Hello Mod 🖖

we should aspire to give people housing where they want to live

@alyaza Absolutely, that’s exactly the underlying idea of UBI imho, to give people choice. An UBI puts people in a much better position to negotiate all kinds of contracts like rent, mortgage, or employment, as they don’t have to accept the next best offer for having trouble making ends meet.

@SubArcticTundra How would markets work then? People want different things, different volumes, they want to have choice. I don’t see how product and service exchange would be organised if everything is for free.

The way these are usually envisioned long term is that tax rates go up to progressively eat up the universal payment.

@Kichae I agree there are many UBI schemes that don’t really deserve the name for various reasons. A true universal basic income, however, could never be eaten up by tax for whatever group of people exactly because it’s universal and basic.

A possible scheme, for example, would be that a UBI of 1,600 is guaranteed by the state, while every income above the UBI level is then taxed. So if you earn 2,000 and the tax rate is 40%, your tax amounts to (2,000 - 1,600)*0.4 = 160.

An income of 1,600 would mean you pay no taxes at all as the 1,600 is the UBI, and any income below 1,600 triggered a negative tax rate (for example, if one earned 1,000 they would be given 600 from the state).

In a nutshell: a real UBI can never be lowered by tax or any other public measures. Practically all researchers agree that this a very important feature of any UBI, no matter how it is designed.