...Replace with a universal basic income. I just want to throw out a thought on UBI, but I'm gonna leave universal healthcare out of the OP for now.

Is this possible? Here is what I was just randomly thinking this morning:

The UBI, in my mind, should be determined in such a way that the amount you receive is by a predetermined minimum baseline to meet all basic needs in the current state of the country.

The state of the country should be revised every set amount of years. I dunno if annually, every 5, or every 10 years is best. Probably annually with the fiscal budget. The standard of living is always changing as is cost of living. It can rise and fall with inflation, etc.

The amount actually received by citizens could be either the full amount of this minimum baseline, or the minimum baseline minus what an average able-bodied person can make with a minimum wage job over a set amount of hours. 40? 20? I dunno.

Doing it the latter way incentivises individuals to work just to live. I don't like how that sounds so perhaps the minimum UBI could be such that even a minimum wage job puts you above a total income needed for basic living standards, leading to the next paragraph:

The former encourages savings, investment, and/or a more fulfilling and/or enjoyable lifestyle by even the poorest. With basic needs covered, even the bottom rung of income earners can invest in the market or consume in the economy with discretionary funds.

This is just some preliminary basic thoughts, of which I've no idea is economically feasible. I don't really have a deep knowledge on UBI or the debate around minimum wage. What I just laid out implies a minimum wage, but I wonder if eliminating it altogether leads to a better outcome?

I remember Mitt Romney saying something like we should tether minimum wage to the consumer price index. Would that be best in my proposal for UBI?

Is anything I just put forth plausible? All, none, some?

Wouldn't this optimize the welfare state by eliminating inefficiency, fraud, and waste? Make the economy more free-flowing?

We can't legislate ****ty parenting out completely, so idiots with children who aren't taken care of by ****ty parents receiving UBI may lose their child at a higher rate/faster pace. Perhaps a massive overhaul and reform of foster care would be necessary in conjunction? That's needed in the current state of affairs anyway...

My understanding is the vast majority of the country has like 10k or less invested in the market. 10k is basically nothing unless you're like 10 years old.

I feel like UBI could boost the economy by allowing even the poorest to save and/or invest in the market. There are an astonishing amount of financially illiterate people out there all across the spectrum, so perhaps a forced savings and/or investment plan would be necessary? This is just my feels, so perhaps I'm way off in unicorn land. What's possible here on earth?

Your plan is how to do a UBI so that it saves the taxpayers money and leaves the poor in worse shape than before: fund the UBI by cutting all the programs the poor rely on, and them give them a UBI that doesn't cover what you took away. Maybe that's not your intention, but any welfare model that starts with "cut universal health care" is a loser, and a UBI can be used for good or for evil depending on the goals of the person proposing them.

Yes, any model that doesn't include health care isn't going to work. It's all well and good to presume that people will use part of their UBI to buy their own, but many won't. When they then get sick or get in a car accident or something they're still going to walk into emergency rooms and expect to get looked after.

And if you also pass a law that the ER can turn them away then you'll have people just dying right outside the door of hospitals that could save their lives, which is pretty dumb. Or with an asterisk you'll have fire departments and ambulances showing up at crash scenes or fires, saving the people with the jaws of life or whatever, then rushing them to the hospital, where they then just die for not having any insurance. Makes no sense.

One problem with a UBI that you'd need to sort out is, where does the money come from to pay a UBI to people who aren't currently receiving any benefits but earn under the BI threshold? Do you take that money from the people who already qualify for benefits, or increase taxes or take it from other budget lines? If it's the former, you're redistributing money from the most disadvantaged people upwards and increasing inequality.

Yeah, replacing everything with UBI is stupid. There are things that just work better done by government. Health care is one of them. No one has figured out a private health care system that works as well as any of dozens of government health care models.

Not to mention there is no plausible amount that could actually provided by UBI that would cover you in the event of a medical catastrophe. All the problems with private medical insurance would persist.

100k ubi just print the cash **** it

I meant repeal Obamacare and replace it with universal healthcare.

Sorry, I worded my OP and title poorly. I was thinking UBI + universal healthcare. I just didn't outline my version of universal healthcare like I did with UBI.

I was thinking something like single payer + a market for anyone who wants to pay to get higher quality healthcare b/c you can afford it.

I just don't understand the point of food stamps and obamaphones. Obamaphones is just a gov't subsidy to a phone provider to give phones to people who can't afford one. Food stamps are like when you give a gift card to someone as a Christmas gift instead of cash (I do neither, that **** is tacky). Why tf would I want a gift card to be forced to spend money at ONE store vs cash which can be used for ANY store? Why all that bureaucratic red tape and middlemen for a phone when an individual can just walk in a buy one on their own?

The consumer should be given widest range of choice. If they waste it, then **** them. If they're making decisions for children, then children should be monitored more often and taken away from egregiously neglectful parents.

This is why I mentioned foster care reform/overhaul. In its current state it's a travesty and with UBI I'd think foster care needs to be orders of magnitude better if they might be getting an influx of more kids coming from horrible backgrounds.

Perhaps financial literacy education needs to be forced upon the masses?

Where I live a single person on welfare gets about $720 a month, and the average 1 bedroom apartment costs about $1200 a month. Will your financial literacy course teach people how to afford a place to live on that income?

Food stamps and Obama phones exist because governments are unwilling to pay welfare recipients enough to afford everything they need, so they decide for them what they need to prioritize. My Grandma did appreciate her free cheese from Reagan, and I bet the dairy farmers in Wisconsin did too.

I am on board with UBI.

The UBI should more than cover what you took away. Agree that universal health care is necessary; free market doesn't work for health care.


It comes from a combination of removing the other welfare benefits and higher income taxes. Since the UBI should be > the value of the current welfare benefits to anyone, that would not have the effect of redistributing money upwards. It would distribute it downwards to some extent.

The EBT cards exist because many people when given cash won't spend it on food, so the cards are designed to be used to buy only food. They do work at pretty much any store, though, but they're set so you can't buy stuff like cigarettes or alcohol with them.

As for the phones, the reason they were brought out is because it was found that many people in marginal situations had trouble finding jobs because they lacked phones to get call backs on. However, in the modern era getting a cell phone is in a lot of places cheaper and easier than getting a landline, and they're way more useful too. Plus they have pay as you go options.

Foster care and child welfare programs are for sure a big mess, but like all programs they're only in that state because of one simple reason: Money. If they were better funded they'd provide better results, pure and simple. So if you want them to improve, all you have to do is pay more in taxes. EZ Game.

If your UBI involves increasing taxation in order to to fund increases in spending over current social programs, then I'm all for it. In addition to increasing income tax, you'll want to fund it through a consumption tax like a VAT, with rebates based on income.

First, the 'U' has to be dropped since no one is going to be willing to give money to the rich. Second, try cutting SS and see what happens to you. The polls know this and won't do it. The entire basic income talk will have to wait until the job losses caused by machines starts to really hurt.

Meh, political feasibility is a separate concern from whether it is a good idea or not.

You wouldn't really be "giving money to the rich" since their tax burden to pay for the UBI would be vastly larger than the UBI they get back. Anyway you could solve that problem by just making the UBI a tax credit for anyone with a tax burden > UBI

L O ****ing L

Perhaps I ought to have added 'for a thing like this.'

why dont we just take all the money in the country and put it in a pool. then we can split it so everyone gets the same amount. just one question though. how long before there is a chasm between two groups of people who we will have to call the rich and the poor?

wat

This is an extreme example of the ideas I've put forth that I'm positive absolutely nobody supports.

A better representation of what I'm trying to suggest is take all the money that is in the current pool of entitlements + social security + obamacare and replace it with UBI and a sound universal healthcare system. It would be more efficient, reduce fraud and waste, incentivize lazy *******s to work, others to be more productive, and unencumber the productivity of individuals who are tethered to their healthcare through employment and those who aren't working or working less because they can't afford to pay for health issues.

Michael Tubbs was on Real Time with Bill Maher discussing UBI. He's the mayor of Stockton, California.

Some interesting experiments happening out there. Thoughts?

Perhaps those who don't need the income at all can get a tax break instead? Some other incentive? Matched contributions to retirement accounts or direct investments of their choosing?

Agreed, but it is not out of the realm of possibility to sell an idea if you boil it down to a simple message. We're replacing your SS income with...more income.

That's essentially what would be happening if execution of the plan is sound and the numbers are right.

Combine the above with a decrease in military spending.

I think Obama did some nominal spending freeze on the military. A dog and pony show. If that was all he can muster, then I don't see any avenue where any significant cuts could be made unless Ds wafflecrush for the next 2 years up to the presidency.

I made this thread on the assumption we'd have to get it done without any change whatsoever to military spending. Any freeze or decrease in spending would be ancillary and awesome and shock me.