Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

Don't we actually have a glimpse at what the effect of this might be? This is effectively society giving an "allowance" to people, is it not? Rather than tying it to grades or chores, the other two popular allowance methods, this will be the "no strings attached" allowance that many parents choose to use.

My recollection is there have already been studies (albeit, done on children) as to the effect of such grants. Might be worth looking at those again.

Wow, you're going to give me money for nothing?! Sweet! I'll be sitting on my rump watching Springer all day.

[LynahFan]

Wow, you're going to give me money for nothing?! Sweet! I'll be sitting on my rump watching Springer all day.

...while Democrats and Independents will beusily be off pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. Party of personal responsibility? I don't think so.

[Rover]

Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

Before he left us, The World's Most Interesting Man gave an interiew with Rolling Stone

http://www.rollingstone.com/dos-equi...inal-interview

That's awesome.

[Kepler]

Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

...while Democrats and Independents will beusily be off pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. Party of personal responsibility? I don't think so.

I've always kinda wondered whether there's projection going on. People hear about trans using bathrooms and their first thought is "people are going to use that to abuse children." Why would their thoughts run to that immediately? I'm only asking the question.

[Rover]

Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

Just checking, but isn't $35K X 250,000,000 (the adult population the US) = $8.75 trillion dollars a year? I think the US budget each year is about $3.5T.

Like the concept but curious as to how to make it happen.

[St. Clown]

Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

Just checking, but isn't $35K X 250,000,000 (the adult population the US) = $8.75 trillion dollars a year? I think the US budget each year is about $3.5T.

Like the concept but curious as to how to make it happen.

It would just require a small tax. A very small tax.

[Kepler]

Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

It would just require a small tax. A very small tax.

To be fair, it would also replace a fair amount of our public assistance.

But no, I do not think it would be revenue neutral. :-)

Might phase out a heckuva lot of law enforcement though.

[LynahFan]

Just checking, but isn't $35K X 250,000,000 (the adult population the US) = $8.75 trillion dollars a year? I think the US budget each year is about $3.5T.

Like the concept but curious as to how to make it happen.

Fire up the presses!

Clearly the only way that could work. And by "work" I don't mean that it would successfully accomplish the intended effects...

Money is just a stand-in for an amount of work that can be accomplished. Right now, the going rate is about $10 per hour of unskilled labor. Give everyone $35k per year, and $10 will no longer be sufficient incentive to get lazy people like Flaggy off the couch for an hour, so that exchange rate will change in a hurry. Of course, as that happens, Flaggy's $35k will buy him less and less of other people's labor, too, so he may not be able to find service providers who will feed, clothe, and shelter him for a lousy $95 per day, so he'd actually be back up off that couch a whole lot quicker than he (and the proponents of this idea) thinks.

[Rover]

Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

So, given the expenditures and the trouble with getting Flaggy off his lazy @ ss I propose this. Why not drop the stipend to a more reasonable 10K a year, per household! Furthermore, I'd exempt Social Security recipients since the way to get them more $$$ would be to just enhance the program (possibly by raising the cap on the amount taxable). Lastly you could exclude anybody making over 250K a year or 1M a year depending on your preference.

So, 250,000,000 - 60,000,000 (Social Security) - 10,000,000 (over 250K) = 180,000,000. Now divide by 2 to roughly approximate adults per household.

90M households x $10,000 = 900Bn. Not a small # but with Sanders type tax rates on the 1% that ought to be doable.

[joecct]

Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

Why are you doing it via a transfer payment (taxes in, largesse out)? That involves overhead and bureaucrats getting their share of the revenue stream.

Why have the money come into the government at all and have some incentives? Maybe exempt a large chunk of income from taxation & toss all deductions?

The less the government is involved, the better.

[unofan]

Why are you doing it via a transfer payment (taxes in, largesse out)? That involves overhead and bureaucrats getting their share of the revenue stream.

Why have the money come into the government at all and have some incentives? Maybe exempt a large chunk of income from taxation & toss all deductions?

The less the government is involved, the better.

Yeah, because traditional Social Security has that whopping 0.4% overhead! Why, that is roughly on par with the cheapest mutual fund fees! We should be outraged!

(SS disability has a 2% overhead - bringing the average to the whole agency to roughly 0.75% - the horrors!)

[Kepler]

Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

Implementation would be very simple. Everybody files a 1040. Withholding and taxes work just like now. At the very end when you have figured out your taxes owed there's one more step: you subtract $35K.

Tax rates and withholdings would be commensurately changed so it would be just like today: most people's withholdings would be pretty close to their tax bill and the check or refund would be pretty small. For people with no income, they'd have $0 withholdings and a negative income tax of $35k, so they'd get their check.

It would be possible to live on $35k but not very well. Maybe 10% of the population is congenitally lazy and would do that. In all honesty it's probably better than dragging them through the labor market where do they do a crappy job and generate 90% of the behavior / morale issues. Let them lie in their fairly uncomfortable hammock.

Everybody who wants to improve their lot does put in an effort. The major change is that for horrible jobs we now have to pay people a lot of money because there's no captive labor available who have to accept terms. We have to pay more to do the dirty work. The janitor becomes the highest paid person at the company. Good! An actual free market now determines salaries because nobody has an advantage of being able to wait the other guy out and starve him into submission.

[St. Clown]

Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

The average household income for my above-average-income county is $60k and change per year for a family of four. If both of the two adults get $35k/year in your plan, that's already an above the average household income in my county. And you can't live well off of $35K? That's very much a DC-centric view right there.

[Kepler]

Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

The average household income for my above-average-income county is $60k and change per year for a family of four. If both of the two adults get $35k/year in your plan, that's already an above the average household income in my county. And you can't live well off of $35K? That's very much a DC-centric view right there.

I was just being lazy, not DC-centric. I was going to add that there could be a local cost of living multiplier. A $70k income in DC is equivalent to $39k in Tulsa, or $110k in San Francisco. But I left it as implied, you're right.

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

Fire up the presses!

Clearly the only way that could work. And by "work" I don't mean that it would successfully accomplish the intended effects...

Money is just a stand-in for an amount of work that can be accomplished. Right now, the going rate is about $10 per hour of unskilled labor. Give everyone $35k per year, and $10 will no longer be sufficient incentive to get lazy people like Flaggy off the couch for an hour, so that exchange rate will change in a hurry. Of course, as that happens, Flaggy's $35k will buy him less and less of other people's labor, too, so he may not be able to find service providers who will feed, clothe, and shelter him for a lousy $95 per day, so he'd actually be back up off that couch a whole lot quicker than he (and the proponents of this idea) thinks.

No, you've actually just kicked the can down the road, and we'll end up with the same argument, just with bigger numbers.