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Hey Y'all Let's Talk about Basic Income
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Oh yeah some day on the way to socialist utopia SS would become unnecessarily redundant. But starting out when I'd hope the goal is to just cut people down to 20-30 hour work weeks or work on what they're passionate about it'd be a good idea for those who have trouble doing either.
"The government is paying you money to live" is manifestly untrue for Social Security.
Social Security is funded through its own tax (the payroll tax) and is accounted separately from the US government's general budget. In fact, a significant portion of the United States government's national debt is debt that the government owes to the Social Security fund.
Social Security has been revenue-positive for most of its existence, and a corollary is that the average worker receives slightly less in retirement benefits than his or her total contribution.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Which is all nothing more then a bunch of accounting flim-flam, as shown by the fact that the government steals from the SS fund all the time. The program literally doesn't even have it's own separate tax funding when you look at how the government actually behaves.
SS is just a government program to keep old people alive with the illusion of being something else.
Even if you ignore the accounting "flim-flam" (which is a patently silly reaction, IMO), there is still one huge difference:
Social Security pays out more based on prior work history.
UBI is not concerned with prior work history.
So if you attempted to replace UBI with Social Security right now, you still have to consider that some people will receive less in UBI than they receive in Social Security, while others will receive more, and that presents a pretty significant challenge.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
No, it is not. The government uses the payroll tax to fund general operations. You literally conceded this before I even brought it up, as one would hope given how simple it is to show.
The idea that SS is separately funded is a bunch of hogwash. The US government uses it as a pass-through.
Theoretically it's supposed to be entirely separately but the way it actually works is that the payroll tax funds the US government.
Which I already addressed above when I pointed out you'd need to bridge the change with some sort of program. Any major overhaul of a retirement or savings program like SS needs something like that as it changes.
But other then that retirement would just entail living off UBI+savings instead of UBI+wages. You have personal retirement savings vehicles for people and you use UBI to do what SS is supposed to do, which is keeping people too old to work from starving to death.
If you wish to argue that this is an accounting fiction, that's fine, but then so is every other law that governs money held safe by a third party, including all deposit accounts, which means that the only money that belongs to you is whatever gold coins you've managed to stuff under your mattress.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Uh no. The government could change the law tomorrow. And that money is not yours specifically because, hey, the people who first received SS didn't pay anything into it. There is not a tiny bank account in the SS trust fund with your name on it. That whole idea is an accounting fiction.
You pay payroll taxes to fund it (and the US government) and they set an amount that you get paid out which comes out of the big pile o money.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Uh, I do, cause it will be. It just won't pay out as much.
Unless someone mails me a huge check it better be.
You're going to see those boomers working longer and retiring later. Already do in a lot of industries.
Can you please explain how it's earned?
what we could do is start making social security and unemployment entirely optional since the idea that people would starve without it would vanish, but still honor all its existing obligations
unemployment still provides a valuable service too, which again we could make optional since the public need would be gone
the other alternative is instantly abolish all inputs into SSI and UI and just start paying all of the accounts out to everyone who has put money into them, added to their UBI payment
You live long enough to require it. You also pay for it throughout a lifetime of work.
It's only as "earned" as any other tax funded service.
This is one of the most ridiculous things. It's an evolution to allow conservative retirees to ferociously defend a social welfare program without compromising their anti-government principles, by pretending that social security is like their 401k and not an FDR brain child social safety net.
Now can we get back to the thread topic?
This is "I will eat my vegetables if you buy me a pony."
Eh, close but not quite.
Social Security is indeed something you earn and you are entitled to the programs benefits, however depending on when you die and if you are disabled or not the amount you get out of it may be less than what you put in, or it can be significantly more. If you view social security as money in vs money out Social Security steals a lot of money from lots of people. It is designed primarily as a safety net, you are not just paying into SS for income post retirement, you are paying in for security. If you get injured and can no longer work or retire and for some reason all your other investments blew up, you would still have SS.
Social Security is based on the amount you pay in via 12.4% of your total paycheck (your employer pays half of this before even printing your paycheck with the rest of the social security tax withheld). As a retirement investment, it's piss poor, rates almost equally with shoving 12% of your paycheck into a pillow and retrieving it after you retire. This is because social security is not an investment, you do not get the money out that you put in. Social Security works more like an insurance scheme. The money you put in determines what plan you subscribe to. The more money you put in, the better plan you get, and the more money per month you get in benefits when you retire.
If you die before you can start collecting those checks that money doesn't go to your kids or spouse like any real investment.
Basic Income or a Negative Income Tax system will still require that Social Security exist, and they can exist side by side just fine, just take 12.4% of your BI and send that to SS.
So long as it's guaranteed that you would get at least as much from UBI as you would from SS (topped up if necessary for current people) you can get rid of it without problems. Or, probably easier, change SS to be a UBI, effectively replacing it without the name-changing that would freak people out
Why? UBI is already paying you.
I would not be in favor of UBI or NIT providing a comfortable living for people as well. It should be enough to get by - but not something you should be able to live comfortably on.
Sure you can tack on disability or survivors benefits to UBI/NIT but that means touching social security and if you want a decent chance of getting UBI or NIT through - you cannot touch SS. There isn't any particular reason that I can find that would require that SS be changed or removed under UBI/NIT.
Yeah, but it also provides basic income for retired people. Mostly I'm pretty sure.
Like, you'd need something else to provide other services, some of which SS covers now, but you wouldn't need the main function of SS anymore and that would involve fundamentally changing SS.
Because there's literally no reason for them to co-exist, especially since on of the big points of UBI is to eliminate this kind of stupid patchwork of programs.
So, what's the point in getting rid of social security?
Social security already has the tax structure set up to support it, and it would be entirely compatible with UBI.
Because it would be yet another program on top of those other ones. Doing exactly the same thing. Because those other programs will exist either way, whereas SS as a basic income scheme doesn't have to.
There's literally no reason to have two separate basic income programs once you turn 65.
So for a current retiree that earned 100k a year and retires now earns around $1,973 in SS benefits per month.
If you earned 50k a year and retire you would earn around $1,248 per month. So how would you end SS and be fair to both of these individuals? SS wont work unless people are paying in. So ending it will be a huge financial burden on the government if you are going to continue to pay out the benefits these individuals are entitled to.
Sure it would be nice to wave a magic wand and poof there goes SS, but we cant. There is reality in the way. Politically and socially we cant just get rid of SS.
So lets say there is basic income at 2k per month (for easy numbers!) and the basic income is reduced 50 cents per dollar you earn. SS would count as earnings meaning that your 2k of basic income gets reduced to 1,013.5 per month for the first individual. So they earn 1.9k from SS and 1k from basic income and are living on almost 3k a month. And that's if we leave SS alone. If we remove SS that means were removing almost 2k per month from that individual and replacing it with 2k per month... how is that totally not shafting that individual?
For instance, the amount of income certain states give out could vary. One state might have no UBI at all where another provides enough for you to live your whole life on it.
Would this be any kind of a good idea? What are the benefits?
No. No. None.
This design would turn it into Medicaid and it would be terrible.
i think this is a promising avenue. as it stands we have an overeducated population with an overworked professional class. it won't square the income disparity between the investor class and the working world (which is the central problem) but its worthwhile on its own merits IMO.
They told me that if government borrowing kept up the way it is, by the time I retired they could afford to pay me 77% of what they pay out now, adjusted for inflation.
It also said that they are planning to pay the full 100%.
They probably won't.
I'm planning on it not being there when I retire, because you can't rely on anyone but yourself.
Once that upper level of wealth in our job market gets pushed down because boomers finally keel over, we should be able to chunk away huge amounts of money for retirement based on how we deal with the little amount of money we've been partitioned.
Maybe even be able to retire at 55 if we're lucky!
Explain.
Because I don't see how UBI will work anyway when costs of living can be so wildly different throughout the country.
If someone lives in San Francisco and they need basic income, 2K a month isn't going to cut it. That same 2K a month though could be just fine in Mississippi. How do you deal with this unfairness?
Foie gras is amazing.
People are gonna have to move.