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Hey Y'all Let's Talk about Basic Income

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Posts

  • surrealitychecksurrealitycheck lonely, but not unloved dreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered User regular
    Feral wrote: »
    Basically, only after this graph shows a concave curve does it make any sense at all to consider raising taxes on anybody below the 95th income percentile.

    total-tax-bill-income.jpg

    this graph looks much worse if you have a top 0.1 or 0.01% bracket too

    teehee

    obF2Wuw.png
  • DunderDunder Registered User regular
    Enc wrote: »
    Nbsp wrote: »
    So when do we raise taxes on anyone that is not the top 1%?

    If we are raising taxes on the top 1% we are, actually, raising taxes on everyone by the way the tax code works. You are taxed on a baseset of your income, so your income from $1->$25,000 is taxed at a certain rate, then your 25,001->$50,000 is taxed at a certain rate, and so on and so forth.

    The issue at hand is the $250,000->$TEXAS taxation rate has been lowered, and lowered, and lowered over time with no added value shown.

    Given the current wealth distribution and executive pay levels I believe $ALASKA is a better term

  • HefflingHeffling No Pic EverRegistered User regular
    zakkiel wrote: »
    Heffling wrote: »
    zakkiel wrote: »
    Dunder wrote: »
    I said I would post this when I got home, so here goes. Several posters opposing UBI have brought up the notion that this will somehow make people not work, or that proponents want less people to work etc. The basic idea behind these objections is that if people aren't forced to work, they will simply not work (also known as the American approach). So I compared labor participation rates between the US and Scandinavian countries since it is commonly agreed that the countries of tall, handsome blondes have very strong social safety nets (basically these countries allows people to not work and still live, meaning it is the very situation opponents to UBI say will make people not work).

    ...

    There are several things to discuss and question about UBI, people not working is not one of them
    Let me be more precise, since what counts as working is a fuzzy and arbitrary concept. A UBI will result in drastic drop in the amount of human labor devoted to economically beneficial goods and services. In fact, many people will leave the workforce, observational evidence of Scandinavia notwithstanding, but let's assume they don't.

    I think you're conflating labor (productivity) with employment. A UBI may cause a drop in employment levels, but probably won't cause a significant drop in labor produced. Why? Because many people will not work at the sufferance of corporations that are only willing to offer 29 hours a week at minimum wage as a way to dodge paying health insurance. People take that kind of job because there is not a better alternative, and a UBI would give them, if not a better, at least not a drastically worse alternative. This empowers the employee to negotiate.

    This makes no sense. Providing a viable alternative to work means people will use that alternative. The result of UBI will not be that everyone keeps working but with better stuff. The result will be that some people keep working with better stuff, of which some unspecified portion goes to funding the UBI, and others stop. This assumes that it's possible for the companies to provide better stuff without going under. And that depends on how many people keep working. If enough people stop working, then taxes rise on those who remain. And if taxes rise on those who remain, more people decide it's not worth it and drop out, taxes rise again, and you have GDP collapse.

    Why does it not make sense? Part time employment will be severely disincentivized for employees under a UBI, because they won't be earning enough to offset the UBI.

    It is certainly possible for companies to make better stuff without going under. Look at how companies continually post record profits. That's coming out of your pocket.

    Companies that may not be sustainable under a UBI, such as Wal-Mart, maybe shouldn't be sustainable as it really shows that the company had existed and profited at the expensive of society.

    Your tax argument is a slippery slope argument.
    zakkiel wrote: »
    zakkiel wrote: »
    What happens then? Well, let's take whoever it was a page earlier who wants to go tutor college for $8 an hour. The reason why he's going to wind up in an office job instead is that the value he provides there is a whole lot higher than the value he provides helping brittle premeds do their homework. The difference in value is so stark that, from an economic perspective, an entire laborer's worth of work disappears even though he still counts in workforce participation rates. The same holds if he decides to stay home and do letsplays, which indeed many more people will do because you no longer have to attract enough followers to live on. Instead of people doing unpleasant stuff like mopping public restrooms and garbage collection, they'll be engaged in self-actualization, or simply hobbies with enough online followers to pretend that they're doing something worthwhile.

    That person who has the choice between teaching at $8 an hour or working in a better paying office job would generally already be working in the better paying office job in the current market. If someone is tutoring others for $8 an hour, they are doing it because they love teaching and want a token investment on the students side so that they don't waste too much of their time on those not dedicated to learning.

    The productivity isn't disappearing in your scenario, it's just moving. You'd be moving that person's labor from teaching to office-work to entertainment.

    You're missing the point. Here's the post I was referring to:
    zakkiel wrote: »
    override wrote:
    if GBI was a thing I'd probably go back to tutoring at the college for $8 an hour or whatever it is they're paying now since Walker cut the budget

    I'd rather live on a low paying job + a GBI and do something I get fulfillment out of than what is actually going to happen

    eg: graduating and getting a job in an office somewhere and hating my life forever

    All labor is not equal. The person who decides to collect stamps and the person who invents an HIV vaccine are not producing equally, even if they spend the same hours at their respective tasks. How do we know how productive work is? By how much the market pays. If tutoring pays you 5k a year and an office job pays you 80k, it's because you provide way more value to everyone else by working in that office, so everyone else gives you more value in return. The person in the 5k tutoring job may technically be employed, but they are not producing nearly as much.

    Pay is an absolutely terrible metric for productivity. Look at how many corporations are in a race to the bottom of the pay scale.
    zakkiel wrote: »
    I think one consideration that people seem to overlook is that if you argue against people making Let's Play or starting their own garage bands or whatever, you're eventually arguing against the entertainment industry as a whole. For ever Taylor Swift or Pewdiepie, there are thousands of entertainers who have not been able to turn their dream into a career.

    I totally agree with your point on self-actualization. And I think that's a major goal that all humans should have, to self actualize.

    And those people go on to do something else that actually is valuable. A UBI means you can continue your useless vanity projects forever, rather than realizing that you should do something else. Also, I think self-actualization is one of the worst monstrosities ever coined in the English language. But I digress.

    Value as defined by whom? Should we get rid of all music, because less than one in ten thousand performers reaches the popularity of Taylor Swift? According to you, that's 9,999 people adding little or nothing to society.
    zakkiel wrote: »
    The UBI would create a free market condition with regards to employment. You would have to pay someone a reasonable wage above that of just barely enough to get by to get them to work for you. Working isn't disincentivized. Instead, the incentive is changed from "survival" to "ability to afford luxuries". As the Scandinavian countries show, people still want those luxuries, so they will work.

    Understand, this issue hits very close to home to me. My wife is from Denmark, and her daughter cannot work due to severe pain from a back injury. She and her husband have 3 kids. When her husband lost his job a few years ago, in America they would have been destitute and unable to ever recover. With the Danish social system, they didn't do great (no luxuries), but they got by for a couple of years while he learned drafting, and was able to find a new job. I have first hand, and obviously very anecdotal, evidence that a good social security system works.

    Scandinavia is a cherry-picked example. France and Belgium also have extensive welfare states and have workforce participations of 56% and 53% respectively. What none of these countries have is a UBI, which makes them useless for evaluating the effect of introducing same. More to the point: if a UBI doesn't reduce workforce participation, how exactly does it help with automation-driven unemployment?

    Your wife's daughter would have disability in the US, and her husband would have unemployment. These things would not help as much as they would in Denmark - but then, that's a pretty good argument for funding them more, no?

    In general, it's going to be impossible to have a conversation in this thread if the proponents of UBI can't decide what it's supposed to do. Is it a safety net? A means to extract concessions from employers (which will then presumably be taxed away)? A way for the chunks of the population made unemployable by automation to have a decent life with a permanent absence of employment?

    I'm not trying to play a game of moving goal posts. A UBI can solve multiple problems to greater and lesser degrees. For example, by acting as a safety net, it allows negotiation with employers, and allowing those situations where the negotiations falls through that the employee does not fall into destitution. There's no reason it has to be pegged into a single hole.
    zakkiel wrote: »
    zakkiel wrote: »
    Wages signal the value of the work to be performed and the difficulty of getting people who can do it to do it. A UBI muffles that signal. The result is people not doing the unfulfilling but necessary work that allows modern high standards of living.

    The UBI doesn't muffle it. There is a huge, artificial disparity between the supply/demand of jobs in the US. Corporations are focused on being leaner and squeezing more productivity out of individuals and keeping unemployment high so that employees have no room to negotiate. Look at wage stagnation in the US as an example.

    Also, keep in mind that people are perfectly willing to take a job that is unfulfilling in order to find fulfillment in the rest of their life. It's extremely difficult to find that fulfillment, however, when your focus is solely on survival.

    There is no "artificial disparity." Corporations are not engaged in a plot to maintain high unemployment. This is conspiracy goosery.

    To rebut: https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage-fixing-cartel-involved-dozens-more-companies-over-one-million-employees/

    And this is one example. There are many, many others. Breaking up unions, the 29-hour work week, etc.
    zakkiel wrote: »
    I disagree. We don't need "economically productive labor", we just need productivity. And I realize that this is a vague concept. But the idea is that each person X produces Y productivity. Automation is continually increasing the value of Y, and Y is in fact growing at a rate far exceeding our population growth. This means that we will need less labor in the future to achieve the required amount of productivity to be sustainable.

    I understand the points about new infrastructure, but investing in new infrastructure is not about sustainability. It's about growing our economy. Economic growth is not required for a UBI to be valid, just economic sustainability. Growth is certainly good, as it will allow us to reach the point at which a UBI is feasible sooner, but it's not mandatory.

    Note - Infrastructure maintenance is definitely required for sustainability.

    This is very confusing. If you have rising productivity but the economy is not growing, you either have a rapidly falling population or you are looking at a depression.

    Rapidly falling population, in this case, doesn't have to mean death. It can just be people leaving the normal labor pool to pursue their dreams.
    zakkiel wrote: »
    Do you want UBI now, or UBI in the future of mass robot-created unemployment?

    I want us to start having real discussions about a UBI now so that we're not scrambling at the last moment to implement it. I recognize that it's unrealistic to expect a UBI to be implemented across the US or globally tomorrow, but I think it's something we will need in the future.

  • HefflingHeffling No Pic EverRegistered User regular
    zakkiel wrote: »
    3) Perhaps you missed the part in Heffling's post where he talked about how UBI would free people to pursue self-actualization. Or, like, the fifty other times in this thread people have mentioned that. The reality is that every time I respond to someone's claim about what the UBI accomplishes, someone else pops up to insist that no, that's not the motivation for it all! How dare you construct such a straw man! There needs to be a term for this. Maybe rotating goal posts?

    I strongly suggest not to take anything that is my opinion and assume it is everyone's opinion. I am prone to error as much as anyone else.

    I am curious, however, how people working an unsatisfying job instead of pursuing self-actualization is a good thing.

  • HefflingHeffling No Pic EverRegistered User regular
    zakkiel wrote: »
    Don't think of UBI as "no one has to work if they don't want to" and instead as "unemployment won't cause people to disappear down an inescapable pit of poverty". A life on UBI shouldn't be easy or comfortable, but still leagues better then homelessness and starvation.

    The overall objectives would be:

    1) Making sure poverty is never so bad that it becomes inescapable.
    2) Give workers more leverage - especially the ones in the crappiest of jobs.
    3) Economic stimulation by closing the wealth gap and putting more wealth in the hands of people who will spend it in economically beneficial ways.

    All this can be accomplished more simply by improving the safety net and having the government employ more people.

    Improving the safety net, like by implementing a simple and understandable concept like UBI?

    Employment for the sake of employment is a terrible idea, and is as much a waste of someone's potential as is sitting on the sofa eating cheetos and playing video games all day. Neither have any productivity.

  • That_GuyThat_Guy I don't wanna be that guy Registered User regular
    Feral wrote: »
    Basically, only after this graph shows a concave curve does it make any sense at all to consider raising taxes on anybody below the 95th income percentile.

    total-tax-bill-income.jpg

    That graph is highly misleading. Most people in the upper 95% actually PAY almost no income taxes due to deductions and credits. After all their credits and deductions, Koch Brothers and the Walton family actually MAKE money from income taxes.

  • HefflingHeffling No Pic EverRegistered User regular
    That_Guy wrote: »
    Feral wrote: »
    Basically, only after this graph shows a concave curve does it make any sense at all to consider raising taxes on anybody below the 95th income percentile.

    total-tax-bill-income.jpg

    That graph is highly misleading. Most people in the upper 95% actually PAY almost no income taxes due to deductions and credits. After all their credits and deductions, Koch Brothers and the Walton family actually MAKE money from income taxes.

    It should say something to us, then, that even WITH all of these tax breaks they still pay as much in taxes as the 60-80% or 80-90% brackets.

  • DunderDunder Registered User regular
    That_Guy wrote: »
    Feral wrote: »
    Basically, only after this graph shows a concave curve does it make any sense at all to consider raising taxes on anybody below the 95th income percentile.

    total-tax-bill-income.jpg

    That graph is highly misleading. Most people in the upper 95% actually PAY almost no income taxes due to deductions and credits. After all their credits and deductions, Koch Brothers and the Walton family actually MAKE money from income taxes.

    Hence scheck's post at totp

  • schussschuss Registered User regular
    Top 5% is like 250k+ right? Most people in that bracket most assuredly pay lots of taxes as they're often highly paid (via salary) professionals or professional couples.
    To basically not pay any tax you need:
    1. Primarily Dividend/cap gains income - only taxed at 15% vs. normal
    2. Enough capital to invest/acquire/maintain vehicles for things like farm subsidies

    This only happens when you've amassed quite a bit more than 250k.

  • Lord_AsmodeusLord_Asmodeus goeticSobriquet: Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered User regular
    That_Guy wrote: »
    Feral wrote: »
    Basically, only after this graph shows a concave curve does it make any sense at all to consider raising taxes on anybody below the 95th income percentile.

    total-tax-bill-income.jpg

    That graph is highly misleading. Most people in the upper 95% actually PAY almost no income taxes due to deductions and credits. After all their credits and deductions, Koch Brothers and the Walton family actually MAKE money from income taxes.

    That's disgusting

    Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited July 2015
    HamHamJ wrote: »
    I'm pretty sure tutoring disadvantaged college students is far more valuable to society than the majority of office work.

    I used to do that for a living, it paid $12 an hour

    Scott Walker decided the money was better spent elsewhere : /

    I honestly would have worked there forever, even at that pittance of a pay

    override367 on
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    Heffling wrote: »
    zakkiel wrote: »
    Heffling wrote: »
    zakkiel wrote: »
    Dunder wrote: »
    I said I would post this when I got home, so here goes. Several posters opposing UBI have brought up the notion that this will somehow make people not work, or that proponents want less people to work etc. The basic idea behind these objections is that if people aren't forced to work, they will simply not work (also known as the American approach). So I compared labor participation rates between the US and Scandinavian countries since it is commonly agreed that the countries of tall, handsome blondes have very strong social safety nets (basically these countries allows people to not work and still live, meaning it is the very situation opponents to UBI say will make people not work).

    ...

    There are several things to discuss and question about UBI, people not working is not one of them
    Let me be more precise, since what counts as working is a fuzzy and arbitrary concept. A UBI will result in drastic drop in the amount of human labor devoted to economically beneficial goods and services. In fact, many people will leave the workforce, observational evidence of Scandinavia notwithstanding, but let's assume they don't.

    I think you're conflating labor (productivity) with employment. A UBI may cause a drop in employment levels, but probably won't cause a significant drop in labor produced. Why? Because many people will not work at the sufferance of corporations that are only willing to offer 29 hours a week at minimum wage as a way to dodge paying health insurance. People take that kind of job because there is not a better alternative, and a UBI would give them, if not a better, at least not a drastically worse alternative. This empowers the employee to negotiate.

    This makes no sense. Providing a viable alternative to work means people will use that alternative. The result of UBI will not be that everyone keeps working but with better stuff. The result will be that some people keep working with better stuff, of which some unspecified portion goes to funding the UBI, and others stop. This assumes that it's possible for the companies to provide better stuff without going under. And that depends on how many people keep working. If enough people stop working, then taxes rise on those who remain. And if taxes rise on those who remain, more people decide it's not worth it and drop out, taxes rise again, and you have GDP collapse.

    Why does it not make sense? Part time employment will be severely disincentivized for employees under a UBI, because they won't be earning enough to offset the UBI.

    Just an aside, this is unlikely to be the case

    currently if you get disability or something, your first $X of income are exempt, your second $X of dollars come at the expense of fifty cents on the dollar of your disability

    I would expect a UBI to be even smoother than this, since we'd just be rolling it into a new set of progressive taxation brackets.

  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    Feral wrote: »
    Basically, only after this graph shows a concave curve does it make any sense at all to consider raising taxes on anybody below the 95th income percentile.

    total-tax-bill-income.jpg

    this graph looks much worse if you have a top 0.1 or 0.01% bracket too

    teehee

    Yep. I looked for one like that, but after five minutes of Googling I couldn't find one so I concluded that it must not exist.

    It also doesn't take into account capital gains, which pushes the real tax burden of the financial elite even lower.

    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    I was writing something longer, but I'll keep it short: wages don't measure the value of labor, they measure the prevailing price of labor. They can both be too high or too low.

    While extreme, the most obvious example of this is slavery. Slaves produce economic value, but don't get paid (or get paid effectively nothing). Slavery is on the extreme edge, but the general principle of people's labor being priced like they only have so much choice is true for so many workers.

    Yep, exactly this.

    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • NbspNbsp she laughs, like God her mind's like a diamondRegistered User regular
    schuss wrote: »
    Top 5% is like 250k+ right? Most people in that bracket most assuredly pay lots of taxes as they're often highly paid (via salary) professionals or professional couples.
    To basically not pay any tax you need:
    1. Primarily Dividend/cap gains income - only taxed at 15% vs. normal
    2. Enough capital to invest/acquire/maintain vehicles for things like farm subsidies

    This only happens when you've amassed quite a bit more than 250k.

    How is a 15% percent capital gain tax suddenly not a tax?

  • schussschuss Registered User regular
    Nbsp wrote: »
    schuss wrote: »
    Top 5% is like 250k+ right? Most people in that bracket most assuredly pay lots of taxes as they're often highly paid (via salary) professionals or professional couples.
    To basically not pay any tax you need:
    1. Primarily Dividend/cap gains income - only taxed at 15% vs. normal
    2. Enough capital to invest/acquire/maintain vehicles for things like farm subsidies

    This only happens when you've amassed quite a bit more than 250k.

    How is a 15% percent capital gain tax suddenly not a tax?

    If you make 250k in salary combined, you're taxed at about 33% on that income.
    If you make that money from cap gains, you're taxed at 15%, akin to if you were only making 18k-75k
    There's no good reason that the source of your income defines how it is taxed.

  • NbspNbsp she laughs, like God her mind's like a diamondRegistered User regular
    schuss wrote: »
    Nbsp wrote: »
    schuss wrote: »
    Top 5% is like 250k+ right? Most people in that bracket most assuredly pay lots of taxes as they're often highly paid (via salary) professionals or professional couples.
    To basically not pay any tax you need:
    1. Primarily Dividend/cap gains income - only taxed at 15% vs. normal
    2. Enough capital to invest/acquire/maintain vehicles for things like farm subsidies

    This only happens when you've amassed quite a bit more than 250k.

    How is a 15% percent capital gain tax suddenly not a tax?

    If you make 250k in salary combined, you're taxed at about 33% on that income.
    If you make that money from cap gains, you're taxed at 15%, akin to if you were only making 18k-75k
    There's no good reason that the source of your income defines how it is taxed.

    I'm tired of this attack on capital gains taxes.

    If capital gains taxes were 100%, no one would ever seek to make capital gains. Everyone would buy and sell assets within the same year to avoid having the gains taxed out. Remember that you must hold on to an asset for longer than a year to qualify it for capital gains taxes, otherwise it gets taxed as normal income for your bracket.

    Likewise, the effect would be similar if capital gains taxes were 90%, 80%, 70%, and so on. We need capital gains taxes to be low so people are incentivized to invest long term, that means making them much lower than your normal income tax.

  • HamHamJHamHamJ Registered User regular
    Nbsp wrote: »
    schuss wrote: »
    Nbsp wrote: »
    schuss wrote: »
    Top 5% is like 250k+ right? Most people in that bracket most assuredly pay lots of taxes as they're often highly paid (via salary) professionals or professional couples.
    To basically not pay any tax you need:
    1. Primarily Dividend/cap gains income - only taxed at 15% vs. normal
    2. Enough capital to invest/acquire/maintain vehicles for things like farm subsidies

    This only happens when you've amassed quite a bit more than 250k.

    How is a 15% percent capital gain tax suddenly not a tax?

    If you make 250k in salary combined, you're taxed at about 33% on that income.
    If you make that money from cap gains, you're taxed at 15%, akin to if you were only making 18k-75k
    There's no good reason that the source of your income defines how it is taxed.

    I'm tired of this attack on capital gains taxes.

    If capital gains taxes were 100%, no one would ever seek to make capital gains. Everyone would buy and sell assets within the same year to avoid having the gains taxed out. Remember that you must hold on to an asset for longer than a year to qualify it for capital gains taxes, otherwise it gets taxed as normal income for your bracket.

    Likewise, the effect would be similar if capital gains taxes were 90%, 80%, 70%, and so on. We need capital gains taxes to be low so people are incentivized to invest long term, that means making them much lower than your normal income tax.

    No we really don't.

    While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
  • NbspNbsp she laughs, like God her mind's like a diamondRegistered User regular
    HamHamJ wrote: »
    Nbsp wrote: »
    schuss wrote: »
    Nbsp wrote: »
    schuss wrote: »
    Top 5% is like 250k+ right? Most people in that bracket most assuredly pay lots of taxes as they're often highly paid (via salary) professionals or professional couples.
    To basically not pay any tax you need:
    1. Primarily Dividend/cap gains income - only taxed at 15% vs. normal
    2. Enough capital to invest/acquire/maintain vehicles for things like farm subsidies

    This only happens when you've amassed quite a bit more than 250k.

    How is a 15% percent capital gain tax suddenly not a tax?

    If you make 250k in salary combined, you're taxed at about 33% on that income.
    If you make that money from cap gains, you're taxed at 15%, akin to if you were only making 18k-75k
    There's no good reason that the source of your income defines how it is taxed.

    I'm tired of this attack on capital gains taxes.

    If capital gains taxes were 100%, no one would ever seek to make capital gains. Everyone would buy and sell assets within the same year to avoid having the gains taxed out. Remember that you must hold on to an asset for longer than a year to qualify it for capital gains taxes, otherwise it gets taxed as normal income for your bracket.

    Likewise, the effect would be similar if capital gains taxes were 90%, 80%, 70%, and so on. We need capital gains taxes to be low so people are incentivized to invest long term, that means making them much lower than your normal income tax.

    No we really don't.

    Explain.

  • DunderDunder Registered User regular
    Nbsp wrote: »
    schuss wrote: »
    Nbsp wrote: »
    schuss wrote: »
    Top 5% is like 250k+ right? Most people in that bracket most assuredly pay lots of taxes as they're often highly paid (via salary) professionals or professional couples.
    To basically not pay any tax you need:
    1. Primarily Dividend/cap gains income - only taxed at 15% vs. normal
    2. Enough capital to invest/acquire/maintain vehicles for things like farm subsidies

    This only happens when you've amassed quite a bit more than 250k.

    How is a 15% percent capital gain tax suddenly not a tax?

    If you make 250k in salary combined, you're taxed at about 33% on that income.
    If you make that money from cap gains, you're taxed at 15%, akin to if you were only making 18k-75k
    There's no good reason that the source of your income defines how it is taxed.

    I'm tired of this attack on capital gains taxes.

    If capital gains taxes were 100%, no one would ever seek to make capital gains. Everyone would buy and sell assets within the same year to avoid having the gains taxed out. Remember that you must hold on to an asset for longer than a year to qualify it for capital gains taxes, otherwise it gets taxed as normal income for your bracket.

    Likewise, the effect would be similar if capital gains taxes were 90%, 80%, 70%, and so on. We need capital gains taxes to be low so people are incentivized to invest long term, that means making them much lower than your normal income tax.
    Nbsp wrote: »
    schuss wrote: »
    Nbsp wrote: »
    schuss wrote: »
    Top 5% is like 250k+ right? Most people in that bracket most assuredly pay lots of taxes as they're often highly paid (via salary) professionals or professional couples.
    To basically not pay any tax you need:
    1. Primarily Dividend/cap gains income - only taxed at 15% vs. normal
    2. Enough capital to invest/acquire/maintain vehicles for things like farm subsidies

    This only happens when you've amassed quite a bit more than 250k.

    How is a 15% percent capital gain tax suddenly not a tax?

    If you make 250k in salary combined, you're taxed at about 33% on that income.
    If you make that money from cap gains, you're taxed at 15%, akin to if you were only making 18k-75k
    There's no good reason that the source of your income defines how it is taxed.

    I'm tired of this attack on capital gains taxes.

    If capital gains taxes were 100%, no one would ever seek to make capital gains. Everyone would buy and sell assets within the same year to avoid having the gains taxed out. Remember that you must hold on to an asset for longer than a year to qualify it for capital gains taxes, otherwise it gets taxed as normal income for your bracket.

    Likewise, the effect would be similar if capital gains taxes were 90%, 80%, 70%, and so on. We need capital gains taxes to be low so people are incentivized to invest long term, that means making them much lower than your normal income tax.

    I'm on mobile so it's too much effort to post a real full reply to this. But I just wanted to say "thank you " for not going the double taxation derp route on this.

  • HamHamJHamHamJ Registered User regular
    Nbsp wrote: »
    HamHamJ wrote: »
    Nbsp wrote: »
    schuss wrote: »
    Nbsp wrote: »
    schuss wrote: »
    Top 5% is like 250k+ right? Most people in that bracket most assuredly pay lots of taxes as they're often highly paid (via salary) professionals or professional couples.
    To basically not pay any tax you need:
    1. Primarily Dividend/cap gains income - only taxed at 15% vs. normal
    2. Enough capital to invest/acquire/maintain vehicles for things like farm subsidies

    This only happens when you've amassed quite a bit more than 250k.

    How is a 15% percent capital gain tax suddenly not a tax?

    If you make 250k in salary combined, you're taxed at about 33% on that income.
    If you make that money from cap gains, you're taxed at 15%, akin to if you were only making 18k-75k
    There's no good reason that the source of your income defines how it is taxed.

    I'm tired of this attack on capital gains taxes.

    If capital gains taxes were 100%, no one would ever seek to make capital gains. Everyone would buy and sell assets within the same year to avoid having the gains taxed out. Remember that you must hold on to an asset for longer than a year to qualify it for capital gains taxes, otherwise it gets taxed as normal income for your bracket.

    Likewise, the effect would be similar if capital gains taxes were 90%, 80%, 70%, and so on. We need capital gains taxes to be low so people are incentivized to invest long term, that means making them much lower than your normal income tax.

    No we really don't.

    Explain.

    What social or economic benefit is there in you staying invested instead of selling the stocks or whatever to some other investor? Why do you need a special incentive? Either you think your current investment will have better returns than your other options or you don't.

    While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    Good thing nobody suggested that we set the cap gains tax rate to 100%, 90% or even 60%.

    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • NbspNbsp she laughs, like God her mind's like a diamondRegistered User regular
    edited July 2015
    HamHamJ wrote: »
    Nbsp wrote: »
    HamHamJ wrote: »
    Nbsp wrote: »
    schuss wrote: »
    Nbsp wrote: »
    schuss wrote: »
    Top 5% is like 250k+ right? Most people in that bracket most assuredly pay lots of taxes as they're often highly paid (via salary) professionals or professional couples.
    To basically not pay any tax you need:
    1. Primarily Dividend/cap gains income - only taxed at 15% vs. normal
    2. Enough capital to invest/acquire/maintain vehicles for things like farm subsidies

    This only happens when you've amassed quite a bit more than 250k.

    How is a 15% percent capital gain tax suddenly not a tax?

    If you make 250k in salary combined, you're taxed at about 33% on that income.
    If you make that money from cap gains, you're taxed at 15%, akin to if you were only making 18k-75k
    There's no good reason that the source of your income defines how it is taxed.

    I'm tired of this attack on capital gains taxes.

    If capital gains taxes were 100%, no one would ever seek to make capital gains. Everyone would buy and sell assets within the same year to avoid having the gains taxed out. Remember that you must hold on to an asset for longer than a year to qualify it for capital gains taxes, otherwise it gets taxed as normal income for your bracket.

    Likewise, the effect would be similar if capital gains taxes were 90%, 80%, 70%, and so on. We need capital gains taxes to be low so people are incentivized to invest long term, that means making them much lower than your normal income tax.

    No we really don't.

    Explain.

    What social or economic benefit is there in you staying invested instead of selling the stocks or whatever to some other investor? Why do you need a special incentive? Either you think your current investment will have better returns than your other options or you don't.

    Because that's just not how investing works, and it drastically limits what gets invested in.

    If long term investing is penalized, then people will only put money into things that can pay off in the very short term.

    This is the kind of stuff they should teach in schools.

    Nbsp on
  • NbspNbsp she laughs, like God her mind's like a diamondRegistered User regular
    Feral wrote: »
    Good thing nobody suggested that we set the cap gains tax rate to 100%, 90% or even 60%.

    It was only an extreme example to illustrate a point, but raising capital gains too close to normal income tax levels will have negative effects in the long run, even if in the short term it may produce some additional revenue. It's not worth it.

  • HefflingHeffling No Pic EverRegistered User regular
    Heffling wrote: »
    zakkiel wrote: »
    Heffling wrote: »
    zakkiel wrote: »
    Dunder wrote: »
    I said I would post this when I got home, so here goes. Several posters opposing UBI have brought up the notion that this will somehow make people not work, or that proponents want less people to work etc. The basic idea behind these objections is that if people aren't forced to work, they will simply not work (also known as the American approach). So I compared labor participation rates between the US and Scandinavian countries since it is commonly agreed that the countries of tall, handsome blondes have very strong social safety nets (basically these countries allows people to not work and still live, meaning it is the very situation opponents to UBI say will make people not work).

    ...

    There are several things to discuss and question about UBI, people not working is not one of them
    Let me be more precise, since what counts as working is a fuzzy and arbitrary concept. A UBI will result in drastic drop in the amount of human labor devoted to economically beneficial goods and services. In fact, many people will leave the workforce, observational evidence of Scandinavia notwithstanding, but let's assume they don't.

    I think you're conflating labor (productivity) with employment. A UBI may cause a drop in employment levels, but probably won't cause a significant drop in labor produced. Why? Because many people will not work at the sufferance of corporations that are only willing to offer 29 hours a week at minimum wage as a way to dodge paying health insurance. People take that kind of job because there is not a better alternative, and a UBI would give them, if not a better, at least not a drastically worse alternative. This empowers the employee to negotiate.

    This makes no sense. Providing a viable alternative to work means people will use that alternative. The result of UBI will not be that everyone keeps working but with better stuff. The result will be that some people keep working with better stuff, of which some unspecified portion goes to funding the UBI, and others stop. This assumes that it's possible for the companies to provide better stuff without going under. And that depends on how many people keep working. If enough people stop working, then taxes rise on those who remain. And if taxes rise on those who remain, more people decide it's not worth it and drop out, taxes rise again, and you have GDP collapse.

    Why does it not make sense? Part time employment will be severely disincentivized for employees under a UBI, because they won't be earning enough to offset the UBI.

    Just an aside, this is unlikely to be the case

    currently if you get disability or something, your first $X of income are exempt, your second $X of dollars come at the expense of fifty cents on the dollar of your disability

    I would expect a UBI to be even smoother than this, since we'd just be rolling it into a new set of progressive taxation brackets.

    I was referring to part-time employment, vis-a-vis the 29 hour work week. If we made the UBI say 15,000$ a year, or $1,250 a month, would you take a 29 hour a week minimum wage part time job? That's 841$ a month, and would increase your salary to $1,670 (using the 50%). Is it really worth spending 29 hours a week, or 116 hours a month, for only a gain of $420?

    For some, this would be enough. For others, it wouldn't be worth it. But if anywhere will be disincentived to work, it will be part timers.

  • HamHamJHamHamJ Registered User regular
    Nbsp wrote: »
    HamHamJ wrote: »
    Nbsp wrote: »
    HamHamJ wrote: »
    Nbsp wrote: »
    schuss wrote: »
    Nbsp wrote: »
    schuss wrote: »
    Top 5% is like 250k+ right? Most people in that bracket most assuredly pay lots of taxes as they're often highly paid (via salary) professionals or professional couples.
    To basically not pay any tax you need:
    1. Primarily Dividend/cap gains income - only taxed at 15% vs. normal
    2. Enough capital to invest/acquire/maintain vehicles for things like farm subsidies

    This only happens when you've amassed quite a bit more than 250k.

    How is a 15% percent capital gain tax suddenly not a tax?

    If you make 250k in salary combined, you're taxed at about 33% on that income.
    If you make that money from cap gains, you're taxed at 15%, akin to if you were only making 18k-75k
    There's no good reason that the source of your income defines how it is taxed.

    I'm tired of this attack on capital gains taxes.

    If capital gains taxes were 100%, no one would ever seek to make capital gains. Everyone would buy and sell assets within the same year to avoid having the gains taxed out. Remember that you must hold on to an asset for longer than a year to qualify it for capital gains taxes, otherwise it gets taxed as normal income for your bracket.

    Likewise, the effect would be similar if capital gains taxes were 90%, 80%, 70%, and so on. We need capital gains taxes to be low so people are incentivized to invest long term, that means making them much lower than your normal income tax.

    No we really don't.

    Explain.

    What social or economic benefit is there in you staying invested instead of selling the stocks or whatever to some other investor? Why do you need a special incentive? Either you think your current investment will have better returns than your other options or you don't.

    Because that's just not how investing works, and it drastically limits what gets invested in.

    If long term investing is penalized, then people will only put money into things that can pay off in the very short term.

    This is the kind of stuff they should teach in schools.

    If it isn't paying off yet then you aren't paying taxes on it?

    While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
  • PolaritiePolaritie Sleepy Registered User regular
    You seem to be conflating "won't work" and "won't work for a pittance".

    Steam: Polaritie
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  • JediabiwanJediabiwan Registered User regular
    edited July 2015
    The real question is does encouraging investing through a capital gains tax provide more benefit to a society than simply taxing that income normally. I think there are most definitely benefits to society from investment, but it's hard to quantify if this offsets the loss of paid taxes to the government (and at the current rate the answer is very likely no). How much of a reduction would we see in investment if we eliminated capital gains tax entirely? Or raised it to 20%? 25%? But arguing that there are no "social or economic benefit from you staying invested instead of selling the stocks" is ridiculous.

    Jediabiwan on
  • EncEnc A Fool with Compassion Pronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered User regular
    Really, most of the first world has their capital gains tax rate at about 10% to 20% higher than us and seems to do fine. The few exceptions are either tax havens (Luxomberg) or have stagnant economies (Japan, Iceland).

  • PhyphorPhyphor Building Planet Busters Tasting FruitRegistered User regular
    Nbsp wrote: »
    HamHamJ wrote: »
    Nbsp wrote: »
    HamHamJ wrote: »
    Nbsp wrote: »
    schuss wrote: »
    Nbsp wrote: »
    schuss wrote: »
    Top 5% is like 250k+ right? Most people in that bracket most assuredly pay lots of taxes as they're often highly paid (via salary) professionals or professional couples.
    To basically not pay any tax you need:
    1. Primarily Dividend/cap gains income - only taxed at 15% vs. normal
    2. Enough capital to invest/acquire/maintain vehicles for things like farm subsidies

    This only happens when you've amassed quite a bit more than 250k.

    How is a 15% percent capital gain tax suddenly not a tax?

    If you make 250k in salary combined, you're taxed at about 33% on that income.
    If you make that money from cap gains, you're taxed at 15%, akin to if you were only making 18k-75k
    There's no good reason that the source of your income defines how it is taxed.

    I'm tired of this attack on capital gains taxes.

    If capital gains taxes were 100%, no one would ever seek to make capital gains. Everyone would buy and sell assets within the same year to avoid having the gains taxed out. Remember that you must hold on to an asset for longer than a year to qualify it for capital gains taxes, otherwise it gets taxed as normal income for your bracket.

    Likewise, the effect would be similar if capital gains taxes were 90%, 80%, 70%, and so on. We need capital gains taxes to be low so people are incentivized to invest long term, that means making them much lower than your normal income tax.

    No we really don't.

    Explain.

    What social or economic benefit is there in you staying invested instead of selling the stocks or whatever to some other investor? Why do you need a special incentive? Either you think your current investment will have better returns than your other options or you don't.

    Because that's just not how investing works, and it drastically limits what gets invested in.

    If long term investing is penalized, then people will only put money into things that can pay off in the very short term.

    This is the kind of stuff they should teach in schools.

    The thing though is that a one year holding requirement isn't really "long term" to begin with. .Sure you might see more money moving around investments, but that's not likely to matter long term, as you will still be optimizing for total returns. Maybe you'll see more speculative behaviour without having a disincentive for short-term investments

    Not providing a tax break is not penalizing though

  • hippofanthippofant ティンク Registered User regular
    edited July 2015
    Nbsp wrote: »
    Feral wrote: »
    Good thing nobody suggested that we set the cap gains tax rate to 100%, 90% or even 60%.

    It was only an extreme example to illustrate a point, but raising capital gains too close to normal income tax levels will have negative effects in the long run, even if in the short term it may produce some additional revenue. It's not worth it.

    It was an absurd example.

    Look, if we set the tax rate to 110%, nobody would do everything. Therefore, we should have no taxes. QED.

    Hell, your comment about relative incentivization makes no sense either. We don't want people incentivized to invest more than to work. Working is a more direct route to productivity and economic growth. Overly incentivized investments leads to things like hollow economies and bubbles.

    Furthermore, they're not even comparable activities: most people invest with their excess money, which would otherwise be sitting around idle. Incentivizing one in comparison to the other isn't going to make me more or less likely to work or invest, since I first need to work to generate the money I could invest with, and then I might as well invest since that money's sitting around anyways (or I can spend it on other things, which is also a more direct way to improve the economy than making a long-term investment).

    hippofant on
  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    Nbsp wrote: »
    Feral wrote: »
    Good thing nobody suggested that we set the cap gains tax rate to 100%, 90% or even 60%.

    It was only an extreme example to illustrate a point, but raising capital gains too close to normal income tax levels will have negative effects in the long run, even if in the short term it may produce some additional revenue. It's not worth it.

    Sure, and there is empirical evidence supporting this. (The period in the US between 1986-1997 when cap gains were taxed at the same rates as other income serve as a convenient natural experiment.)

    The current Democratic proposal for raising capital gains taxes would bring it from 23.8% to 28% for the highest earning bracket, which is still significantly less than the highest tax rate of 39.6%. There would still be significant incentive to hold on to investments over one year.

    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • DisruptedCapitalistDisruptedCapitalist I swear! Registered User regular
    Sorry, I must have missed some parts of this thread but what does the tax rates have to do with Basic Income?

    "Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    Sorry, I must have missed some parts of this thread but what does the tax rates have to do with Basic Income?

    We would have to pay for it somehow.

    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    edited July 2015
    HamHamJ wrote: »
    I'm pretty sure tutoring disadvantaged college students is far more valuable to society than the majority of office work.

    I used to do that for a living, it paid $12 an hour

    Scott Walker decided the money was better spent elsewhere : /

    I honestly would have worked there forever, even at that pittance of a pay

    I made less than that, but I would have stayed a Teaching Assistant in my graduate school if I could have.

    To be fair, our salaries were no secret, and I'm fairly sure the actual tenured faculty treated us as such. I guess I shouldn't really be surprised that my supervisor at my full-time position at a local community college, by contrast, treats me like something she scrapped off the bottom of her shoe.

    But, you know, insurance.

    Synthesis on
  • Gabriel_PittGabriel_Pitt (effective against Russian warships) Registered User regular
    Sorry, I must have missed some parts of this thread but what does the tax rates have to do with Basic Income?
    Talking about tax burdens on various peoples and Nbsp got salty about taxing people who are generating fortunes in investment at a rate approaching that of people drawing a paycheck, they'll all stop investing for... reasons.

  • DoctorArchDoctorArch Curmudgeon Registered User regular
    Nbsp wrote: »
    Feral wrote: »
    Good thing nobody suggested that we set the cap gains tax rate to 100%, 90% or even 60%.

    It was only an extreme example to illustrate a point, but raising capital gains too close to normal income tax levels will have negative effects in the long run, even if in the short term it may produce some additional revenue. It's not worth it.

    You say things like this as though they are 100% true. Since you are the one claiming it's true, the onus is on you to link to some proof, because from what I know about economics this is not a correct statement.

    Switch Friend Code: SW-6732-9515-9697
  • schussschuss Registered User regular
    The incentive is they're still making money, it's just taxed as salaries are taxed. No reason for any difference in income, and I sincerely doubt any stockbrokers will become bricklayers as a result of the change. Even if they did, I personally think bricklayers are probably more useful to society.

  • HefflingHeffling No Pic EverRegistered User regular
    The question about how to pay for a UBI was asked, and I feel has been answered. Can we please move on?

    If there is interest in continuing the discussion around a particular aspect of how the funding could be achieved, e.g. capital gains, let's make a separate thread to discuss.

  • That_GuyThat_Guy I don't wanna be that guy Registered User regular
    If free College and Mincome were things, I would totally quit my job and study to be a historian or possibly a cosmologist. IT is a good gig, but I feel like History and Astronomy are where my real passions lie. I feel like I could be a lot happier in either of those fields. At least I would be engaging mostly with people on my intellectual level. Dealing with idiots day in and day out is wearing on me.

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