Sunday 5 June 2016

Another ill-informed article slagging off Citizen's Income

Spotted by Shiney Mart in The Economist (register for three free articles a month):

An economy as rich as America’s could afford to pay citizens a basic income worth about $10,000 a year if it began collecting about as much tax as a share of GDP as Germany (35%, as opposed to the current 26%) and replaced all other welfare programmes (including Social Security, or pensions, but not including health care) with the basic-income payment.

That level seems a little on the high side to me, why not just assume it is set at current welfare rates and try again? Either way, it would not mean an increase in 'taxes' if you count the CI as a simple tax break or negative tax. The net cost is always zero.

Shiney reckons that the idea must be gaining traction, which is why TPTB are now setting out to ridicule it. Most of the comments are far better informed that the writer of the article.

6 comments:

Random said...

Labour looking at it also:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/05/john-mcdonnell-labour-universal-basic-income-welfare-benefits-compass-report

Get in touch?

Unknown said...

Some LVT support from across the pond.


http://gene-callahan.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/the-market-decides-upon-whom-tax-falls.html

James Higham said...

See Switzerland just definitively rejected the idea.

Curtis said...

The Swiss proposal was a "resident's income", not a "citizen's income".

Mark Wadsworth said...

R, ta. He asked me for my email address ages ago and I haven't heard from him since.

SV, ta.

JH, they did not reject "the idea". They rejected a very high CBI of £1,755 a month, and rightly so, that is off the scale. Had they proposed something sensible in the £200 - £500 a month range, maybe it would have gone through.

C, that's a bad idea. You will never get support for "resident's income". It has to be "citizen's income" i.e. only for people who are legally and actually resident in and have the nationality of the country paying it.

Bayard said...

Mark, ah, the old "discrediting an idea by putting forward an unworkable version" trick.