Could Basic Income work in the US?

[SwimExpert]

Let's look at this from the vantage point of someone qho akready works and makes a decent living......

I make about $6500 a month before taxes. If wa assume this "basic wage" was say, $2000 a month, that means my employer is going to reduce my wages to $4500 a month.

Then that means you're a shit employee who is over-payed.

 

[Anathema]

[QUOTE="SwimExpert, post: 14200762, member: 46250Then that means you're a shit employee who is over-payed.[/QUOTE]

No. It means my employer, like every other employer in this country will prefer to increase their profits while being able to tell their employees that no wages were lost.

Even a fool can see THAT coming in this scenario.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

To me, math is a talent more than a subject. That's probably why you don't get a lot of parental help with it. Years ago my company sent me to electronics school, and electronics is all math. Much of it I got, but there were parts that left me sitting there with my mouth open.

You are completely mistaken. Math is a subject as any, but definitely being intelligent also plays a role.

Anyway, college classes could easily be computerized. It could be a robot talking and no one would notice - that's the level of interaction that generally takes place.

You are seeing more online colleges these days, and no indication that it's going to stop anytime soon. College is a business and like all businesses, tries to maximize profit. I don't know anything other than what I read, but the way I understand it, the more online college you have, the less an employer values your education.

Bingo! Daughter-in-law was a surrogate mother and took her classes on-line and received a degree in criminal justice. She is a shift manager at McDonald's because no one will give her the time of day, much less a job. The only reason she has that job is prior experience in high school.

Yeah but that too is a rough field to get into because so many are interested in it.

My friends son wanted to be in law enforcement. He went to college for a couple of years because he wanted to work for the federal government. They wouldn't give him the time of day. So he went out for a police officer and it was a rough struggle. He finally made it, but it took years to get what he wanted. He even went to the police academy and paid for it himself to try and have an edge on other applicants. Apparently it worked.

Rough field to get into? We have police departments here that are severely undermanned because they cannot find anyone willing to get killed for that little salary.

Just the opposite over here. Even in Cleveland, when they start accepting applications, they are flooded with people trying to get in.

All of our cities around here are the same way. In fact, a suburb near where I work, their minimum requirement is a four year college degree to even apply, and they still have dozens of applicants to choose from.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

I'm sure taxes would have to go up for the working. But I think most people that do work would continue working anyway. Remember, you still get your paycheck on top of the $1,700 per month from the government. Would you quit working if government gave you that check every month? I doubt it. Think of the economic stimulus that would take place.

in order for every person to get 1700.00 a month from the government, it would require those working to pay more than 1700.00 a month in taxes to do it. Someone has to pay for those that dont contribute. Its a non workable proposal.

Not really. When you eliminate all welfare programs, that's a pretty good sum of money from the start. And as I stated, you eliminate the paper pushers and all the bureaucracy which would be thousands of people.

Then of course you do have higher taxes on wages than we do now. I think most people would continue working.

but when you say eliminate the welfare, thats something that the taxpayer is already funding.
there is no way for those that dont contribute to receive money if someone else that does contribute is not paying for it.
So if the two of us are collecting a check for 1700 a month, you work and I dont. You essentially have to pay 3400 a month for me to get my 1700. You get 1700 also, but you still end up paying me 1700 a month out of your income. Your 1700 is not really money you are getting, its just a check that you already paid for.

Correct, that would be if we kept welfare programs the way they are now. But the idea is to eliminate all welfare and instead, just have this one check.

So what they would do is take all the money we currently spend on welfare checks, all the money we currently spend on SNAP's, all the money we spend on TANF, all the money we spend on energy assistance and HUD and more, and we combine all that money and use it to pay these $1,700 checks.

Now of course that wouldn't be enough money to fund all these checks, so we would also be taxing the people who continue working. Assuming that most of the people working will continue to work, it may be enough to fund this system.

If you have to pay a couple hundred dollars more a month in tax, it's a net gain when you consider that government check. Those who don't want to work will pay nothing into the system and just live on that $1,700, but they are currently not working anyway. We have over 93 million Americans of working age that are not working nor looking for work. That's almost 1/3 of our entire population, and if you figure in the children, probably close to half of adults of working age are not working.

you still have to pay more than you end up getting.
How about this.
End welfare, use that money to create government jobs that teach people to move into the workforce. Consider it a trade school type of learning that is funded by taxpayers, and the sale of whatever product or service is provided.
Just giving money with nothing required in return has proven to be a losing proposition

Maybe, but the way we are doing it now is certainly not a winning proposition.

Right now, the working people make money and take care of themselves. They get taxed to support the non-working and get nothing in return. HUD buys and rents dwellings in the suburbs and in some places, upper-middle-class areas. I'm sure there are many working people who put in 50 hours a week or more that would love to live in those areas, but can't afford it.

As I stated in an earlier post, I see plenty of food stamp people get in line in front of me. I wish I could afford what they buy with food stamps, and I wish I had vehicles they drive as well.

As for vocational training, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. There are some people who are just too stupid to learn anything, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way. They simply don't have the intelligence to advance themselves in life. What do we do with people like that? Well......they take jobs that don't pay all that much and do the best they can.

 

[SwimExpert]

No. It means my employer, like every other employer in this country will prefer to increase their profits while being able to tell their employees that no wages were lost.

Even a fool can see THAT coming in this scenario.

Your victimhood mentality is not impressive.

 

[kaz]

OP you can't fix stupid, it doesn't matter how much money you gift some people they will just blow it and not be able to pay their bills.

Yes, but with a flat check system, they have nothing to complain about and it would stop the Democrats from pandering to them by promising this to help them out or that to help them out.

I remember when I was a child back in the 60's and my father and I were driving through a rough area of town. I told my father I wish I had a million dollars (which was a lot of money at the time) to give to these people so they didn't have to live like that. My father smiled at my innocence and said, you can give each one of these people a million dollars, and within a couple years or less, they will be right back here where they are today.

Even if it didn't cost money overall, it has the insidious side effect that it makes everyone a dependent of a government check. For that reason, Social Security/Medicare and Obamacare are the most insidiously evil programs politicians have ever inflicted on the American people. They make everyone ultimately a government dependent.

And your claim that it would take away the ability of politicians to pander is preposterous. Social Security shows how wrong you are, talk about a program that enslaved so many Republicans to big government and even most Republicans staunchly support that dependency machine

Only because they and their employers paid into the program all these years or decades. If you include the employer contribution, SS is the second highest deduction out of your paycheck, and that's next to the largest which is FICA--a different word for Social Security, but the very same thing.

Who would want to pay dearly into something all of their life and not get anything back? That's why Republicans are against the idea of getting rid of SS.

First of all, you realize you just made my point for me, right? Government got everyone invested in a massive tax and spend scheme by making them recipients of government checks.

Second of all, they saved nothing, government spent the money as it came in, it's a scam. One that works ... for the reason you pointed out. They want checks ...

As for politics, we will hear the same thing this presidential election as all others: The Republicans want to take X away from you; the Republicans want to see poor people starve; the Republicans want your children to go hungry and so on and so on. If we had the $1,700 check and eliminated all welfare programs, Democrats wouldn't be able to do that any longer.

So Democrats couldn't go to the people and say Republicans are after your $1,700 check. Social Security and now Obamacare belie that claim

It would really limit their claims. And unless Republicans did come out and say they wanted to change the system back, the Democrats couldn't bring up that check in the first place.

How do I get a portal to your reality, because this one sucks. Either Hillary or Trump are going to be President

 

[Anathema]

Your victimhood mentality is not impressive.

I'm pretty simple. I'm all aboit ME. This concept fails ME in two ways.....

It reduces my pay, since I won't take money from the Government.

It puts money in the pockets of people I don't believe deserve it.... especially since it comes from MY taxes.

 

[Godboy]

I ask this question because it was a discussion on the Michael Smerconish show on satellite radio. What basic income would do is eliminate all social programs we know as the safety net, and instead, just have government write every adult (21 and older) a check for $1,700 a month. It doesn't matter what you do with it, it's yours to spend as you like.

The savings from all these social programs would mostly fund the idea. It would eliminate tiers of bureaucracy and the hundreds if not thousands of government workers that oversee and operate these programs. There would be no food stamps, no HUD, no TANF, no welfare checks, unemployment checks, nothing. Anything you or your family needs comes out of that government check. Plus unlike our current system, it wouldn't discourage people from working. You get this check if you are Bill Gates or a homeless guy in the gutter. It would encourage people to work instead of discourage them. It would stop people from having unwanted children in order to get more goodies from the government. It would actually discourage poor people from procreating unlike our current system that rewards it. For those who could live solely on that $1,700 a month, they wouldn't have to work thus leaving open a job opportunity for those that may want it.

Switzerland is now putting it up for a vote as a trial program. If successful, it may the the law of the land. But the question I have is, who here would support such a program, and what party affiliation do you have?

Switzerland Will Hold The World's First Universal Basic Income Referendum

I dont think the math works. This would cost about 4-5 trillion dollars annually.

 

[georgephillip]

I ask this question because it was a discussion on the Michael Smerconish show on satellite radio. What basic income would do is eliminate all social programs we know as the safety net, and instead, just have government write every adult (21 and older) a check for $1,700 a month. It doesn't matter what you do with it, it's yours to spend as you like.

The savings from all these social programs would mostly fund the idea. It would eliminate tiers of bureaucracy and the hundreds if not thousands of government workers that oversee and operate these programs. There would be no food stamps, no HUD, no TANF, no welfare checks, unemployment checks, nothing. Anything you or your family needs comes out of that government check. Plus unlike our current system, it wouldn't discourage people from working. You get this check if you are Bill Gates or a homeless guy in the gutter. It would encourage people to work instead of discourage them. It would stop people from having unwanted children in order to get more goodies from the government. It would actually discourage poor people from procreating unlike our current system that rewards it. For those who could live solely on that $1,700 a month, they wouldn't have to work thus leaving open a job opportunity for those that may want it.

Switzerland is now putting it up for a vote as a trial program. If successful, it may the the law of the land. But the question I have is, who here would support such a program, and what party affiliation do you have?

Switzerland Will Hold The World's First Universal Basic Income Referendum

I dont think the math works. This would cost about 4-5 trillion dollars annually.

16.77 trillion USD (2013)
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Maybe we would have to subtract the billionaire class?