> The spending power of the basic income will ultimately reflect the value its recipients produced in order to obtain it - zero in this case.
What do you think the purchasing power of welfare money is? Furthermore, can you really separate the purchasing power of the money utilized in the minimum income and the income from working?
I am not separating anything. I am saying that inflation will rise, because that's what happens when a country isn't producing anything more, but the country increases the amount of its currency in circulation. It's like a stock split - absent a rise in the actual value of the company, doubling the number of shares makes each share half as valuable.
In this case, over time inflation will adjust to the point that the spending power of the basic income will approach zero. It won't actually hit zero, because markets are not 100% efficient. But it will be close.
They will have to print this money, because there is nowhere else to get it. What happens when you print money but there is no additional demand for it? You guessed it...the value drops. Markets are surprisingly efficient at pricing things like this in.
Are you seriously trying to make the argument that their economy will absorb this with no effect on the value of their currency?
Why that? Nobody's talking about abolishing taxes. Note also that the basic income would replace many other forms of social subsidies that already exist and have harmful side effects.
That depends entirely on how high it is, doesn't it?
Ultimately, it's not about money but about productivity. If the economy is productive enough to give everyone a minimal standard of living as well as comforts and luxuries for those who earn them, it doesn't really matter how said minimal standard of living is "funded".
And there is little doubt that the economies of developed countries are that productive for a reasonable minimal standard.
You can free up ~4500 per adult in the US "just" by redirecting the "mandatory" portion of the Social Security Administration and the Department of Agriculture (which I believe is largely food subsidies, but I could be wrong about that). Drop Medica.. and tell people to spend some of their BI on insurance if they need it and you can just about double it, with no tax increases at all.
Apparently the total income in the US is $13,401,868,693,000 (according to http://bber.unm.edu/econ/us-tpi.htm), which is about $43k per person.
So funding a $20k/person basic income would correspond to about 50% tax? Actually I think this is an overestimate, since the declared incomes do not cover social security and corporate taxes.
Taxes? I'm not proposing anything by the way, just explaining that mincome isn't a proposal to print a bunch of new money. I think the idea is that it replaces current welfare programs.
That's absurd, of course people will work. Why does anyone work right now when there are already welfare programs?
By your logic there would be no sense in companies paying bonuses--if you already have a guaranteed salary why would you do anything more than the minimum?
This is not welfare. This is giving money to every single person, and you cannot do that without negatively impacting the value of the currency. Reality sucks, but we still have to live in it.
How is it not welfare in your estimations? It's nearly the dictionary definition of welfare.
Why would it negatively impact the value of the currency and how is that any different than the current state of welfare (where only some people receive it)?
Because welfare, being given to only a small percentage of the population, can be funded out of taxes from the much larger pool of people not receiving welfare. But if everyone were suddenly on welfare, the system would quickly run out of money. We would then have to print more money.
Your argument seems to rest on the false assumption that (like welfare) anyyone who receives the basic income is not paying taxes.
In fact, a lot of people would pay considerably more taxes than the basic income they're getting. Yes, that's not perfectly efficient, but still more efficient than the bad-incentive-riddled beaurocracies that exist to ensure that welfare goes only to the "deserving poor".
You seem to be under the impression that this is not being done already. That impression would be wrong. The treasury creates trillions of new dollars every year.
People won't accept full-time low-wage shitty-manager jobs, because they won't accept their lives being poisoned by shitty managers, and they will have the choice.
But most shitty managers are shitty because they have power over their low-education personal (which can be easily replaced, and job market is not good these day). Those workers will take part-time ok-manager jobs, mostly because they want to contribute to society, also because they might get bored.
Also, in most of Europe, University cost is quite low (like, less than 1k€ / year, instead a life-long debt like 'some' country can pull out), so universal income could bring interesting trends in education.
Not everyone would go back to school, maybe almost no one at first, but I would expect views to change rather quickly on that subject.
What do you think the purchasing power of welfare money is? Furthermore, can you really separate the purchasing power of the money utilized in the minimum income and the income from working?