
Negative income tax - dmmalam
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax
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citizensixteen
I wonder if this is a better alternative to the guaranteed minimum (basic)
income.

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d6e
It's much simpler.
[https://youtu.be/xtpgkX588nM](https://youtu.be/xtpgkX588nM)

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danjayh
"the idea of a negative income tax is to treat people who are poor the same
way we treat people who are rich"

... BS ...

There is nothing the _same_ about taking a significant amount of money from
one group and giving a significant amount of money to another group, even if
you use a unified mechanism to accomplish it. Regardless of how you feel about
the issue, let's at least keep the discourse honest.

I'll be honest: although most people around here are fans of basic income,
negative income tax, etc., I am not for one simple reason: the second that
more than 50% of the population is on the 'receiving' end of things and not on
the 'paying' end, the motivation of society as a whole to enforce responsible
governance and efficient use of government funds diminishes significantly. The
pain of waste just doesn't sting so badly when it's not "your" money being
wasted.

As a nation, we already pay a disgusting portion of our total income tax
revenue toward interest (over 25% if you exclude FICA income). As painful as
it may be, at some point our country is going to have to own up to the credit
binge we've been on and either significantly raise taxes & keep spending the
same, or keep taxes the same & significantly reduce spending to keep our debt
problem from getting further out of control. Alternatively, the federal
government could reclaim control of the money supply from the federal reserve
and inflate its way out, but this is also really a form of tax; if the assets
& income you had yesterday are worth less today because the government printed
itself some funds ... you have been taxed, my friend.

All of these things, however, would be political suicide and I don't expect to
see it happen any time soon.

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AstralStorm
So what is your solution to inequality that can explode at any time into
riots? People have better standards of life and are on the whole less violent,
but this outcome is not unthinkable...

It is easy to criticise ideas unconstructively. And circuses can only do so
much.

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danjayh
I don't think that inequality in itself is a problem - it really doesn't
matter how rich the super-rich are, as long as the vast majority of the people
can afford basic housing, food, and transportation with an entry level job.
Currently, the standard of living for the poor in the US is still much higher
than the vast majority of the world. If that changes in a significant way,
we'll have to become more competitive with the rest of the world, and that's
not something we should do until we absolutely have to: although the
relatively regulation-free manufacturing environment that exists in places
like China has worked wonders for creating jobs and increasing wages, Chinese
cities are not pleasant places to be. I _DO_ think there is room to relax a
lot of regulations (across the board - environmental, employment, and
financial ... sarbox comes to mind), and I _do_ think that this would help to
bring back jobs, I just _don 't_ think that we should go as far as allowing
the kinds of things that folks in 3rd and 2nd world economies get away with.

As an anecdotal example, I live in the midwest and have a couple of friends
who have bottom-of-the-barrel jobs, making maybe $10/hr (which is what you get
at McD's around here). That's enough that with careful management of their
funds they were able to buy a very small house, eat modestly, drive a car, and
cover the expenses for their child (we don't have smog laws here, so you can
get a serviceable car for < $1k). They're not particularly motivated people,
and haven't put any effort into getting better jobs, but they're also OK with
living in the bad part of town in a postage stamp house. Nonetheless, their
standard of living is _dramatically_ higher than that of the vast majority of
the rest of the world, and even though they're by far on the bottom end of the
income scale, they're doing just fine.

We have fairly permissive zoning laws and building codes here, and people pop
up houses like it's going out of style, so housing is very cheap compared to
other parts of the country (the downside being that we have huge neighborhoods
of small, cheaply built houses). Even though I don't particularly enjoy the
look of these neighborhoods, they do serve a purpose, and I'm glad that we let
people build them because they enable people like my friends to live on a very
tight budget (and quite honestly, what somebody wants to build on their
private property isn't anybody else's business, unless it's dangerous to
people outside of the property in some way). True story: I needed a hay barn
and I needed it to be extremely cheap, so I bought the ass-end of a cube van
and plopped it on the back of my property. No flak from the township :). The
chassis of the cube van is now living a happy life as a septic pumping truck.

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ionised
So to put it simply, we should never strive for something more than 'on or
slightly above the breadline' for everyone?

Your view of the world and how it should be is incredibly depressing and
defeatist to me.

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danjayh
Quite to the contrary - I feel that we should strive to provide excellent
opportunities to all. I feel no need to provide a comfortable life straight-
away, though - if we've provided the opportunity, the walk between being poor
and living comfortably is something that I'm fine with leaving to individuals.

And the fact that you think my friends are living 'just above the breadline'
is somewhat interesting to me; I would disagree. The _own_ , not rent, a home.
They have and cashflow a child (a very expensive thing these days, and
considering the cost to society and the planet, it _should_ be a privilege).
Not only do they have food, but they never want for it (granted, they can't
spend $15 on fast food for the family whenever they don't feel like cooking).
They have a _car_. If that's 'on or slightly above the breadline', then we
might not even be using a common vocabulary.

