the Federal government has Military, personnel, etc. which would be:
Military: $866,000,000,000
Other: $766,000,000,000You have overlapping costs here. Most of the cost of military is in salaries. So you are counting all of that twice.
No I am not look here Defense then all other spending:
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@penguinwrangler said in Discussing Basic Income from Forbes Article:
So let's say because of GBI you can now live on $25,000.00 a year. plus $500.00 for each child (That is what I pay in child support).
So total cost for GBI for adults and children added together would be $6,336,827,689,000.00
That number makes no sense. You are assuming that the entire population will stop working and go to minimum income. That's not how it works. If that happened, there would be no doctors, no military, like you have in your budgets. No government, even.
In reality, the number would be tiny compared to this. Most people would keep working. Loads would not, no one knows exactly how many, but tons and tons of people would keep working because they want more than the minimum income level.
And the people most likely to stop working are the ones early lesser amounts. So the impact on income tax would be far less than it seems, possibly nominal.
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@penguinwrangler said in Discussing Basic Income from Forbes Article:
@scottalanmiller said in Discussing Basic Income from Forbes Article:
@penguinwrangler said in Discussing Basic Income from Forbes Article:
Not mentioning any other expenses the Federal government has Military, personnel, etc. which would be:
Military: $866,000,000,000
Other: $766,000,000,000You have overlapping costs here. Most of the cost of military is in salaries. So you are counting all of that twice.
No I am not look here Defense then all other spending:
right, that's double dipping. The defense budget you show here includes the salaries of the military. But your GBI numbers ALSO include their salaries. You are counting the need to pay all those people, twice.
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@scottalanmiller said in Discussing Basic Income from Forbes Article:
@penguinwrangler said in Discussing Basic Income from Forbes Article:
So let's say because of GBI you can now live on $25,000.00 a year. plus $500.00 for each child (That is what I pay in child support).
So total cost for GBI for adults and children added together would be $6,336,827,689,000.00
That number makes no sense. You are assuming that the entire population will stop working and go to minimum income. That's not how it works. If that happened, there would be no doctors, no military, like you have in your budgets. No government, even.
In reality, the number would be tiny compared to this. Most people would keep working. Loads would not, no one knows exactly how many, but tons and tons of people would keep working because they want more than the minimum income level.
And the people most likely to stop working are the ones early lesser amounts. So the impact on income tax would be far less than it seems, possibly nominal.
So only people who stop working get GBI? Why in the hell should the people working pay for the slackers?
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Bottom line, you are looking at GBI in completely the wrong way. This isn't how you rationalize it. You are trying to use a non-GBI budget and figure out how to pay for it with the existing system. That doesn't make sense. GBI is part of whatever system it becomes.
How GBI pays for itself is simple - it doesn't really need to. It increases the size of the economy, while lowering the overhead. That is, literally, all you need to know. Now you can not believe that, that's different. But the theory of GBI is that is makes businesses make more money, and the country cost less to run. There is more money for each person. More for everyone. The only thing that the government has to work out is how to handle the distribution of it, that's the hard parts. But the underlying "how do we pay for it" is so simple that it's all done for us.
The money "comes" from everywhere. And we need far less of it than imagined.
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@penguinwrangler said in Discussing Basic Income from Forbes Article:
So only people who stop working get GBI? Why in the hell should the people working pay for the slackers?
And BOOM, exactly why it won't work in America. Because the "fair" ethics come out. It's not "fair" for people to get paid and we are willing to LOSE money, to stop other people from getting perceived benefits.
This is exactly why I explained that American ethic effect earlier, because this is always, in the end, why Americans dislike this plan. Even though they would get more out of it, they aren't willing to do so because they perceive people on GBI as slackers and will hurt themselves before they let everyone benefit.
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@scottalanmiller said in Discussing Basic Income from Forbes Article:
The problem is, especially with American ethics, useless jobs are seen as WAY better than GBI. American ethics prefers "fair" treatment. "You work, you get paid. "
European ethics prefers overall well being. "Whatever is best for everyone."
American ethics sound great, because we grew up here. Fair sounds nice. It is nice. But it means we are all willing to lose a few dollars to keep someone else for getting a hundred dollars we don't feel that he deserves. It's not logical, it's spiteful in the end. But that's why useless jobs are SO popular in the US.
Not that they dont' exist in Europe, I've seen them a lot. But the US seems passionate about keeping them while Europe seems to want to fight them.
Here is the post where I explained that this would come out from the "fair" perception.
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@scottalanmiller said in Discussing Basic Income from Forbes Article:
@penguinwrangler said in Discussing Basic Income from Forbes Article:
So only people who stop working get GBI? Why in the hell should the people working pay for the slackers?
And BOOM, exactly why it won't work in America. Because the "fair" ethics come out. It's not "fair" for people to get paid and we are willing to LOSE money, to stop other people from getting perceived benefits.
This is exactly why I explained that American ethic effect earlier, because this is always, in the end, why Americans dislike this plan. Even though they would get more out of it, they aren't willing to do so because they perceive people on GBI as slackers and will hurt themselves before they let everyone benefit.
And BOOM exactly why I don't think our country can exist much longer together. We have people that are too ideologically divergent to coexist together much longer.
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@penguinwrangler said in Discussing Basic Income from Forbes Article:
@scottalanmiller said in Discussing Basic Income from Forbes Article:
@penguinwrangler said in Discussing Basic Income from Forbes Article:
So only people who stop working get GBI? Why in the hell should the people working pay for the slackers?
And BOOM, exactly why it won't work in America. Because the "fair" ethics come out. It's not "fair" for people to get paid and we are willing to LOSE money, to stop other people from getting perceived benefits.
This is exactly why I explained that American ethic effect earlier, because this is always, in the end, why Americans dislike this plan. Even though they would get more out of it, they aren't willing to do so because they perceive people on GBI as slackers and will hurt themselves before they let everyone benefit.
And BOOM exactly why I don't think our country can exist much longer together. We have people that are too ideologically divergent to coexist together much longer.
So we should force people to move to a different part of the world? How about camps, I know at least one guy who did this and it didn't end up so well for him. . .
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As long as we call people on GBI slackers, we are actually stating that we want useless work for no purpose other than punishing those people so that we don't perceive them as receiving benefits.
Honestly, I already see everyone in useless jobs this way, as just riding the system to get welfare from adding no value, but getting paid anyway. LIke most university employees... all just part of a hidden welfare system. But one that is inefficient and costing us way more than it should.
The one benefit to the current system is that it artificially taxes the "stupid" rather than the "rich". It uses a lot of somewhat obvious trickery to make people voluntarily "tax themselves" rather than taxing people who stop and think about things.
It's like the lotto. It's not a tax on the poor, but on the stupid. Helping to make stupid people poor and smart people rich, rather than poor people stupid and rich people smart, as some countries attempt to do.
