Universal Minimum Income
- Thread starter Traditio
- Start date
How bout give veterans a grant to start businesses and give them three years of no taxation.
If you join the military give five years service you get $50k and 3 yrs tax free to start your business.
All you gotta do is find some rich dudes to launder their cash thru you and you're set trad
If you join the military give five years service you get $50k and 3 yrs tax free to start your business.
All you gotta do is find some rich dudes to launder their cash thru you and you're set trad
I own a business but hiring is a risk and a cost.
How about re employment insurance instead of unemployment ins?
For example the government pays me to hire the unemployed, basically I take their weekly unemployment check and make them work for it.
In return I don't lose money training them and if they work out they get on full time and they get Obama care
Muuwaahahaa
How about re employment insurance instead of unemployment ins?
For example the government pays me to hire the unemployed, basically I take their weekly unemployment check and make them work for it.
In return I don't lose money training them and if they work out they get on full time and they get Obama care
Muuwaahahaa
HisServant
New member
I saw a while back, on Facebook, an article about an idea which is apparently fairly popular both among left-wingers and libertarians worldwide (Republicans probably aren't a big fan, but hey): a universal minimum income.
Basically, here's the idea: have the government pay everyone enough money so that they start off at an above-poverty income level.
I can't express just how much I love this idea, and just how much this would pretty much solve all kinds of social problems and political debates.
Pay everyone $24,000 of untaxable, no strings attached income and automatically adjust that amount every year based on inflation.
Abolish social security.
Abolish federal and state entitlements (except, perhaps, as an addition to the universal minimum income).
Abolish welfare.
Abolish foodstamps.
Abolish minimum wage laws.
You get the idea.
Combine this with a single payer health-care system, tuition free universities and extremely tight border controls? I can't even express in words just how supremely epic that would be.
All of a sudden, the need for unions just ends. There's no need for unions, for minimum wages or for all sorts of other government regulation about employment. All of a sudden, the employee doesn't need his employer. They can negotiate on a perfectly level playing field.
"You want me to work for you? Ok. Then treat me like a person, not like a number. Oh. You don't want to do that? That's fine. I don't need your job anyway."
Not to mention it would simplify things a lot government wise. No need for a dozen different government agencies.
Here, people will complain about the following:
1. It would decrease productivity and take away peoples' incentives to do meaningless, inhuman work.
2. It would be unfair because pay would no longer correspond to merit.
I answer as follows:
A. 1. is going to happen with technological increases anyway.
B. 1. If the job is meaningless and inhuman, then maybe it's not worth doing in the first place.
C. 1. There's only so many jobs anyway. What's the unemployment rate again?
D. 2. Money shouldn't be a standard of personal worth. It should be a mean of acquiring the necessities of a dignified and properly human life.
E. 2. It's not even true. I'm talking about a universal minimum income. Note the key word: "minimum."
Because of our consumerist economy and businesses being smart enough to analyze the incomes of their customers... doing the above will end up rapidly raising the poverty level so that the government will have to continue to raise the yearly amount at a disproportionate amount to keep the have-nots happy.
In the end, no matter how much the government pays us, IT will always be the poverty line as businesses will already have their calculated pieces of the pie figured out.
As far as free education, the country would end up like Cuba where everyone is highly educated but there are few jobs available commiserate with their education... you have doctors driving buses and working the fields because they have too many doctors.
GuySmiley
Well-known member
1. Inflation. You'd have to tie this minimum wage to inflation. The wage would cause inflation, which causes the wage to go up, which causes inflation, etc.
2. GDP is not the same as tax revenue. Fed, State, and local tax revenue combined is only about 6.1 trillion.
3. Meaningless inhuman work doesn't exist that anyone pays for.
4. Jobs that are currently $12/hr to $16ish/hr will disappear at that pay rate. People would rather sit at home for $12/hr equivalent than get up in the morning for not much more. Those jobs will have to pay more, causing inflation.
2. GDP is not the same as tax revenue. Fed, State, and local tax revenue combined is only about 6.1 trillion.
3. Meaningless inhuman work doesn't exist that anyone pays for.
4. Jobs that are currently $12/hr to $16ish/hr will disappear at that pay rate. People would rather sit at home for $12/hr equivalent than get up in the morning for not much more. Those jobs will have to pay more, causing inflation.
has anyone suggested how this is paid for?
Quincy
New member
I really dislike that we have business structures that include constructs like hierarchies. All mandated minimum wages do, is give businesses with a system of hierarchy, a right to pay everyone the same basic amount while the top execs rake in the profits (which only a small percent of reaches workers who actually produce the products and revenue).
It would be nice if flat organizations were the common structure, then we wouldn't need these kinds of gimmicks. Everyone in an organization is their own boss, working towards a common goal that they all share and together they decide how to split up the profits. It would be nice.
It would be nice if flat organizations were the common structure, then we wouldn't need these kinds of gimmicks. Everyone in an organization is their own boss, working towards a common goal that they all share and together they decide how to split up the profits. It would be nice.
You misunderstood me. Dude makes $1.5 million dollars. 90% taxes on all income over one million. That's $450,000 in taxes. On the amount below a million? Dunno.
A cursory google search tells me that the total income of all Americans in the US, in 2011, was 12.95 trillion dollars.
What you are trying to tell me, Cabinet Maker, is that there's not enough money for everyone to have an income of $24,000 a year. In point of fact, let us assume that the actual income there is to go around is $13 trillion. If everyone had an income of $24,000, by your own admission, that only comes out to, at most, in between 7-8 trillion dollars. By my reckoning, there's still $5-6 trillion left to spare.
In point of fact, there's plenty of money to go around, presupposing that there is an equitable and just distribution. Even supposing an additional $4 trillion for other expanses like healthcare, schools, etc. (and I doubt this would be the actual expense), that's only comes out to $12 trillion.
There is not enough money for everybody to collect $24,000 from the government each year. Your plan is nothing more than a wealth redistribution plan, take from the rich to give to the poor. Is that what God intended?
You are telling me that the total income which is collected by everyone each year is less than $24,000 multiplied by the total number of adults?
Again, a cursory google search disagrees with you.
Income restribution, not wealth redistribution. To my mind, wealth is, at best, a matter of secondary importance.
In a question of politics, I'm not particularly interested in the religious question.
At any rate, note that this objection is not:
1. The thing cannot be done.
The objection is:
2. But Jesus said...
Maybe. But it doesn't solve your problem of getting person A to give most of his income to persons B through Z.
A great, GREAT many people are likely to strongly disagree with you as to redistribute income you necessarily redistribute wealth. They kind of go hand in hand.
Should the very first question about anything that you do in your life be, "What would Jesus want me to do?"
The government pays people to solve that problem. They even have places to put people who refuse.
You own a massive farm. You grow x thousands of pounds of wheat every year.
Wealth: your massive farm
Income: the x thousands of pounds of wheat.
I don't want the farm. I just want most of your wheat. So long as you keep growing wheat, I couldn't care less who owns the farm.
Well, if Jesus had written a tract on political justice, I might be interested. Unfortunately, he didn't.
Moses gave the Law, but the concrete conditions of the ancient Jewish State do not reflect the concrete conditions of modern political society. And even if we took that as our standard, the ancient Jewish State was not exactly a capitalist paradise. The Law is not friendly to modern capitalism and modern Republicans/libertarians.
It only looks that way to them because they cherry pick verses and ignore the rest.
What about the Walton kids. They have wealth in the billions of dollars each only a few millions of which are tied up in homes, cars, planes and whatever else. Now you want to go collect most of their wealth and redistribute it. Think that will go well?
Money just sitting in the bank does not constitute income. I'm assuming that the $13 trillion dollars in income reported by all Americans by the aforementioned google search was not telling me about money that's been sitting in a bank for the last decade.
Again: the 5 million dollars of stock that you have constitutes wealth, not income. I don't care who owns it. The $150,000 you made off of dividends? That's income.
A lot of that income may be in the form of stock options and may not ber readily accessible to you.
Here is a question for you, how would you feel if the taxes that you are currently paying were to suddenly go up by a factor of about 3? The government currently collects about 3.7T$. To pay for your plan alone they need 7.2T$ making the total tax the government takes in to be 10.5T$. Since the government is paying this, it would need to be collected as tax. Lets take somebody who earns 50k$. Under 2014 federal tax laws that person paid 5,081.25+(50,000-36,900)*25%=8356.25.
Under you plan that scenario looks like this: Taxable Income is 50k4-24k$=26k$ Using the 2014 tax rules again but modified to 3 times the 2014 tax rate to cover your plan, the new tax is calculates as follows. 907.50+(26,000-9,075)*(3*15%)=$8,523.75
In other words, a person who is currently earning 50k$ will now only earn 26k$ from his employer and get 24k$ from the government. But this person will actually pay $167.50 more in taxes each year.
If somebody has gone to college to become a professional and earns 150k$ per year, under your plan that person will pay and additional $13,804 in taxes.
The more you earn, the more you are penalized. Only the very egalitarian might agree to such a plan. The average person wont.
My example is based on the single chart.
whitestone
Well-known member
That's the trap P.J. ,,,across my life I possessed between 15-20 million dollars. As time went on though I began to fail in my health and ended up on s.s.d.,,,
There's a great portion of s.s.d. that has changed since Obama care took effect that has either not been realized or is suppressed in the media.
if you make 1101.1 or more on s.s.d. you will no longer not qualify for the supplemented medical care(free insurance),,you make to much per month. When you try to apply for Medicare under the new laws you must wait 24 months before you qualify(waiting period).
If you decide to go into one of the nursing homes you will qualify for 21 days,then they will discharge you and send you home. If you go to the emergency room then they can refer you back to the nursing home and you can then stay there for 21 more days.
As for me I have until this March before Medicare will begin to pay for testing,I need a biopsy on a mass in my neck. The thing about it is if they would have given the medical care when I was disabled then it would have been easy to remove. Now the doctors are telling me that because of the delay in testing and removal that they will need to remove my entire Jaw,all the muscles in the right side of my neck ect. their not sure how fast this will progress before the insurance kicks in.
I thought "well I'll buy a private policy",well after them explaining the enrollment date,then the date it would actually take effect ect. Medicare is the fastest of the two. So if you have an insurance policy "DON'T GET RID OF IT THINKING YOUR SAFE WITH THE GOV. INSURANCE!",,,Obama care is nothing more than Jack Kevorkian style assisted death,I am living proof.
These dollar amounts that they toss around are not at random they are a dollar above you qualifying for assistance. You either make to little to qualify,or too much. I hope you and the others will understand that I have made up my mind to elect not to undergo the operations,I no longer see the struggle as a necessity.
glassjester
Well-known member
So I pay $13,804 more in taxes, in exchange for $24,000 extra income?
Sounds like you made a point in favor of Traditio's plan.
I think he was factoring in the $24,000 when he calculated that the total net increase in taxes would be $13,804. That said, I don't see this as problematic:
"If lower income persons make more money, then there will be less income to go around for higher income persons. It will be much harder to get an extraordinary amount of income."
To which my answer is: "Yes, and this would be felt especially by the top income earners. What's your point?"
Trouble is, I don't think it would be extra income. But, if you do assume that it is extra income then the scenario looks like this:
Income = 50k$+24k$-74k$. Of that, only the 50k$ is taxable. Using the single rate table above gives you this.
2014 Tax Calculation 5,081.25+(50,000-36,900)*25%=8356.25.
Tradition tax plan: 5,081.25+(50,000-36,900)*(3*25%)=14,906.25.
Under Traditions plan you pay an additional $6,550.00. Which is actually a benefit to you as 24k$-6.55k$=$17.45k$ more in your pocket.
For the doctor in our example the numbers look like this:
Income = 150k$+24k$-174k$. Of that, only the 150k$ is taxable. Using the single rate table above gives you this.
2014 Tax Calculation 18,193.75+(150,000-89,350)*28%=35,175.75.
Tradition tax plan: 18,193.75+(150,000-89,350)*(3*28%)=69,139.75.
Under Traditions plan you pay an additional $33,964.00. Which means that not only do you not see any benefit from the 24k$, it actually costs you $9,964.00 in taxes. (33,964-24,000=9,964.00). You you pay 10,000 to get 24,000 that would all go to pay taxes anyway?
So the question would become, what to the employers do? Will they adjust the amount they pay you downwards so that your government salary plus your company salary equals what you make now?
glassjester
Well-known member
In that case, it's still not a fair comparison.
Even if they paid 40% income taxes (which I do not think you are suggesting for 50k earners), the extra 24,000 would still result in a greater net income.