I think there are at least four measures required to make a real dent in today's global tax environment: Higher taxes (doesn't hurt growth, leads to more government programs) Land value tax (the...
I think there are at least four measures required to make a real dent in today's global tax environment:
Higher taxes (doesn't hurt growth, leads to more government programs)
Land value tax (the housing market is the cause of so much inequality because it's taxed wrong)
A single clearing system for all financial transactions (makes tax evasion and tax shopping way, way harder. Ability for tiny tax percentage of all transactions).
But if I were to pick just one, higher taxes is obviously the single measure that would help.
Ooh, now that's an interesting question. I personally think a Negative Income Tax would work splendidly to, so that's my pick—although stopping government jobs/grants from having hard requirements...
Ooh, now that's an interesting question.
I personally think a Negative Income Tax would work splendidly to, so that's my pick—although stopping government jobs/grants from having hard requirements beyond "Probable Cause to Believe This Person Will Achieve the Goal We Want Achieved" would immensely help, too—the poor tend to get locked out of attaining those requirements, and I generally find it a bit odd with the majority of them, and intensely sad with all of them—seeing other humans with low opportunity is heartbreaking.
I think the idea of better requirements for government activities would help a ton. Hadn't thought of how important that would be! But I'm really skeptical in relation to your second idea, the...
I think the idea of better requirements for government activities would help a ton. Hadn't thought of how important that would be!
But I'm really skeptical in relation to your second idea, the negative income tax.
Negative income tax is basically a guaranteed minimum income that's set at a specific threshold. It disincentivizes working. Especially for the groups who should be integrated into society the very most, like students, and minority women.
I'll give a couple real life examples for why that's really problematic.
The first requirements that had to be embedded into such a system was that you had to have had a large enough income for a long enough time before you can get benefits. Otherwise all students still in school would get benefits, or it'd be better for them economically not to study and not to work for a time while travelling, chilling, doing non-profit work etc. and leaving on small means. This creates huge inequality later on in terms of home-ownership, education levels etc. that have much longer lasting effects.
The same goes for any basic income system.
Also, anyone on the fence for if they wanted to work or not is disincentivized from working by a basic income. Say if a family has young children and parents are deciding whether one of them stays at home, they alternate staying at home or they get childcare. If it's a question of economy, the guaranteed income incentivizes the not working at cost to public finance any time someone is in doubt.
Groups strongly underrepresented in the workforce are immigrants who speak little of the language in the society they come to. Especially women and older people. Other underrepresented groups include people with disabilities and people struggling with chronic health issues.
All those groups are at the highest risk of falling out of society with all the health and wellness risks associated.
So the groups that would most benefit by a guaranteed basic income are those who we have a bunch of programs to integrate in society. We'd effectively put a large wad of cash up against the money we're already spending on integrating them.
The groups who're underrepresented in the workforce are those who get hurt the most by falling outside of society because they don't have large and meaningful social networks.
Sure, they get fish and if you're starving, that's great. But we're not teaching them to fish while feeding them in the meantime.
You're targeting a basic income. A Negative Income Tax is different than a basic income in many ways. It's best described as a "complicated income." However, the more popular implementation places...
You're targeting a basic income. A Negative Income Tax is different than a basic income in many ways. It's best described as a "complicated income." However, the more popular implementation places it at "applies only if working," which is the standard in-practice for similar things. (Ala, the UK's Working Tax Credit; albeit that's disappointingly different from an NIT than I'd like.) I highly recommend you read about what a Negative Income Tax is, and a few of the different interpretations of it; I think you'll find it's a lot closer to something that both of us can agree would be pretty effective compared to a basic income.
On top of that, an NIT more or less entirely eliminates the need for most welfare programs (most popular interpretations involve funding one by cutting welfare to various degrees of extremity); and given welfare programs have a seriously long history of having more administrative costs than even close to what the end-users receive, replacing the vast majority of welfare programs with an NIT would generally make us come out ahead financially, make us come out better from a guilt standpoint (a good amount of people tend to not take welfare they're entitled to as a matter of pride, even when they or their children very much need it), and make us better from an educational standpoint.
Norway's system has a few very notable flaws: in particular, it (lightly) discourages people from seeking higher education - never mind a career in academia - which is absolutely the wrong thing to do, and encourages that its students tend to live a bit worse off than the rest of its society.
Unemployment benefits in general shouldn't necessarily be a thing; especially not like Norway's. There're always open jobs or a career in academia to fall back on; the jobs might not be in a field a person necessarily enjoys, but most of them are necessary to society in some way.
I've read Friedman and more modern takes on NIT. You're suggesting a regressive NIT? You make nothing, you get nothing. You make $2000 a month. You get say a negative rate of say 25% so your...
I've read Friedman and more modern takes on NIT.
You're suggesting a regressive NIT?
You make nothing, you get nothing.
You make $2000 a month. You get say a negative rate of say 25% so your take-home pay is $2500.
You make $3000 a month. You either get a negative rate of 25% or 20% or whatever so your take-home is $3750 or $3600. You get more state money even though you're making more.
There's a reason plans for NIT pretty much always move towards a limit incentive: otherwise you have bracket thresholds where you make very little more overall by working slightly more. That limit incentive becomes a basic income floor in practice.
Doesn't regressive NIT simply write off those very worst off and leave them behind?
Means-tested benefit programs are both inefficient, and economists' analyses of the programs (especially in Great Britain) keep showing that it's those who're worst off that don't supply the documentation that gives them means-tested benefit at all.
NIT does get rid of the need for many welfare systems if you accept that groups of poor people simply won't be able to afford living in a lot of communities. Otherwise you still need corrective measures for housing costs, to give one example.
Or you need social programs to aid those with for example chronic illnesses (I wouldn't want those programs to be welfare programs and means-tested based on the arguments of efficiency you point out, and the stats showing that means-testing leaves the worst off being the group to mostly not get the benefits they qualify for).
Unemployment benefits in general are necessary. Especially in a system of regressive NIT where those who make nothing get nothing extra to live from. You can't have a society where people starve when they lose their jobs.
If unemployment benefits aren't necessary, you must be assuming perfect and instantaneous labor mobility, a perfect match of qualifications and required skills, completely elastic supply/demand of worker compensation and fluid hiring without seasonal differences.
When you lose a job, you don't have an income the next day. What are you supposed to live off of? You aren't getting NIT because you aren't making an income. You may have to move (contracts for housing don't stop immediately). You definitively need to match with a suitable employer before you start getting an income again.
One thing is for people who can fall back on academia or work in a field they don't enjoy. Those are luxury problems.
It's something else to be employed in a field where poverty is much more highly prevalent. Say for construction workers, or fast food employees.
What happens if you work a seasonal job, say tourism, and lose your job mid-season? Too bad for the rest of the season intra-season opportunities in seasonal production (say the apple-season at a food processing plant) are notoriously evasive.
We live in a society where specialized skills become requirements for more and more types of work, also manual labor. Those skills require training. The societal cost from having to re-train people for a ton of different skills instead of having a general trade they can follow are huge sunk costs that aren't recouped.
(Will respond in morning, I'm burnt out on long-form communication today. This has been fun and I look forward to continuing it! But wow I've been basically non-stop writing solely synchronous...
(Will respond in morning, I'm burnt out on long-form communication today. This has been fun and I look forward to continuing it! But wow I've been basically non-stop writing solely synchronous long-form communication for the past four or five hours and it was getting to be a bit too much. I absolutely will get back to you though, and I look forward to it! I just need a little less "Writing in Books" and more "talking over the phone with a friend" right now, ha.)
This is what tildes is all about! Actual conversations and talking about the issues. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts because I really would want NIT to work because it'd be so efficient...
This is what tildes is all about! Actual conversations and talking about the issues.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts because I really would want NIT to work because it'd be so efficient and easy to administrate, if the practical considerations work.
Sorry it took so long! Bit of a distraction came up and ended up taking a bit of a Net-purge! Sort of sorting my thoughts at the moment and will respond in just a bit! EDIT: AHHHH I CAN'T GET A...
Sorry it took so long! Bit of a distraction came up and ended up taking a bit of a Net-purge!
Sort of sorting my thoughts at the moment and will respond in just a bit!
EDIT: AHHHH I CAN'T GET A FREE MINUTE. After a quick anniversary dinner.
Can you really separate these risks from the risks of poverty itself? Lots of rich people do fine without a job. The way I see it, a UBI/NIT is just a way of giving everyone "rich parents" to fall...
All those groups are at the highest risk of falling out of society with all the health and wellness risks associated.
Can you really separate these risks from the risks of poverty itself? Lots of rich people do fine without a job.
The way I see it, a UBI/NIT is just a way of giving everyone "rich parents" to fall back on—many people in this situation still have jobs or contribute in other ways to society.
In the US? Electoral reform. If the government isn't responsive to the will of the people alone then any policy 'wins' are rendered fragile by the fact that the same or another party can be...
In the US? Electoral reform.
If the government isn't responsive to the will of the people alone then any policy 'wins' are rendered fragile by the fact that the same or another party can be perverted by non-public interests and could just as easily reverse it following the next election. Such interests will also work to slow or prevent the introduction of such policy in its infant stages.
However, electoral reform is not a sexy issue to talk about, it will face a lot of resistance and unfortunately a number of its proponents borderline on zealotry for their preferred replacement system, all of which make it a difficult issue to work with.
I'm curious, if people had to pick one policy that would help alleviate wealth inequality what would you pick?
I think there are at least four measures required to make a real dent in today's global tax environment:
But if I were to pick just one, higher taxes is obviously the single measure that would help.
Ooh, now that's an interesting question.
I personally think a Negative Income Tax would work splendidly to, so that's my pick—although stopping government jobs/grants from having hard requirements beyond "Probable Cause to Believe This Person Will Achieve the Goal We Want Achieved" would immensely help, too—the poor tend to get locked out of attaining those requirements, and I generally find it a bit odd with the majority of them, and intensely sad with all of them—seeing other humans with low opportunity is heartbreaking.
I think the idea of better requirements for government activities would help a ton. Hadn't thought of how important that would be!
But I'm really skeptical in relation to your second idea, the negative income tax.
Negative income tax is basically a guaranteed minimum income that's set at a specific threshold. It disincentivizes working. Especially for the groups who should be integrated into society the very most, like students, and minority women.
I'll give a couple real life examples for why that's really problematic.
Norway has a system of extensive unemployment benefits which is money for living off of when you're out of work.
The first requirements that had to be embedded into such a system was that you had to have had a large enough income for a long enough time before you can get benefits. Otherwise all students still in school would get benefits, or it'd be better for them economically not to study and not to work for a time while travelling, chilling, doing non-profit work etc. and leaving on small means. This creates huge inequality later on in terms of home-ownership, education levels etc. that have much longer lasting effects.
The same goes for any basic income system.
Also, anyone on the fence for if they wanted to work or not is disincentivized from working by a basic income. Say if a family has young children and parents are deciding whether one of them stays at home, they alternate staying at home or they get childcare. If it's a question of economy, the guaranteed income incentivizes the not working at cost to public finance any time someone is in doubt.
Groups strongly underrepresented in the workforce are immigrants who speak little of the language in the society they come to. Especially women and older people. Other underrepresented groups include people with disabilities and people struggling with chronic health issues.
All those groups are at the highest risk of falling out of society with all the health and wellness risks associated.
So the groups that would most benefit by a guaranteed basic income are those who we have a bunch of programs to integrate in society. We'd effectively put a large wad of cash up against the money we're already spending on integrating them.
The groups who're underrepresented in the workforce are those who get hurt the most by falling outside of society because they don't have large and meaningful social networks.
Sure, they get fish and if you're starving, that's great. But we're not teaching them to fish while feeding them in the meantime.
You're targeting a basic income. A Negative Income Tax is different than a basic income in many ways. It's best described as a "complicated income." However, the more popular implementation places it at "applies only if working," which is the standard in-practice for similar things. (Ala, the UK's Working Tax Credit; albeit that's disappointingly different from an NIT than I'd like.) I highly recommend you read about what a Negative Income Tax is, and a few of the different interpretations of it; I think you'll find it's a lot closer to something that both of us can agree would be pretty effective compared to a basic income.
On top of that, an NIT more or less entirely eliminates the need for most welfare programs (most popular interpretations involve funding one by cutting welfare to various degrees of extremity); and given welfare programs have a seriously long history of having more administrative costs than even close to what the end-users receive, replacing the vast majority of welfare programs with an NIT would generally make us come out ahead financially, make us come out better from a guilt standpoint (a good amount of people tend to not take welfare they're entitled to as a matter of pride, even when they or their children very much need it), and make us better from an educational standpoint.
Norway's system has a few very notable flaws: in particular, it (lightly) discourages people from seeking higher education - never mind a career in academia - which is absolutely the wrong thing to do, and encourages that its students tend to live a bit worse off than the rest of its society.
Unemployment benefits in general shouldn't necessarily be a thing; especially not like Norway's. There're always open jobs or a career in academia to fall back on; the jobs might not be in a field a person necessarily enjoys, but most of them are necessary to society in some way.
I've read Friedman and more modern takes on NIT.
You're suggesting a regressive NIT?
You make nothing, you get nothing.
You make $2000 a month. You get say a negative rate of say 25% so your take-home pay is $2500.
You make $3000 a month. You either get a negative rate of 25% or 20% or whatever so your take-home is $3750 or $3600. You get more state money even though you're making more.
There's a reason plans for NIT pretty much always move towards a limit incentive: otherwise you have bracket thresholds where you make very little more overall by working slightly more. That limit incentive becomes a basic income floor in practice.
Doesn't regressive NIT simply write off those very worst off and leave them behind?
Means-tested benefit programs are both inefficient, and economists' analyses of the programs (especially in Great Britain) keep showing that it's those who're worst off that don't supply the documentation that gives them means-tested benefit at all.
NIT does get rid of the need for many welfare systems if you accept that groups of poor people simply won't be able to afford living in a lot of communities. Otherwise you still need corrective measures for housing costs, to give one example.
Or you need social programs to aid those with for example chronic illnesses (I wouldn't want those programs to be welfare programs and means-tested based on the arguments of efficiency you point out, and the stats showing that means-testing leaves the worst off being the group to mostly not get the benefits they qualify for).
Unemployment benefits in general are necessary. Especially in a system of regressive NIT where those who make nothing get nothing extra to live from. You can't have a society where people starve when they lose their jobs.
If unemployment benefits aren't necessary, you must be assuming perfect and instantaneous labor mobility, a perfect match of qualifications and required skills, completely elastic supply/demand of worker compensation and fluid hiring without seasonal differences.
When you lose a job, you don't have an income the next day. What are you supposed to live off of? You aren't getting NIT because you aren't making an income. You may have to move (contracts for housing don't stop immediately). You definitively need to match with a suitable employer before you start getting an income again.
One thing is for people who can fall back on academia or work in a field they don't enjoy. Those are luxury problems.
It's something else to be employed in a field where poverty is much more highly prevalent. Say for construction workers, or fast food employees.
What happens if you work a seasonal job, say tourism, and lose your job mid-season? Too bad for the rest of the season intra-season opportunities in seasonal production (say the apple-season at a food processing plant) are notoriously evasive.
We live in a society where specialized skills become requirements for more and more types of work, also manual labor. Those skills require training. The societal cost from having to re-train people for a ton of different skills instead of having a general trade they can follow are huge sunk costs that aren't recouped.
(Will respond in morning, I'm burnt out on long-form communication today. This has been fun and I look forward to continuing it! But wow I've been basically non-stop writing solely synchronous long-form communication for the past four or five hours and it was getting to be a bit too much. I absolutely will get back to you though, and I look forward to it! I just need a little less "Writing in Books" and more "talking over the phone with a friend" right now, ha.)
This is what tildes is all about! Actual conversations and talking about the issues.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts because I really would want NIT to work because it'd be so efficient and easy to administrate, if the practical considerations work.
Have a good one :)
Sorry it took so long! Bit of a distraction came up and ended up taking a bit of a Net-purge!
Sort of sorting my thoughts at the moment and will respond in just a bit!
EDIT: AHHHH I CAN'T GET A FREE MINUTE. After a quick anniversary dinner.
Can you really separate these risks from the risks of poverty itself? Lots of rich people do fine without a job.
The way I see it, a UBI/NIT is just a way of giving everyone "rich parents" to fall back on—many people in this situation still have jobs or contribute in other ways to society.
In the US? Electoral reform.
If the government isn't responsive to the will of the people alone then any policy 'wins' are rendered fragile by the fact that the same or another party can be perverted by non-public interests and could just as easily reverse it following the next election. Such interests will also work to slow or prevent the introduction of such policy in its infant stages.
However, electoral reform is not a sexy issue to talk about, it will face a lot of resistance and unfortunately a number of its proponents borderline on zealotry for their preferred replacement system, all of which make it a difficult issue to work with.