So, I had someone recently act extremely condescending and dismissive toward my agenda, without knowing what it really is. All he knows is "I want free stuff", and "someone has to pay for it", meaning someone's paying taxes. It's typical conservative pro work dogma against an inherently anti work agenda. Well, I decided to use this as a learning experience to debunk these kinds of arguments, and explain why my ideas would help many taxpayers too.
Universal basic income
As we know, my universal basic income program would pay $13,200 a year to adults, and $4,800 to children. It would be funded by a combination of spending cuts, a carbon tax, and a 20% flat tax on all earned income. I have no doubt, upon hearing this, the guy would seethe with rage. Okay, but before you get your panties in a twist, let's think about what this really means. The median individual income is around $36,000 a year. This is the 50% mark. 50% make more, 50% make less. Under such a plan, assuming the person in question is single, they would pay an additional $7,200 in taxes to fund my UBI...while also getting my UBI. So they would also get $13,200 back, meaning they would come out ahead by $6,000. That's an additional 17% of their earned income. UBI would literally benefit over half of all taxpayers.
How much would someone have to earn before they pay in? Well, they would have to earn 5x the UBI, or $66,000. At this point, they would pay in $13,200, while getting back $13,200. How many people earn more than $66,000 a year? Well, according to the link above, only about 20%. Which is the big point I try to make with UBI. To pay into UBI in net, you would need to be in the top 20% of income earners. Now, if the person making that much is in the top 20%, my arguments would hold no sway. They're a net payer into my program and would likely be unhappy with it. But considering how many people with these sentiments are NOT in the top 20%, and they pay taxes, I want to tell you to chill. For the vast majority of people, you would get more income out of UBI than taxes paid into it. Taxes are merely the mechanism through which the benefit is clawed back or reduced under the break even point, similar to a negative income tax. UBI is effectively a transfer of wealth from the top income earners to everyone else, ensuring more equal (but not perfectly equal, even I would not argue against some level of work incentive tied to market signals) outcome, while solving poverty, and giving people the freedom to live the lives they want. You could still make moral arguments against basic income, but let's be honest 4/5 times, your morals are crap and work to your detriment. If you wanna die on that hill, fine, but I'd recommend you get with the program as you're defending rich people and their right to obscene wealth. And that includes the person in question, because, to my knowledge, they've never earned enough to pay into my UBI plan. They're net beneficiaries to UBI.
And if you're in that top 20%, well, you're not my demographic. You're welcome to support the movement, but I would not expect you to.
By the way, before I move on, the outcome is even more rosy for households. Median household income was $63,000 back in 2018, but these days it's a bit higher. I think I had it up to $69,000 when I did my UBI plan and calculated it. Still, that's roughly the individual break even point. Households often have multiple people in them. The average is around 2.5ish. Let's round to 3, assuming 2 adults and 1 child being the typical American household. Such a household would get $31,200 in UBI benefits under my plan. This would mean they need to earn $156,000 to pay into my plan, over twice the median household income, at around the 89th percentile. 89% of households, based on this analysis, should be net beneficiaries of my plan. The median income of $63,000 would pay in $12,600 while getting back $31,200. This would leave them with a net income of $81,600, which would make them 30% better off. The vast majority of taxpayers benefit under this plan. Including many of the right wingers who are so resentful of people getting free stuff. For some reason this does not connect to them. These plans help every day Americans. Not just the poor and lazy, but middle class people too. The net payers are the upper middle class people and the rich. Which, is bad news for Biden's upcoming coalition of bringing those 15% of upper class white suburbanites into the party, but is fitting for a progressive working class agenda. My ideas help the working class. Substantially. In real terms. Stop fighting progress.
Universal healthcare
Universal healthcare is also a go to "free crap" idea according to these conservative and moderates. "Someone has to pay for it", yeah. You're already paying for it. Bernie's M4A plan, which I no longer support because it costs too much when combined with the above UBI plan, is literally structured around current healthcare costs. He imposes a 7.5% payroll tax on the employer side of income. Why? Because according to Bernie, this is replacing what employers currently contribute to healthcare and actually saves them money, reducing employer costs by over 2/3. Bernie's 4% income tax imposed on households earning above $29,000 replaces health insurance premiums, which would reduce costs by as much as 80% on some households. The net payers under Bernie's plan are, again, the rich. Also, moving to single payer would cut out hundreds of billions of dollars of inefficiencies in the current system due to companies overcharging, as well as administrative bureaucracy that only exists because the current system is so expensive. Once again, I'm trying to help you, working class tax payer. Stop fighting progress.
And this is more progressive than the plan I support, which is a compromise to allow my UBI to exist in its full form (because even I know taxing people above laffer curve peaks is a dumb idea). My favored plan would maintain a combination of public and private spending, with even the public option technically being private spending. Regardless, such plan would save most people anywhere to 20% to 95% on healthcare costs, while only increasing spending marginally. And that spending would be taken on mostly by the rich in the form of stuff like wealth taxes, financial transaction taxes, corporate taxes, or repealing the Trump tax cuts.
So....why complain? Most people making these arguments are not rich. They are middle income people who would clearly save money under my ideal plans. Again, you could make a moral argument, and at which point we'll have to agree to disagree because I don't share such peoples' moral stance toward the "dignity of work", but I would also encourage such people to rethink their morals. If these plans save you money, despite increased taxes, and in effect give you more money, why are you complaining? Unless you're rich, you shouldn't care, and if you're rich I literally don't care about your opinion given how insane income and wealth inequality is.
Free college/student debt forgiveness
Back to Bernie for this one. Anyway, college is prohibitively expensive. We encourage people to go to college to get ahead, and then they end up coming out indebted and screwed. Much like healthcare, it's a clear market failure. Free college would encourage people to pursue careers and upward mobility and not be chained to crap jobs. For jobists, you would think they would see the benefit in that. Also, because pursuing a career is such a risky venture these days, many people are finding out the hard way they're screwed. Student debt forgiveness would help these people and increase consumer spending. And Bernie would finance both with a financial transaction tax on rich people speculating on wall street. So, this helps everyone, while only taxing super rich people gambling their money on the stock market. You would think this is something that would benefit 99% of the population. Why the arguments against it?
Conclusion
People of economically conservative attitudes are always gonna argue about how I want "free stuff." They think anything that people get should come with the dignity of a job, and that people should work for all they get. Even worse, many of these people think they're paying for it, because they pay taxes.
I mean, they kind of are, but at the same time, look at the benefits. Your typical taxpayer would get roughly twice the UBI of what they pay in. They would save anywhere from 20% to 95% depending on plan and exact circumstance on healthcare costs. They would get free college or their student debt forgiven. And the people paying for these things in net would mostly be the top 1%, or in the case of my UBI plan, the top 20%. The vast majority of taxpayers would benefit under my plan, including the ones complaining. They would need to earn more money than they've seen in their entire life in order to pay into my plans in net.
And that's the point. Obviously it's selfish to expect not to work and to just demand run of the mill people struggling to get by to pick up the slack. Middle class taxpayers love to see themselves as the martyrs being so emburdened by taxes that they're paying for all of these free loaders and if not for that they'd be better off. But your typical taxpayer pays, in net, what, like 14% of their income on the federal level? Okay say we cut that in half and only focus on the stuff we NEED to fund. Well congrats, you get a couple thousand dollars out of that, but is it worth it? You get no UBI for a safety cushion, at this point unemployment and welfare are gone, as is social security and medicaid. No universal healthcare so have fun paying for insane premiums, and also college costs an insane amount too. Everything costs more, and you have no safety nets, but Joe Schmoe got an extra $2000 from Uncle Sam or whatever.
Yeah, congrats. You screwed us all. This right wing ideology is so regressive that it completely screws us over for a marginal benefit. Wanna know who really benefits? People who have millions if not billions of dollars. And perhaps some elitist suburbanites making 6 figures with petite bourgeois attitudes. Trust me people, you're way better off with my ideas. You would actually benefit, prosper, make more money than you've ever seen before. Your taxes might be higher, like 35% nominally instead of 15% (or more like 40-45% under Bernie's M4A plan) and that might seem high, but given how much you're getting out of it, I don't see why people are so intent on complaining. People love moralizing over how much they pay in taxes and how hard they work and make martyrs of themselves but hey, I'm trying to help them. I wish these people would freaking listen, rather than denigrating my ideas.
I might be an antiworker to some extent, but I'm not anti working class. I wanna help you people, give you more stuff, let you work less, make your lives substantially better. I wish you would actually listen to me before you talk down to me.
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