406
Why Republicans are fighting the basic-income programs many cities and states are adopting: 'Is money a birthright now?'
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2024
406 points (99.0% liked)
politics
19241 readers
2459 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
People having access to basic necessities is a distortion of market functions, so such the markets. The economy is supposed to work for us, not the other way around, so I really couldn't care less if it's distorted in ways that benefit ordinary people.
Don’t disagree, also pretty close to impossible to have a non distorted market place considering you’re dealing with people, not strictly rational forces. My point is more the perspective from people who may not consider a financial subsidy via UBI to be providing value as it distorts the value of income. I’m not a fan of UBI being “universal” in the sense that people who don’t need it still getting access (it’s main benefit is it simplifies access and avoids needing to prove income), but its certainly simpler and less distorting than say housing vouchers and food subsidies. That being said, I don’t think most people actually care about the well being of those less fortunate and that’s representative in our elected officials.
Regarding the idea of basic income being universal, it makes a lot more sense when you think of income tax and basic income being facets of a single system that decides how much each person owes the government in income tax; basic income is just negative tax. We already have a mechanism for making sure wealthier people pay more: tax brackets. People who don't need basic income automatically end up with a positive tax burden. You could describe it as gradually phasing out basic income for people who make over a certain amount, but that's mathematically equivalent to just adding a tax bracket for low income earners.
The thing I'd really want to avoid is a system where earning an extra dollar can put you over some threshold where lose all your basic income, becoming poorer as a result. A lot of real programs for low-income people work that way, and it creates what's known as a poverty trap, where people can't afford to get out of poverty because getting on a career track that would lead to them not needing benefits anymore leads to a short-term loss of benefits that they can't afford to lose.
To me, it always comes back down to what’s the objective, what’s are the options to solve or improve the results. If the goal is to provide basic fundamental needs for your population, define what basic fundamental needs are: is it housing, food security, a wage where people have the option to save? All of those things are moral, desirable things that I would argue every person on the planet should have. In reality, people are self interested, care about people closest to them or most similar to themselves, and we as a society don’t truly have the conversation about what impact solving that problem would have to their own social stature. Case in point, housing - among several reasons why housing is so scarce is that its in the interest of those with secure housing to limit access to it. I think UBI is similar in that it closes the gap in comparison between the middle class and the lower worker class - there’s a lot of arguably selfish justification for why that poor person deserves to remain poorer than thou. The other question which I personally think is somewhat justifiable, does UBI replace or supplement existing social safety net programs? Do you remove, say housing subsidies when you create a $2000/mo UBI? Does that establish a pricing floor for goods and services? Do businesses reduce their wages by the amount of UBI or do they decide to relocate to a place with lower taxation? Much like universal health care, I really think this is something that needs to be implemented at scale on the federal level due to the relative ease of people and companies relocating to places where their tax burden would be reduced. That being said, its insanity to ban UBI when its essentially just a reform of what we do today - republican posturing is out of control and doesn’t come with any conservative leaning solutions to the same social issues.