The plan probably should be tweaked which is fine as long as it still includes my name.

But the general idea seems win win win.

All American citizens get about 10K a year from the government. Maybe not the rich. The truly needy continue to get more. Maybe those non citizens who have been here legally a long time get something as well.

All immigrants who don't have criminal records can enter the US with no restrictions. But they won't get the semi UBI and their jobs will not have a minimum wage associated with it. The market will decide. Americans will be in the same boat so the unskilled will receive a pay cut. But it should be less than the 10K they now get given to them.

All non citizens would be eligible to eventually become citizens and get that semi UBI. But it would be a long and difficult process.

I would think businesses would like this since they could pay a bit less.

I would think immigrants who are in bad situations in their home countries would be happy as well even though they are making five dollars less per hour than their American coworkers.

I would think prospective immigrants NOT in terrible situations might think twice about coming over unless they are fairly highly skilled.

I would think most Americans would benefit via lower prices.

I know there are flaws and downsides to this Sklansky Plan. But would they overcome the upsides?

Without price controls the cost of basic goods would rise to meet the additional supply of money. Like college tuition post loans and grants.

Couple of q's.

Didn't either a Scandinavian country or EU country try out UBI and it failed, or is about to fail?

Also I assume we're raising taxes on the rich to pay for UBI? If not where does the money come from?

Also how do prices of, I guess everything, get lower from this? Are we assuming employers don't lower wages/cut jobs to offset, what I'm assuming is, higher taxes for collection of UBI?

It feels like the first time someone who does not have a record kills someone from the US this plan goes straight to hell given the current political climate. As in an overreaction to want to ban everyone, or something along those lines.

I like it.

I'm very much a capitalist and for the most part lean right when it comes to matters of the economy but I've been convinced for a while that some form of UBI will be necessary. And I don't see any reason not to start small now and ramp it up as necessary. The "negative income tax" proposed by Milton Friedman describes a pretty good general model.

Unlike most UBI proponents (leftists) who are often for raising minimum wages, I'm also for just getting rid of the minimum wage in conjunction with UBI. I think it's the only way it makes sense.

The Sklansky Plan differs from the stinkypete plan in that I haven't considered simply opening the borders (but definitely recognize the problem that immediately giving new immigrants full benefits would cause). Interesting idea though, I'll have to give it some thought.

Does it require an additional supply of money?

No. Finland ran a short experiment recently but it's a huge stretch to say they "tried out UBI and it failed". It was really just an experiment to see if it would motivate welfare recipients to find work if they could keep their benefits, but it's too short and too small scale an experiment to produce any really meaningful results.

Yup, raising taxes on pretty much everyone, but lower income people would come out ahead.

Labour and cost of production would be cheaper but whether prices go up or down on the whole would be a matter of how the money supply is controlled. I suspect supply/demand curves would change in massively different ways for different types of goods/services.

So you basically ripped off Charles Murray's plan and put your name on it? As far as I can tell the only difference is Charles Murray proposed 13k where 3k of that had to be spent on health insurance or health care savings, instead of just 10k.

http://www.aei.org/publication/a-gua...very-american/

(It looks like Charles Murray has changed from being open borders to putting a moratorium on low skill immigrants. )

Just a couple trillion.

higher taxes, higher velocity of money, higher gdp... it's not clear you need to increase the money supply at all

David,
There is no need to wait for the government to do this. You can make the world a better place right now.

You can do exactly the above locally right now, and change the world.

1. Abolish all locks on your house, all security, give up your rights to prosecute for trespass, and advertise that it's open for any homeless or poor person who wants to use it.

2. Tax yourself (a rich person) 80% of your income to pay for a UBI for those near you. You can do this right now - no need to wait for the government. Plenty of poor Mexican Americans in Vegas that you can sponsor

3. Anyone you hire, say builders or domestic help, pay them a UBI whether they turn up for work or not.

I think this is a stellar plan and you should implement it on a small scale to gain some evidence for its effectiveness; who knows, you might just change the world. Change starts small and ripples up. Imagine it was YOU who managed to abolish ICE and give the US open borders and taxed all those awful selfish rich people (like yourself).

Never mind the problem explained below (far more economically useless destitute people than your house can take); we'll figure out as we go!

can't for the life of me figure why people want to pay people money to sit on their asses

not only people but far and away the least deserving people

Kind of feel like this is "prove a negative" territory i.e. proof that this isn't a good policy for the USA to implement.

How about some actual criteria as to what represents successful outcomes? I would strongly disagree with anyone who believes that this wouldn't result in morphing into a political football of massive proportions.

I am up for doubling SS payouts (still indexed to inflation of course) and having Medicare cover 100% of health care costs instead of 80% instead of the UBI part. Of course all SS recipients are grand fathered in. This would result in incentivizing people to be more productive in their working life. The extra fica revenue generated would offset the additional cost. Not clear the money supply would be affected disproportionately due to the increase in money velocity etc.

Because there's an increasingly large and increasingly angry demographic whose vote counts just as much as yours whose lives are far better than they ever would have been 20, 50, or 100+ years ago thanks to capitalism and technological advancements, but who (mostly erroneously) believe they're being screwed by increasing wealth inequality. Ramping up wealth redistribution is pretty much a certainty, and it makes sense to think about ways to do it that won't destroy capitalism.

pretty sure paying people to do nothing destroys capitalism quickly



Actually I take that back, food stamps, disability for people who don't need it, welfare, etc, etc haven't killed it (yet). Getting there, though

the idea is neither well thought out nor practical.

allowing unlimited immigration but with no mininum wage restrictions will make everyone unhappy............ conserative/trumpees - far too many new immigrants, taking away jobs, why can't white people work for sub-minimum wage if they want........ liberals - a sub-minimum wage for non-whites will be a non-starter (even though the immigrants chose to come on those terms). it will remind these of different laws for different ethic groups/religions etc...

guaranteed income/supplement........... i am pretty sure it will get clawed back eventually and it will have to just the idle and the poor. are there enough rich people to pay for all of this for the middle class? i don't think so and making the very rich pay will just lead to tax avoidance/evasion/flight.

one big problem with all of this is the whole definition of the middle class. the middle class wants help from the govt but i've seen reference to family incomes in excess of $300k as middle class. surely these households will be paying for a dramatic new initiative like this. they simply won't be able to tax the very rich sufficiently

interesting comment. one test was certainly 1960's and 1970's UK and its welfare/socialist state.

while thatcher did attack entitlements and you are correct that good intentions are often abused, i think the bigger progress was made on streamlining the economy and allowing commerce to flourish. lowering tax rates from stifling levels, breaking the back of powerful unions (certainly ties some into certain people having felt entitled)

Maybe that's how I need to start looking at all this. Thanks. The problem is when we start giving in to all these positive rights like Universal Healthcare, Universal Housing, Universal Basic Income, etc. we're paying for it with individual liberty that we'll likely never get back. When we shift from a system of government that is designed to protect the individual from the mob towards one that does the mob's bidding, will the mob's appetite ever be sated?

The math behind UBI just doesn't work unless you double the taxes on everyone or cut the national budget in half.

Neither which would ever happen.

If you want to raise taxes on people, do it to give them free health care of free education.

It does work if you get rid of Social Security and Medicare. And you start gradually phasing out at around 30k income plus the 10k UBI.

So get rid of something that reliably provides basic needs and instead give pure cash to an underclass that overspends, can't save and is into various vices like gambling, alcohol, drugs. Sounds like genius!

There is a thread in Politics on UBI and I started a thread on UBI + universal healthcare where I suggested we cut SS and etc in conjunction. I also suggested either eliminating the minimum wage or pegging it to CPI + inflation, not sure which option would yield the better result.

UBI is fine if you can get the top 1% (or 3%) to pay for the lower 20% (and as one poster said free education or health care is better idea that just giving money)....

but if it's the top 20% paying for the bottom 40% then i think it's a big problem.

top 1% paying for the bottom 70% is a non-starter and doesn't make intuitive sense.... most entitlements like this if given to citizens (i.e. bottom 70% gets paid $5000 per year by govt) are usually clawed back anyway. sorry, my terminology might not be right but basically the government gives it to you and then takes it back somehow else.

one thing that is stark is how quickly the middle class and their types of jobs are dying out there. seems like middleman is being cut out every where (stock brokers, lawyers (???), retail jobs, travel agents, higher paid manufacturing jobs)... computers either can do them or consumers can use computers to do it themselves (i.e. basic law principles instead of hiring lawyer to tell you basics......... presenting a major case is something different but still i'd think far fewer billable hours than 30 years ago

Sounds like a call for better health care, mental health, and rehabilitation systems.

In my thread I also suggested a massive overhaul to the foster care system. I'm under the impression it's ****ty right now anyway and this was the first thing I thought of that could be done since you can't really legislate out ****ty parenting.

opening up the floodgates to immigrants who don't have criminal records but won't be protected by minimum wage will cause these problems/perceptions:

1) trump supporters following his "bunch of criminals" line: i didn't take this to be literally true or them thinking it's literally true. they are "criminal in nature" not necessarily convincted criminals.. and who wants to rely on the mexican, el salvador, nicaragua etc. justice system to determine whether a immigrant has a criminal record..... btw, i don't agree with the first part. just saying this is completely unworkable

2) lower income americans claim illegal and legal immigrants from poorer countries are taking their jobs. allowing the immigrants to work at under minimum wage will just completely KILL minimum wage jobs.

does anyone have a feel for how many more central american (incl. Mexico) immigrants would move to USA if immigration was simple or automatic? people say the borders are lax. but exactly how lax?.. i assume even know the border isn't as tight as trump would like, opening it up would cause a HUGE influx from those countries.

so i'm not really sure what problems david's immigrant non-criminal and sub minimum wage ideas solve....... canada apparently screens immigrants by the skill of their labor. i'm thinking that's a better way to go

self-decided to delete comment

We're not rich enough for UBI and it's highly counterproductive at this point. When viable robots come online, sure.

The open borders thing is laughably ridiculous (morally, practically, economically, globally, negative effects on the poor), particularly from a guy who wrote game theory books. How does your mind take such a sharp left turn that your brains falls out? Amazing.