CDZ Zuckerberg Calls for a Universal Basic Income

[Picaro]

What I meant was that, if a basic income plan replaced all other welfare programs, that benefit should not be reduced for people who are earning additional income. Government welfare programs already "reward" people for not working; I just think we should not penalize people for working by reducing their benefits, since this devalues their work.

I would rather see an EITC type program that augments income below a certain threshhold for a certain time period, say 2 or 3 years, after which you need to be moving up the income ladder. And as a society we need to be taking steps to ensure that upward mobility is possible, and THAT means a business environment that is conducive to new businesses starting up and existing businesses expanding. And THAT means lower taxes and lower costs of compliance with gov't regulations at every level. Anything that makes it more lucrative to operate a business.

Economic realities make that pretty much a no go. If third world political instability and poverty appeal to you, then we can do that, but it's unnecessary and merely sociopathic to go about it like some third world dictator would. We can shut off immigration, put a massive focus on birth control, and sterilization for those who can't exercise self-control or just refuse to, etc., and take a more gradual approach rather than go with some radical ideological pogrom or other. Of course we will have to deport most Democratic Party traitors, the party of sexual fetishists, thugs, and assorted racists to do anything positive, but I'm fine with that; it's something Thomas Jefferson would do. There is no real difference between some millionaire Wall Street insider trader and a 'welfare bum', neither are productive or valuable in any way in an economic sense, they all look alike to me, they want something for nothing, just like Goldman Sachs and any day trader does.

While I recognize your angst, you fail to grasp the most basic concept - there is little or no difference between a dollar and a hammer. Both are tools of creation ...

While I don't doubt you see a lot of things that aren't there, there is a world of difference between a dollar and a hammer, and the dollars made by the financial sector are most definitely not tools of creation' by any stretch, they are just as parasitic as those 'poor and lazy' you right wing ideologues claim to hate so much. As for myself, I'm not even a Communist or a right winger and don't require human life to be an 'economic unit' whose value is determined by how much money it can make, in the case of the lower classes how much they can be underpaid by some corporation for something or other, so some portfolio somewhere, maybe thousands of miles away, gets a nice big dividend for doing nothing but mooching off those hard working victims. I can fully understand why the parasites higher up the food chain hate the 'poor and lazy', they're not making any cash off of their labor, the same reason Marx hated them. There is no difference between Communists and Corporates and bankers for those that work; they all look alike, think alike, and mooch alike.

Did anybody see anyone returning any of the bailout money from a few years ago from the rescue of your 401K's and 'investments? Of course not, certainly not from right wingers, no big wave of 'doing the right thing' out of ideological purity from any, so quit pissing on our legs and trying to tell us it's raining.

/----- You said "those 'poor and lazy' you right wing ideologues claim to hate so much." WOWZA - the first Strawman Argument of the day. Now my turn. "What about our sacred Bill of Rights you Liberals claim to hate so much?" and this gem: "Why do Liberals want to abort every unborn baby even against the mother's will?" I got a million of them.

lol claiming its a 'straw man' after all the sniveling in this thread by right wingers isn't very bright I also never claimed to hate the 'bill of Rights', nor am I even remotely an abortion supporter, just the opposite, speaking of real 'straw men' to knock down. When I see so-called 'conservatives' supporting real conservatism, I might be inclined to take them seriously, and a couple of them I do indeed consider serious posters, but most are just parrots, and have no real clue, they just like to make noises about pet issues and beating their chests as if they support 'hard work n stuff' when they wouldn't be caught dead doing hard work for a living.

Anybody up for doing away with the 'limited liability' scam, for instance? That's the welfare program that lets embezzlers loot companies and keep the money they stole for themselves, in case anybody in the Peanut Gallery isn't familiar with the scam 'private businesses' now almost universally operate under, where any idiot with a couple hundred bucks can 'incorporate' and get government protection for stealing other peoples' money. It's a key socialist program that make almost all of the Wall Street swindles possible, followed by piss poor accounting standards, 'private' bond rating agencies, and all the rest down the line, all of course designed specifically to keep stock holders and CEOs from having to take real responsibility; the latter is for 'everybody else', not them, like most right wing gibberish that involves making money with little or no risk.

 

[Picaro]

Somebody mentioned our GDP numbers. Take the number the Fed publishes, and tack on another 30% to that at a minimum, to account for the businesses and income that gets off-shored via 'transfer pricing' scams to places like Bermuda, and if one wanted to be truly accurate they would also include all the money made off of technology and science research the government pays for, and then gets handed over to countries like Red China by corporations for their own personal gain as well. We can add a lot more to the numbers on top of these to account fro government subsidies for 'free markets' as well, and it's a dead certainty the numbers is far and away many times over what is spent on food stamps and welfare here, all going into the pockets of 'self made' types, you know ... and then there are the patent laws and patent pooling Apple and Microsoft love to do, all protected by the evul Feds ...

Like I said earlier, quit pissing on our legs and trying to tell us its raining.

 

[Cellblock2429]

I would rather see an EITC type program that augments income below a certain threshhold for a certain time period, say 2 or 3 years, after which you need to be moving up the income ladder. And as a society we need to be taking steps to ensure that upward mobility is possible, and THAT means a business environment that is conducive to new businesses starting up and existing businesses expanding. And THAT means lower taxes and lower costs of compliance with gov't regulations at every level. Anything that makes it more lucrative to operate a business.

Economic realities make that pretty much a no go. If third world political instability and poverty appeal to you, then we can do that, but it's unnecessary and merely sociopathic to go about it like some third world dictator would. We can shut off immigration, put a massive focus on birth control, and sterilization for those who can't exercise self-control or just refuse to, etc., and take a more gradual approach rather than go with some radical ideological pogrom or other. Of course we will have to deport most Democratic Party traitors, the party of sexual fetishists, thugs, and assorted racists to do anything positive, but I'm fine with that; it's something Thomas Jefferson would do. There is no real difference between some millionaire Wall Street insider trader and a 'welfare bum', neither are productive or valuable in any way in an economic sense, they all look alike to me, they want something for nothing, just like Goldman Sachs and any day trader does.

While I recognize your angst, you fail to grasp the most basic concept - there is little or no difference between a dollar and a hammer. Both are tools of creation ...

While I don't doubt you see a lot of things that aren't there, there is a world of difference between a dollar and a hammer, and the dollars made by the financial sector are most definitely not tools of creation' by any stretch, they are just as parasitic as those 'poor and lazy' you right wing ideologues claim to hate so much. As for myself, I'm not even a Communist or a right winger and don't require human life to be an 'economic unit' whose value is determined by how much money it can make, in the case of the lower classes how much they can be underpaid by some corporation for something or other, so some portfolio somewhere, maybe thousands of miles away, gets a nice big dividend for doing nothing but mooching off those hard working victims. I can fully understand why the parasites higher up the food chain hate the 'poor and lazy', they're not making any cash off of their labor, the same reason Marx hated them. There is no difference between Communists and Corporates and bankers for those that work; they all look alike, think alike, and mooch alike.

Did anybody see anyone returning any of the bailout money from a few years ago from the rescue of your 401K's and 'investments? Of course not, certainly not from right wingers, no big wave of 'doing the right thing' out of ideological purity from any, so quit pissing on our legs and trying to tell us it's raining.

/----- You said "those 'poor and lazy' you right wing ideologues claim to hate so much." WOWZA - the first Strawman Argument of the day. Now my turn. "What about our sacred Bill of Rights you Liberals claim to hate so much?" and this gem: "Why do Liberals want to abort every unborn baby even against the mother's will?" I got a million of them.

lol claiming its a 'straw man' after all the sniveling in this thread by right wingers isn't very bright I also never claimed to hate the 'bill of Rights', nor am I even remotely an abortion supporter, just the opposite, speaking of real 'straw men' to knock down. When I see so-called 'conservatives' supporting real conservatism, I might be inclined to take them seriously, and a couple of them I do indeed consider serious posters, but most are just parrots, and have no real clue, they just like to make noises about pet issues and beating their chests as if they support 'hard work n stuff' when they wouldn't be caught dead doing hard work for a living.

Anybody up for doing away with the 'limited liability' scam, for instance? That's the welfare program that lets embezzlers loot companies and keep the money they stole for themselves, in case anybody in the Peanut Gallery isn't familiar with the scam 'private businesses' now almost universally operate under, where any idiot with a couple hundred bucks can 'incorporate' and get government protection for stealing other peoples' money. It's a key socialist program that make almost all of the Wall Street swindles possible, followed by piss poor accounting standards, 'private' bond rating agencies, and all the rest down the line, all of course designed specifically to keep stock holders and CEOs from having to take real responsibility; the latter is for 'everybody else', not them, like most right wing gibberish that involves making money with little or no risk.

/---- When cornered like rats, all libs have are Strawman arguments. Apparently my sarcasm was lost on you. So why do libs hate the Constitution?

 

[Picaro]

Economic realities make that pretty much a no go. If third world political instability and poverty appeal to you, then we can do that, but it's unnecessary and merely sociopathic to go about it like some third world dictator would. We can shut off immigration, put a massive focus on birth control, and sterilization for those who can't exercise self-control or just refuse to, etc., and take a more gradual approach rather than go with some radical ideological pogrom or other. Of course we will have to deport most Democratic Party traitors, the party of sexual fetishists, thugs, and assorted racists to do anything positive, but I'm fine with that; it's something Thomas Jefferson would do. There is no real difference between some millionaire Wall Street insider trader and a 'welfare bum', neither are productive or valuable in any way in an economic sense, they all look alike to me, they want something for nothing, just like Goldman Sachs and any day trader does.

While I recognize your angst, you fail to grasp the most basic concept - there is little or no difference between a dollar and a hammer. Both are tools of creation ...

While I don't doubt you see a lot of things that aren't there, there is a world of difference between a dollar and a hammer, and the dollars made by the financial sector are most definitely not tools of creation' by any stretch, they are just as parasitic as those 'poor and lazy' you right wing ideologues claim to hate so much. As for myself, I'm not even a Communist or a right winger and don't require human life to be an 'economic unit' whose value is determined by how much money it can make, in the case of the lower classes how much they can be underpaid by some corporation for something or other, so some portfolio somewhere, maybe thousands of miles away, gets a nice big dividend for doing nothing but mooching off those hard working victims. I can fully understand why the parasites higher up the food chain hate the 'poor and lazy', they're not making any cash off of their labor, the same reason Marx hated them. There is no difference between Communists and Corporates and bankers for those that work; they all look alike, think alike, and mooch alike.

Did anybody see anyone returning any of the bailout money from a few years ago from the rescue of your 401K's and 'investments? Of course not, certainly not from right wingers, no big wave of 'doing the right thing' out of ideological purity from any, so quit pissing on our legs and trying to tell us it's raining.

/----- You said "those 'poor and lazy' you right wing ideologues claim to hate so much." WOWZA - the first Strawman Argument of the day. Now my turn. "What about our sacred Bill of Rights you Liberals claim to hate so much?" and this gem: "Why do Liberals want to abort every unborn baby even against the mother's will?" I got a million of them.

lol claiming its a 'straw man' after all the sniveling in this thread by right wingers isn't very bright I also never claimed to hate the 'bill of Rights', nor am I even remotely an abortion supporter, just the opposite, speaking of real 'straw men' to knock down. When I see so-called 'conservatives' supporting real conservatism, I might be inclined to take them seriously, and a couple of them I do indeed consider serious posters, but most are just parrots, and have no real clue, they just like to make noises about pet issues and beating their chests as if they support 'hard work n stuff' when they wouldn't be caught dead doing hard work for a living.

Anybody up for doing away with the 'limited liability' scam, for instance? That's the welfare program that lets embezzlers loot companies and keep the money they stole for themselves, in case anybody in the Peanut Gallery isn't familiar with the scam 'private businesses' now almost universally operate under, where any idiot with a couple hundred bucks can 'incorporate' and get government protection for stealing other peoples' money. It's a key socialist program that make almost all of the Wall Street swindles possible, followed by piss poor accounting standards, 'private' bond rating agencies, and all the rest down the line, all of course designed specifically to keep stock holders and CEOs from having to take real responsibility; the latter is for 'everybody else', not them, like most right wing gibberish that involves making money with little or no risk.

/---- When cornered like rats, all libs have are Strawman arguments. Apparently my sarcasm was lost on you. So why do libs hate the Constitution?

Says the ideologue who has no real reply to the facts of the matter. Even the 'Libertarian' loons have a lot more consistency and less contradictions in their fantasy economics.

 

[jwoodie]

Good idea: Replace all other welfare programs.

That was Milton Friedman's basic idea. Of course, his last estimate of what the minimum basic income would have to be adjusted for past inflation was around $43,000 a year or so, which is about what minimum wage would be for a 40 hour a week full time job.

I would peg it at about $21,000 per year, which is $10/hr x 40 x 52 weeks. How much do we spend now on all our welfare programs?

 

[Spare_change]

"Important: Do not penalize people for working."

Even more important: Do not reward people for not working.

What I meant was that, if a basic income plan replaced all other welfare programs, that benefit should not be reduced for people who are earning additional income. Government welfare programs already "reward" people for not working; I just think we should not penalize people for working by reducing their benefits, since this devalues their work.

I would rather see an EITC type program that augments income below a certain threshhold for a certain time period, say 2 or 3 years, after which you need to be moving up the income ladder. And as a society we need to be taking steps to ensure that upward mobility is possible, and THAT means a business environment that is conducive to new businesses starting up and existing businesses expanding. And THAT means lower taxes and lower costs of compliance with gov't regulations at every level. Anything that makes it more lucrative to operate a business.

Economic realities make that pretty much a no go. If third world political instability and poverty appeal to you, then we can do that, but it's unnecessary and merely sociopathic to go about it like some third world dictator would. We can shut off immigration, put a massive focus on birth control, and sterilization for those who can't exercise self-control or just refuse to, etc., and take a more gradual approach rather than go with some radical ideological pogrom or other. Of course we will have to deport most Democratic Party traitors, the party of sexual fetishists, thugs, and assorted racists to do anything positive, but I'm fine with that; it's something Thomas Jefferson would do. There is no real difference between some millionaire Wall Street insider trader and a 'welfare bum', neither are productive or valuable in any way in an economic sense, they all look alike to me, they want something for nothing, just like Goldman Sachs and any day trader does.

While I recognize your angst, you fail to grasp the most basic concept - there is little or no difference between a dollar and a hammer. Both are tools of creation ...

While I don't doubt you see a lot of things that aren't there, there is a world of difference between a dollar and a hammer, and the dollars made by the financial sector are most definitely not tools of creation' by any stretch, they are just as parasitic as those 'poor and lazy' you right wing ideologues claim to hate so much. As for myself, I'm not even a Communist or a right winger and don't require human life to be an 'economic unit' whose value is determined by how much money it can make, in the case of the lower classes how much they can be underpaid by some corporation for something or other, so some portfolio somewhere, maybe thousands of miles away, gets a nice big dividend for doing nothing but mooching off those hard working victims. I can fully understand why the parasites higher up the food chain hate the 'poor and lazy', they're not making any cash off of their labor, the same reason Marx hated them. There is no difference between Communists and Corporates and bankers for those that work; they all look alike, think alike, and mooch alike.

Did anybody see anyone returning any of the bailout money from a few years ago from the rescue of your 401K's and 'investments? Of course not, certainly not from right wingers, no big wave of 'doing the right thing' out of ideological purity from any, so quit pissing on our legs and trying to tell us it's raining.

The lack of knowledge, coupled with you obvious bitterness, just boggles the mind.

A hammer is a tool to create something - it is used by a competent tradesman trained to use that particular tool.

A dollar is a tool used to create something - it, too, is used by a competent tradesman trained to use it.

You so blithely talk about the "parasitic" investors who make their living using the dollars created by the "poor and lazy". Yet, he is no different than the carpenter who makes his living using the lumber harvested by the very same "poor and lazy". You hire a carpenter to build your bookcase - you hire a financial manager to build your financial house.

It is convenient for you to look disdainfully at those who manage, those who build, those who invest. Why is it convenient? Because it gives you an excuse not to look at what you have failed to accomplish in your life. The choice is simple - you can work for your money, or you can have your money work for you. You simply picked the wrong one.

 

[anotherlife]

France is easing into a universal income economy currently. The work week is reduced to 30 hours and the paid vacation is increased to 6 weeks. Next step it will be 25 hours in a work week. And so on.

 

[task0778]

Good idea: Replace all other welfare programs.

That was Milton Friedman's basic idea. Of course, his last estimate of what the minimum basic income would have to be adjusted for past inflation was around $43,000 a year or so, which is about what minimum wage would be for a 40 hour a week full time job.

I would peg it at about $21,000 per year, which is $10/hr x 40 x 52 weeks. How much do we spend now on all our welfare programs?

Do you realize how many working age people (under 65) there are in the US? According to the St Louis Fed, it's over 205 million; So how much is 205 million times $21k? That's quite a bit of money, no? On top of that you have the people 65 and over, which includes me and the wife; are you going to pay us too or exempt us from the UBI? That's a lot of people dude. Not sure how many of us there are but I'm guessing it's a big number.

Working Age Population: Aged 15-64: All Persons for the United States©

You could exclude people at the top end of the income ladder, but where do you make the cut? There will be consequences, if I'm a few hundred over the cutoff point I'm going to make sure my income is reduced so I get the free money. IOW, you are disincentivizing work and that ain't a good thing. And there are a lot of people who will be satisfied to get their monthly UBI check and not bother to work at all.

Has anybody seen any numbers for who gets what and how much it would cost? What programs would be cut? This sounds to me like a great big step towards total gov't control, they would have us all by the balls. Be careful what you wish for.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Do you realize how many working age people (under 65) there are in the US? According to the St Louis Fed, it's over 205 million; So how much is 205 million times $21k? That's quite a bit of money, no? On top of that you have the people 65 and over, which includes me and the wife; are you going to pay us too or exempt us from the UBI? That's a lot of people dude. Not sure how many of us there are but I'm guessing it's a big number.

Working Age Population: Aged 15-64: All Persons for the United States©

You could exclude people at the top end of the income ladder, but where do you make the cut? There will be consequences, if I'm a few hundred over the cutoff point I'm going to make sure my income is reduced so I get the free money. IOW, you are disincentivizing work and that ain't a good thing. And there are a lot of people who will be satisfied to get their monthly UBI check and not bother to work at all.

Has anybody seen any numbers for who gets what and how much it would cost? What programs would be cut? This sounds to me like a great big step towards total gov't control, they would have us all by the balls. Be careful what you wish for.

The UBI concept i prefer gives each person a bonus each year that is insure to them that they will have enough to SURVIVE the year. they can supplement their income however they want at no penalty.

There are other ideas as well, but this is how I prefer it.

 

[task0778]

Do you realize how many working age people (under 65) there are in the US? According to the St Louis Fed, it's over 205 million; So how much is 205 million times $21k? That's quite a bit of money, no? On top of that you have the people 65 and over, which includes me and the wife; are you going to pay us too or exempt us from the UBI? That's a lot of people dude. Not sure how many of us there are but I'm guessing it's a big number.

Working Age Population: Aged 15-64: All Persons for the United States©

You could exclude people at the top end of the income ladder, but where do you make the cut? There will be consequences, if I'm a few hundred over the cutoff point I'm going to make sure my income is reduced so I get the free money. IOW, you are disincentivizing work and that ain't a good thing. And there are a lot of people who will be satisfied to get their monthly UBI check and not bother to work at all.

Has anybody seen any numbers for who gets what and how much it would cost? What programs would be cut? This sounds to me like a great big step towards total gov't control, they would have us all by the balls. Be careful what you wish for.

The UBI concept i prefer gives each person a bonus each year that is insure to them that they will have enough to SURVIVE the year. they can supplement their income however they want at no penalty.

There are other ideas as well, but this is how I prefer it.

That's nice JB, but you're going to have to dig a little deeper. Who gets how much, and how are you going to pay for it? It's easy to say we should do this and that, but I never see anybody talking about the details.

 

[jwoodie]

Do you realize how many working age people (under 65) there are in the US? According to the St Louis Fed, it's over 205 million; So how much is 205 million times $21k? That's quite a bit of money, no? On top of that you have the people 65 and over, which includes me and the wife; are you going to pay us too or exempt us from the UBI? That's a lot of people dude. Not sure how many of us there are but I'm guessing it's a big number.

Theoretically, a little over $4 billion (less the cost of existing welfare programs). But that's not how it would work: Anyone with other income up to $21k would get to keep the full UBI. Above that there would be a $1 deduction in UBI for every $2 of additional income, with UBI phased out at $63k of other income. Kind of like the EITC without the work disincentive?

 

[JimBowie1958]

That's nice JB, but you're going to have to dig a little deeper. Who gets how much, and how are you going to pay for it? It's easy to say we should do this and that, but I never see anybody talking about the details.

Well, All that exists right now are the broad strokes of what we might do, and that is because we can only get more specific as the oncoming problems arrive. You cant fix it until it gets broken.

Having said that, I dont think we need a UBI right now, but we will in coming years. This I think would be part of the response to the Strong AI Robotics Revolution.

Now many jobs that used to be done by people are being done by robots already, but these are staticly placed machines that work along assembly lines and that sort of thing. Strong AI androids that will be highly mobile, capable of learning and know how to respond to people these are going to take the majority of jobs in our economy as mass production makes them cheaper than a desktop today.

When that day comes corporations will have sky rocketing profits as they get rid of their primary cost of human labor, while jobs will virtually vanish in the span of ten to fifteen years or so and we have around 80% unemployment. Individuals unable to find a job or pursue careers that they have trained for are going to become very unstable. We could be looking at an existential civilization crisis by 2040.

There will be two routes to avoid this, the first one will be simplistic and in the long run disastrous; just give all the problems to the government to fix.

The second is to have a managed and gradual transition that assures people that if they want to work they can work whether it is through the market, job programs or charitable work.

But also consider that the upside to all this is that people wont have to work in order for society to have enough to feed, clothe, house and shelter the population as robotic labor will do that for next to nothing in terms of costs.

The government will need to have revenues, and the corporations will need to have consumers to buy their crap and so people will have to have incomes. But how to do that when there are no jobs? With a UBI that is not needs based, but an annual grant that goes mostly straight to the landlord, grocer, doctors, etc in the form of vouchers. This is to make it more likely that the money is well spent though somediscretionary income is necessary.

How do we pay for all this? Several ways;
1) a Robotics tax that would replace the lost income tax fromt he workers that are displaced. The corporations will still be making windfall profits with even that much.
2) a flat 10% sales tax on all monetary transactions - no individual income tax.
3) Corporate profit taxes around 15%.

To encourage corporations to continue employing people as long as possible give them an added take break on their corporate taxes by reducing the taxable profits by a percentage of their cost for human labor, somewhere from 50% to 100%.

Another humanitarian factor would be a government program to assist people in using new technologies to produce as much of what they need as possible, from 3D printing, to agroponics to microproduction using nanites.

But we are going to see more radical change in our society over the next twenty years than we saw in the last 200 and we need to be ready at the rudder to avoid the shoals.

 

[Darkwind]

Put everyone on an income of 52,000 dollars. You must use all of the income during the year.
No one is to have a net worth of more than 52,000 dollars, paid weekly...not politicians, not Mark Zuckerberg, not Elon Musk, not Harry Reid, not Barrack Obama.
No one is to work. You just collect your 1,000 dollars a week and if it is gone before the next paycheck, you do without. No credit cards, no credit, no "I'll pay you on Tuesday for a hamburger today".
No lawyer can have a personal wealth worth more than 52,000 dollars.

No business is to hold more than 52,000 dollars in profit. Anything above and beyond is to be forfeited to the government for the upkeep of the citizens. Business will have to replace equipment from the 52,000 per year. They will also have to pay for any product upgrade or research out of those monies.

No company can be sued. They have the right to the same income as the individual.
No doctor can be sued for malpractice. He won't' have the money for it and you cannot touch his income.

Everyone gets the same income. What is fairer than that?

 

[JimBowie1958]

Put everyone on an income of 52,000 dollars. You must use all of the income during the year.
No one is to have a net worth of more than 52,000 dollars, paid weekly...not politicians, not Mark Zuckerberg, not Elon Musk, not Harry Reid, not Barrack Obama.
No one is to work. You just collect your 1,000 dollars a week and if it is gone before the next paycheck, you do without. No credit cards, no credit, no "I'll pay you on Tuesday for a hamburger today".
No lawyer can have a personal wealth worth more than 52,000 dollars.

No business is to hold more than 52,000 dollars in profit. Anything above and beyond is to be forfeited to the government for the upkeep of the citizens. Business will have to replace equipment from the 52,000 per year. They will also have to pay for any product upgrade or research out of those monies.

No company can be sued. They have the right to the same income as the individual.
No doctor can be sued for malpractice. He won't' have the money for it and you cannot touch his income.

Everyone gets the same income. What is fairer than that?

What is not fair about that is that some people are not satisfied with having a minimal existence, and they will want to excel and challenge themselves.

Money as a store of effort accomplishes this, allowing the hard driven souls to work to their hearts content and the less capable to still survive and not be living in fear of economic collapse.

 

[task0778]

Do you realize how many working age people (under 65) there are in the US? According to the St Louis Fed, it's over 205 million; So how much is 205 million times $21k? That's quite a bit of money, no? On top of that you have the people 65 and over, which includes me and the wife; are you going to pay us too or exempt us from the UBI? That's a lot of people dude. Not sure how many of us there are but I'm guessing it's a big number.

Theoretically, a little over $4 billion (less the cost of existing welfare programs). But that's not how it would work: Anyone with other income up to $21k would get to keep the full UBI. Above that there would be a $1 deduction in UBI for every $2 of additional income, with UBI phased out at $63k of other income. Kind of like the EITC without the work disincentive?

And where did you get your numbers? You're telling me we can give that many people $21,000 each year and it'll only cost $4 billion, even after erasing existing welfare programs? I don't think so.

Are you getting rid of Medicare and Medicaid? Everything else too?

 

[task0778]

Put everyone on an income of 52,000 dollars. You must use all of the income during the year.
No one is to have a net worth of more than 52,000 dollars, paid weekly...not politicians, not Mark Zuckerberg, not Elon Musk, not Harry Reid, not Barrack Obama.
No one is to work. You just collect your 1,000 dollars a week and if it is gone before the next paycheck, you do without. No credit cards, no credit, no "I'll pay you on Tuesday for a hamburger today".
No lawyer can have a personal wealth worth more than 52,000 dollars.

No business is to hold more than 52,000 dollars in profit. Anything above and beyond is to be forfeited to the government for the upkeep of the citizens. Business will have to replace equipment from the 52,000 per year. They will also have to pay for any product upgrade or research out of those monies.

No company can be sued. They have the right to the same income as the individual.
No doctor can be sued for malpractice. He won't' have the money for it and you cannot touch his income.

Everyone gets the same income. What is fairer than that?

So nobody works? Where the hell are you going to get the money, just print it out of thin air?

 

[JimBowie1958]

So nobody works? Where the hell are you going to get the money, just print it out of thin air?

why not?

That is what the Federal Reserve does, lol.

 

[task0778]

So nobody works? Where the hell are you going to get the money, just print it out of thin air?

why not?

That is what the Federal Reserve does, lol.

Ah, no it doesn't. Were you being facetious or do you really not know why the US Treasury cannot just print money willy nilly?

 

[JoeMoma]

That may work out for some but not for all. People do not tend to have respect for what they did not work for. We have become a throw away society. Abortion is a good example of how some people think that even life its self of another living being is fully expendable without regard to what that life may contribute to society as a whole if allowed to grow. Perhaps they may want to start programs on how to teach your children respect first and go from there. Their attempt at forcing everyone to accept everyone and their brothers ideology of being acceptable to whatever isn't working out very well thus far.

I see the possibility of population control somehow being tied into UBI, if UBI is ever implemented on a very large scale. After all, we don't want to split that UBI between too many people. Don't want to overload the planets resources.

 

[Spare_change]

Do you realize how many working age people (under 65) there are in the US? According to the St Louis Fed, it's over 205 million; So how much is 205 million times $21k? That's quite a bit of money, no? On top of that you have the people 65 and over, which includes me and the wife; are you going to pay us too or exempt us from the UBI? That's a lot of people dude. Not sure how many of us there are but I'm guessing it's a big number.

Working Age Population: Aged 15-64: All Persons for the United States©

You could exclude people at the top end of the income ladder, but where do you make the cut? There will be consequences, if I'm a few hundred over the cutoff point I'm going to make sure my income is reduced so I get the free money. IOW, you are disincentivizing work and that ain't a good thing. And there are a lot of people who will be satisfied to get their monthly UBI check and not bother to work at all.

Has anybody seen any numbers for who gets what and how much it would cost? What programs would be cut? This sounds to me like a great big step towards total gov't control, they would have us all by the balls. Be careful what you wish for.

The UBI concept i prefer gives each person a bonus each year that is insure to them that they will have enough to SURVIVE the year. they can supplement their income however they want at no penalty.

There are other ideas as well, but this is how I prefer it.

How do you fund it?

Are you going to take back some of the UBI (make it taxable income) in order to fund the UBI?