How so? A big motivating factor to be successful for most people is to set themselves apart financially from the masses.
Edit: And of course, what would be the motivating factor for someone to give their best possible work, if the other 12 guys in their position get paid the same for less quality work?
Because many of those who excel in terms of merit now are those with the resources to support them while they perfect their craft. Money from something other than their craft is paying the bills while they gain their merit.
UBI gives that to everyone, giving everyone a shot at developing their merit.
1. "How so?" UBI doesn't mean you can't earn more, this is not communism.
2. "what would be the motivating factor" They don't, UBI is not communism. And what you say is already true at many places, and the world is still turning. The motivating factor, with UBI, is the same without it: to achieve more. UBI would just let you not fall into homelessness and / or under the poverty threshold.
> UBI would just let you not fall into homelessness and / or under the poverty threshold.
How do you figure? Why wouldn’t landlords, businesses, etc just adjust their prices based on the UBI amount. They’ll be happy to collect more money courtesy of the taxpayers.
> Why wouldn’t landlords, businesses, etc just adjust their prices based on the UBI amount.
The same reason why they don’t capture all income now: “landlords, businesses, etc.” aren’t one single monopolistic entity, there is price competition in markets for necessities that aren't regulated public utilities. There may at times be (natural or artificial) supply constraints in one or anothet market, but those are (1) separate issues from UBI, and (2) natural poison points which create political pressure for resolution.
Yeah, I don't think straight-up UBI would work in our current systems, because the market for the basic goods would absorb it, as you say (and as we experienced many times in history). I do think that it would have no negative effect of motivation though.
How much would taxes have to increase in order to provide a UBI that would keep everyone above the poverty threshold? Have you actually done the math on this?
I don't think straight-up UBI would work, in the current systems. I think it would just make every affected good that much more expensive. A similar thing happened recently in Hungary with housing prices, when the government basically put subsidy into people's pockets. And the market just ate the subsidy.
I really do like the idea of a country keeping all of its citizens above the poverty line though. If UBI isn't the way, then some other way - maybe providing goods and meals instead of money? Taking a page from the Sikh's book.
The "U" part means everyone would get it, so you don't have to opt for it, and everyone would still pay taxes
Another way to think of it is as a negative income tax - as a simple example the equation could be ((income * 0.2) - 20000), so if you make no money you get 20k, if you make 100k you pay no taxes and get nothing, if you make 200k you owe 20. This is using a flat tax rate for simplicity but then everyone get taxes 20% and everyone gets 20k. It's similar to public school - everyone pays for it and everyone gets it, but the purpose is to ensure it's there for people that wouldn't be able to afford it privately.
> The question is how many people making 200k will, given the option, take the free 20k and not work, therefore paying no taxes.
A lot of people making 200k+ have grown accustomed to the kind of lifestyle that income enables (nice house, nice car, nice restaurants, foreign vacations, sending their kids to private school, etc)-and couldn’t afford to keep doing that on 20k. Given the choice between 200k job and 200k lifestyle, and no job and 20k lifestyle, I think the majority of people already accustomed to the first option would choose to continue in it. Also, a lot of people on 200k+ already have more than 20k of savings/investments, so if they are willing to run those down, they could choose the no job/20k lifestyle today, no need to wait for UBI-yet few do.
Agreed - I'm betting that it's a small percentage of people, because anyone making that much is motivated more by the societal recognition than the money - at that point even in the US all your basic needs are met and you're just looking for brownie points, and you'll still be looking for that with an extra 20k.
As another way to think about it - do bonuses disincentivize workers? At least personally that just makes me want to do more because it's freeing up a bunch of mental energy I need to spend on finances, and then I can focus on important things aside from basic survival
I don't personally know anyone that would opt for 20k/yr over their current salary, but I know several people making over 250k that want to make more to drive their sense of societal value.
I don't agree with it, but if you want to maintain the threat of poverty to force labor you can still do that with UBI
What societal recognition? Most people I know that much are in big tech, finance and corporate law. None of us pretend to be of any value to society (thankfully -- that would be insufferable!)
$20k is not quite enough, but I can tell you that I lived the life of my dreams on $25k a year from 2016-2018. If I could guarantee that lifestyle forever I would take it over my current $300k+ job in a microsecond.
> $20k is not quite enough, but I can tell you that I lived the life of my dreams on $25k a year from 2016-2018. If I could guarantee that lifestyle forever I would take it over my current $300k+ job in a microsecond.
But government policy (even that notionally of a Constitutional character, which most UBI proposals wouldn’t be) isn’t a permanent guarantee (see abortion rights for a recent example), and if that was really true, it doesn’t take long living a $25k lifestyle on a $300k income to be able to save and make yourself a firmer guarantee of a $25k lifestyle forever than government policy would ever do.
Approximately no one does it, because as much as people making lots of money might rhetorically appeal to the attractiveness of such an idea, no one actually making that money now feels it enough to act on it.
The people who would be content to rely on minimal poverty support are, largely, doing that already, since we have such programs now and they have a much stronger disincentive to additional income than would exist with UBI due to means testing, which takes benefits away rapidly (sometimes more than 1:1) with additional income.
> The question is how many people making 200k will, given the option, take the free 20k and not work, therefore paying no taxes.
Almost certainly the same number as are making 200k now that cease additional effort beyond what is necessary to make 20k, i.e., 0.
Probably even at lower levels more people would work (at least in the open economy paying full taxes) than dobcurrently, since pushing any clawback of benefits from the low levels and high marginal rates that they kick in with means tested benefit programs to somewhere higher on the income spectrum at a lower marginal additional rate reduces the disincentive to additional work compared to the status quo.
> What if most people paying taxes now opt for UBI instead?
Most people don’t settle for poverty level income if additional effort provides a better standard of living, and UBI increases the degree to which that is true compared to means-tested aid programs (which is why, under a different name, it was proposed as a right-libertarian alternative to such programs long before becoming popular on the left.)
UBI enables meritocracy, it doesn’t kill it.