1) How is this more inefficient than our existing welfare system? Seems a lot more efficient to give everyone money rather than spend $100M on bureaucratic infrastructure for verification and employment tracking.
2) It benefits society because you no longer have to work to live. This affects how you make decisions about your employment. You would be more likely to change jobs when you're unhappy, for example. This is good.
3) Whether you make $40k, $100k, or $500k, the $10k isn't there to prove "additional income support". The system could be set up so that after basic income is implemented, your disposable income is the same as it was before--people making $40k wouldn't have $10k in free money to spend, because their taxes would go up $10k a year, for example. The key here is that if they choose not to work for some period of time, they can. That's not how I think it ought to be implemented, but the principle is true.
4) If government handed out $10k to everyone, they could tax everyone $10k and it would be like nothing happened. The difference in implementation would be that the additional taxes would be progressive, while the benefits are flat. So if you make over $100k a year, you might be taxed $15k more than you were before, but you would also receive $10k. Without a doubt, an effective basic income would require a more progressive tax structure than what we have.
5) "If you do start to add guidelines for poverty, etc.," not familiar with this reference, but presumably a basic income would eliminate extreme poverty. Do you mean like, for example, what would someone who was physically incapable of working receive? Is the basic income enough?
> Whether you make $40k, $100k, or $500k, the $10k isn't there to prove "additional income support". The system could be set up so that after basic income is implemented, your disposable income is the same as it was before--people making $40k wouldn't have $10k in free money to spend, because their taxes would go up $10k a year, for example.
> So if you make over $100k a year, you might be taxed $15k more than you were before, but you would also receive $10k.
So basically as a middle class person, I don't benefit at all, I may even lose money, but some kid who has no income and wants to live in his parents basement gets $10k/yr for contributing nothing to society? Am I understanding this correctly?
The upper class won't care - this is pennies to them, but this is going to bite the middle class badly and completely change their incentives to avoiding getting housing and living as cheaply as possible to minimize or eliminate work.
You always have to think very carefully about the incentives you create with something like this. This seems to create very bad incentives to me, incentives which would have caused me to make very, very different decisions in life drawing me away from any sort of productivity in society.
I'm not strictly against this idea, but as you've presented it, I can't see a way this would ever be implemented, how would you sell it to the middle class?
> So basically as a middle class person, I don't benefit at all, I may even lose money, but some kid who has no income and wants to live in his parents basement gets $10k/yr for contributing nothing to society? Am I understanding this correctly?
The benefit for you is that you'd be living in a better society. Hopefully, you'd see reductions in crime, improvements in various service jobs, etc.
That kid gets $10k/year, sure, but then again lots of people already have the means to live in their parents' basements. Most of them prefer not to do so.
However, there'll be other people getting that $10k/year. Single mothers could spend more time with their children. More people would become educated. The job market would become more liquid for employees, hopefully improving working conditions.
The idea is that the taxes scale, so for the middle class the tax is negligible. You get $10k, and your taxes are increased by $12k if you're making less than $100k.
As for teenagers sitting in their parents basement - The thought is that $10k lets them live and do anything they please instead of being tied to a shitty job or their parents basement. In theory they will choose to contribute to society in some way and not just play video games all day.
But that is what we need to test - Will people choose to play video games and watch TV all day, or choose something fulfilling and 'productive.' Then we have to redefine productive, some other comments in this thread speak about that.
It might seem more efficient to give everyone money rather than spend on bureaucratic infrastructure until you've realised just how many adults don't work or pay income tax or claim welfare. The choice between raising taxes or cutting incomes for the people that do really need the welfare payments isn't a pretty one...
2) It benefits society because you no longer have to work to live. This affects how you make decisions about your employment. You would be more likely to change jobs when you're unhappy, for example. This is good.
3) Whether you make $40k, $100k, or $500k, the $10k isn't there to prove "additional income support". The system could be set up so that after basic income is implemented, your disposable income is the same as it was before--people making $40k wouldn't have $10k in free money to spend, because their taxes would go up $10k a year, for example. The key here is that if they choose not to work for some period of time, they can. That's not how I think it ought to be implemented, but the principle is true.
4) If government handed out $10k to everyone, they could tax everyone $10k and it would be like nothing happened. The difference in implementation would be that the additional taxes would be progressive, while the benefits are flat. So if you make over $100k a year, you might be taxed $15k more than you were before, but you would also receive $10k. Without a doubt, an effective basic income would require a more progressive tax structure than what we have.
5) "If you do start to add guidelines for poverty, etc.," not familiar with this reference, but presumably a basic income would eliminate extreme poverty. Do you mean like, for example, what would someone who was physically incapable of working receive? Is the basic income enough?