It seems like we currently have 2 buckets:
- living money for people who, for whatever reason, have no source of income
- publicly funded medical insurance
It doesn't seem totally unreasonable to classify medical expenses separately from routine living expenses.
The amount of spending in the routine-living-expenses bucket is enough to pay about $350 per month to each of the country's 320M residents.
I think a good proposal is to instate that $350 universal half basic income, replacing social security and unemployment insurance, and then reduce the minimum wage to $0. Even with the rise of a robotic workforce, just about anyone should be able to find work that will pay the remaining 350 if they're allowed to work for little enough.
[1] https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-bud...
Edit / Afterthought: No one currently receiving social security or unemployment will support this proposal because they are all receiving way more than that. More than 700/month, and certainly more than they need to survive.
What would work, I think, might be a phase-out: for anyone who's getting less in SS payments than the UBI, just replace their SS with UBI. For everyone making more, they don't get a UBI, they just keep drawing SS. (Or, you could say they get UBI plus the difference between SS and UBI.) Then eliminate the SS portion of the FICA tax and stop everyone from paying into it going forward. Then there'll be some math involved in figuring out how much people who partially paid into it get, but the end effect is that SS will cost less and less money until finally everyone's aged out (to the point where the amount they'd draw is less than UBI so we can just cancel SS altogether). It'll cost a bit more in the short term to do it this way, but it's more fair to people who paid into the SS system and it won't get the AARP voting against you.
>Edit / Afterthought: No one currently receiving social security or unemployment will support this proposal because they are all receiving way more than that. More than 700/month, and certainly more than they need to survive.
Again, you'll have to phase it out. Unemployment is an insurance program that people have paid into, just like SS, so of course they expect it to be there if they need it. And it may (or may not, depends on the person and their income) pay more than they need to survive, but if they have a lot of expenses like a big mortgage then that's irrelevant. They've been forced to live in a society where having a job is basically required for survival unless you get on the dole (which prevents you from working, so it's a trap), so unemployment is something the society has created to mitigate risk.
But like SS, it could be phased out (and the taxation from that eliminated). It could probably be replaced with privately-run unemployment insurance though, but it wouldn't be as necessary with UBI.
But your $700/month sounds low to me. I know it's supposed to be a bare minimum, but even that seems too little to me to live on with today's rent prices. I do think the government has a responsibility to do something about that; rents have been driven up far too much by Wall Street, foreign investors, speculation, etc. UBI needs to be enough for someone to live on with roommates (and not more than 1 per bedroom at market rates), in an average cost-of-living area, plus reasonable grocery store bills and a bit extra to cover transportation costs. If it isn't enough for that, it won't work, and it needs to be jacked up until it is. If that means instituting a big tax on Wall Street, then so be it, since they're largely responsible for the cost of living being what it is.
But I also think a system that requires taxpayers to fund more than basic living expenses for non-taxpayers is unjust.
Everyone should be able to stay warm and dry, safe and clean, with a soft bed and a healthy diet. Anything beyond that is luxury.
In particular:
- Just because you don't have enough income to pay your big mortgage doesn't mean others should have to pay so you can live in a massive house. Regardless of your previous income, you should sell it or let it be repossessed (and continue to live safely and healthily elsewhere). Otherwise you're asking people who live less extravagantly to fund your own extravagance.
- Likewise, many hardworking people take a roommate to save money. Should they have to pay for other people to live more extravagantly? There is nothing unhealthy or unsafe (in general) about sleeping in the same room with another person, or turning a room that fits 2 people into two smaller rooms.
I think in an average cost-of-living town in the US, you need 300 to 350 to rent a room (all to yourself!), 250 for groceries, soap, razor blades, etc. That leaves 100 or 150 to get around. Certainly not enough for a car or taxi rides. But I think just about everyone should be able to find a place within walking/biking/city-bus distance from the grocery store, though in some sprawly towns it might take a couple of hours to get there.
The definition of "luxury" changes over time. Today, you should include internet access in the list of basic needs since it is needed for many forms of social interaction.
Yes, they should. This is the way it is right now. That's how unemployment insurance works: you pay into it as you work, and then draw from it when you're unemployed. (Of course, a lot of people don't bother because it's a huge hassle, but that's beside the point.)
Do you also think that someone who has full insurance on their $90,000 Mercedes shouldn't get a full payout when someone crashes into it?
I do think that unemployment insurance (since it's a government program and not optional) should be phased out under UBI. But "phased out" is the key phrase here, just as with SSI.
>- Likewise, many hardworking people take a roommate to save money.
>Should they have to pay for other people to live more extravagantly? There is nothing unhealthy or unsafe (in general) about sleeping in the same room with another person, or turning a room that fits 2 people into two smaller rooms.
This is illegal. Most municipalities have codes which prevent more people from living in a place than a certain number, based on the bedrooms (usually 1 per bedroom, except with kids). And yes, I think asking people to have roommates (in the same bedroom) is going too far. Housing is this country is cheap: it's cheaply constructed, with cheap materials, and land is plentiful outside of downtown metro areas. There is absolutely no reason for rents to be as high as they are. Instead of trying to force people into unsafe living situations with strangers, the government needs to fix the housing problem. They're not going to do that as long as people like Hillary are in bed with Wall Street and allow speculation on residential real estate.
>I think in an average cost-of-living town in the US, you need 300 to 350 to rent a room (all to yourself!), 250 for groceries, soap, razor blades, etc. That leaves 100 or 150 to get around. Certainly not enough for a car or taxi rides.
This is what I'm proposing. If that's enough for someone to get by in an average location in the US, that's what the UBI should be set at. And $150/month for a car is actually doable: you can get a pretty decent used car for $5k, and if you're mechanically handy (buy tools at Harbor Freight) you can maintain it yourself for next to nothing, and then as long as your commute is short, and with liability-only insurance, the monthly cost for your transportation should be in that range, even better once you get the vehicle paid off (which you can do by doing some extra work for more money, then after it's paid off you can relax and not work as much or at all). But really, affording a car shouldn't even necessarily be part of it (though as I pointed out, if you're frugal and able to do your own maintenance, it's not that expensive; insurance might blow the budget though). There is public transit in places (though it mostly sucks and needs serious revamping; see SkyTran), and people at the minimum could just get by with a bicycle.
The whole point of UBI is so people can get by and not have major financial stress; it literally kills people, by shortening their lifespans. Sticking them in a room with some stranger and not allowing them any privacy at all is not the answer. So the UBI should be set so that they can afford to rent a room (the whole room), buy groceries, and have a little extra (maybe riding a bicycle) so they don't feel completely miserable, and then can go seek employment as they wish for more money.
I do think unemployment insurance and SSI should both be phased out, and maybe unemployment insurance can be a private matter instead, and I also think universal healthcare needs to be instituted. I also think the UBI should be the same for everyone; it's too complicated otherwise, and I don't think people who want to live in Manhattan or other high-rent areas should be given that luxury and funded by the rest of us (otherwise, we'll all move to high-rent locations). People living in high-rent places like that now with government benefits will have to move under UBI; too bad. If $700/month is enough to make all this work, then great, let's set it at $700/month.
