This keeps popping up. It's genuinely confusing to me. What do you think people on BI would do all day? Just sit around and watch Netflix?
Rly?
Actually yeah, I personally have people in my own family who abuse various other systems of financial support. I have an Aunt and Uncle who've been milking the system for years...they pretty much sit around all day and watch TV.
Yeah, that would be the idea. Income redistribution and all that.
...and that's where we'll always be in disagreement, I'll never agree to rob Peter to give to Paul...regardless of how rich Peter is, and how poor Paul is.
"Let's look at the uber-rich. So this time let's imagine you are earning $1 billion dollars a year, and that thanks to a basic income, your after tax earnings have gone from $850 million to $600 million. At this level of income is there anything really you can't afford? Would you purchase fewer goods and services? What kinds of goods and services? No third mansion? Not quite enough anymore for that personal submarine or tropical island? Or would you perhaps still buy those and just invest less money in the finance sector on things like hedge funds and collateralized debt obligations?"-/u/2noame
This isn't a comparison between the guys who make 40k and 80k. This is a comparison between the people who's tax payments dwarf misters 40 & 80K's salaries for the next ten years combined... and said misters 40 & 80k.
Also, Mini. Are you paying attention? Because I just caught a strawman after reading through this again. Literally everyone in your hypothetical group is getting BI, reducing their effective tax rates. Tim isn't the only one getting the redistribution.
Again, people who are proponents of high minimum wages, living wages, basic income, and wealth redistribution always make sure to make the point that they're only talking about the "über rich"...as if taking something from someone against their will is okay just because they have more of it...
We wouldn't lessen the penalty for a car thief if they stole Bill Gates' car instead of an average Joe's car would we?
All of that aside, I'd like to see some logistics one what you think the cutoff line would be for who pays more, and who collects the basic income...
Even if we're only talking about the super-rich 1%'ers...how much do you really expect to get out of them?
Operating off of some 2010 data, here's some numbers to consider.
How Much Money Do The Top Income Earners Make By Percentage? | Financial Samurai
-There are about 1.4 million people that would be considered to be in the top 1% income range...
-Between those 1.4 million people combined, they made $1,685,472,000,000
-$392,149,000,000 of that is currently getting paid to taxes (~23%)
Even if we were able to find some way to enforce the tax code to make sure these 1%'ers paid something astronomical like a 63% (leaving the 23% in place for other government functions like it is today, and adding 40% onto it strictly for this redistribution program), that would create $674,188,800,000 in new redistribution funds...
$674,188,800,000 divided by 305,000,000 non-1% people = ~$2,200/person
...hmmm, it looks like a 63% effective tax rate on the 1% wouldn't quite cut it, let's expand it shall we, for this one, let's pretend that we'll hit the top 10% with a 58% effective tax rate (the current 18% effective rate being used as it's currently being used + 40% strictly for redistribution)
Top 10%'s income: $13,996,058,000,000, the additional 40% on the effective tax rate would create $5,598,423,200,000 in new redistribution funds...
$5,598,423,200,000 divided by the 285,000,000 non-10% people = ~$19,000 per person...still not a "living wage" or "basic income".
...so without even going further into the exercise, it's pretty plain to see that this couldn't be accomplished by hitting only the multi-millionaires...to get to a place where we could accomplish this goal you have, we'd have get to the point were the $90k-$150k crowd would have to start getting taxed more.
There's also several other variables that would need to be considered, does this get paid out to people who are already collecting social security or is the social security payment being subtracted from the amount that they'd typically collect? (IE: are we allowing people to be double-paid?)...how do we handle situation for the varying types of people who have no income whatsoever like retirees? some retirees are poor, some are are very well to do, yet neither currently have an income (the 70 year old poor person vs. the 70 year old millionaire both of whom are retired?)
People seem to think that the 1% is this endless pool of wealth that should be constantly tapped for more funds...the fact of the matter is we could tax the top 1% at 90% (23% getting used for government functions as it is today, plus 67% for redistribution) and that'd still only work out to be about $3500/person in this country...giving every person in this country an extra $3500/year wouldn't be a life changing event and it certainly wouldn't end poverty.
This notion that "if the 1% just paid more in taxes, everything would be okay" is a false one...
