
A Plan to Reform Welfare and Taxes to Provide Every American Citizen with UBI - 2noame
https://medium.com/economicsecproj/how-to-reform-welfare-and-taxes-to-provide-every-american-citizen-with-a-basic-income-bc67d3f4c2b8
======
SamReidHughes
So in summary, all we need to do to implement basic income is to take money
from people trading stuff, owning stuff, selling stuff, borrowing stuff, or
emitting CO2 (but only if you do it in America). Don't flinch! They'll tax
that too.

~~~
dbpatterson
Or, to summarize, we need to take some of the money from the people who are
currently extracting it from everyone else...

Money, and wealth, is not owned, it is collectively created. Without
collective enforcement of monetary value, currency is useless. Without
collective enforcment of property laws, property rights don't exist. The only
non-collective value that exists is individual power, usually via violence.
Unless you want to live in a society run by armed militias (see, for example,
various failed states), you depend on collective enforcement. Taxes are not a
matter of taking _back_, they are fees for services rendered for that
collective enforcement. Your wealth would not exist without society. How much
society charges to allow you to have that wealth is what we, as a society,
need to decide.

~~~
rbritton
But where does it stop? When are people expected to assume a degree of
personal responsibility? It may sound cruel, but what value to society are
people who mooch off the effort of others and provide nothing of their own?
There are 6 million [0] open job positions, surely a person could find
something suitable in one of those, even if just a stepping stone?

Individuals and businesses extracting wealth by providing a good or service is
capitalism. Yes, there are bad apples in the bunch, probably most often those
at the highest income levels. But the vast majority of those who are currently
taxed for the various welfare services and who would be further taxed to
implement a UBI are not in that bunch. What right does a minority of society
have to demand a portion of their labor?

[0]: [https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2017/job-openings-rose-
to-6-poi...](https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2017/job-openings-rose-
to-6-point-0-million-in-april-2017.htm)

------
senorjazz
For a country that doesn't believe (in big enough numbers) about providing
universal health care to all, a country that has some of the lowest welfare
provisions in the developed world, I don't see how it would ever come about to
go for UBI.

Are all these discussions just academic or is it a real posibility? As I just
don't see it every happening and certainly not in the US - ever

~~~
wmf
Yeah, if the US wanted to become Sweden it seems like we would have done it
already. But the article is an interesting counterpoint to arguments that
there literally isn't enough money to be found to pay for basic income.

------
dleslie
UBI must first overcome the unwillingness of citizens to trust individuals to
be responsible for choosing how to best spend public funds to aid themselves;
and to accept that they may often disagree.

~~~
mcbruiser3
sounds like you need to get out more. there are plenty of responsible albeit
"down on their luck" types. the issue is all the others.. the loafers, drug
addicts, criminals, etc. and please don't be so naive as to pretend they don't
exist.

~~~
dleslie
I think that they do exist, and I have no problem with them spending UBI as
they see fit.

