How to Fund a Universal Basic Income Without Increasing Taxes or Inflation

Truth Out ^ | October 7, 2017 | Ellen Brown, The Web of Debt Blog

[2ndDivisionVet]

Magic!

[chrisser]

Wouldn’t government giving everyone cash be essentially the same as giving everyone a tax cut?

So why don’t we just try that first? Once we get taxation down to zero, then we can talk about handing out cash on top of that...

[KarlInOhio]

This is due to the "velocity of money" -- the number of times a dollar is traded in a year, from farmer to grocer to landlord, etc. In a good economy, the velocity of the M1 money stock (coins, dollar bills, demand deposits and checkable deposits) is about seven; and each recipient will pay taxes on this same dollar as it changes hands. According to the Heritage Foundation, total tax revenue as a percentage of GDP is now 26 percent. Thus one dollar of new GDP results in about 26 cents of increased tax revenue. Assuming each of the seven trades is for taxable GDP, $1.00 changing hands seven times can increase tax revenue by $7.00 x 26 percent = $1.82. In theory, then, the government could get more back in taxes than it paid out.

This reeks of comparing apples to orangutans. Each dollar transaction is not equal to a dollar of GDP. If I buy $100 of raw materials, do something to it and sell it to a wholesaler for $125, who sells it to a retailer for $150 who then sells it to the consumer for $200, then the total amount produced is $200 not 100+125+150+200=$575. The same $200 of value is produced whether one company is vertically integrated and does everything from mining the raw materials to retailing or it goes through a supply chain of specialized companies.

[vpintheak]

Only within the walls of an ivory tower, with a bunch of ignorant echo-chamber educated idiots, can something like this work.
They always leave out the 1 thing that rules all; human nature.

[Nifster]

Erma Gawd....save us from the thoughtful academics

[gogeo]

Exactly the word that came to mind.

[catnipman]

This whole idea of a free “universal basic income” for everyone is completely insane. It would be FAR better to give each person in the U.S. a trillion dollar coin instead of a a lousy $1000.00 per month. After all, the cost to make a “universal basic income” coin is the same as the cost to make a trillion dollar coin, and everyone would be RICH and not have to exist at just a subsistence level of a “universal basic income”. Everyone could buy anything they wanted and no one would ever have to work again.

The coins could be made from a base metal, so they would be cheap to make, and a few extra ones could be minted for the government itself, so taxes could be completely eliminated and yet government could still function. It’s such an elegant solution I don’t know why it hasn’t been implemented yet.

For myself, I’m going to start by buying a pony and the Broncos NFL football team (no kneeling on MY team, BTW). And I won’t even need pony food stamps anymore to feed my pony because I’ll be so rich!

[DIRTYSECRET]

Too much information but I can get into the idea. It should NOT be enough to sustain oneself. Make them work to get by. Cut off ALL other wealth transfers. Proudly proclaim ‘I gave at the office’ and tell the slackers to get a job. Take away one’s right to free speech-pan handling. THAT will show how serious we are.

[Viking2002]

Oh, so fairies, puppies, and unicorns are going to suddenly start to crap non-confiscatatorial, non-fiat revenue in order to pay me a UBI? And this is on top of the annual wages I break my huevos for every calendar year?

[Chode]

[Sequoyah101]

Simple. It is called WORK!

[OldArmy52]

Simple....declare each Chuckie Cheese token to be worth $1,000.

(Oh boy, but I’m gonna be rich!)

And make legal tender out of Monopoly money (I have the game!)

Or just distribute rolls of toilet paper and declare each piece of toilet paper to be $1,000.
Brilliant or what?!
(too bad for a certain South American country who gained Socialism and lost their toilet paper as a result)

[OldArmy52]

Warren Buffett....I’m still waiting for a $10,000,000 check from you....

[Chode]

ah yes, the concentrated blessings of socialism

[Songcraft]

Behind the scenes, this scheme probably really involves disconnecting the Soros money hoses from his many and varied anti-American terrorist funding activities, and redirecting all of them toward this UBI pot instead.

[piasa]

These morons don’t realize that every invention spawns whole new worlds of jobs and enterprises?

Heck, there will be t-shirt lines to clothe the family robot, robot wax, fancy robot hubcaps, robot appreciation day e cards, urine stain remover for when the dog walking robot gets abused by the family dog, sexy clothing lines for sex robots, fashion lines for Hollywood robots, robot bumpers to save the furniture, antitheft devices for robot butlers and yard robots, repairmen, painters, graphics for robots, robot rights activist groups to work for, robot jammers to disable cat burglar drones, ...

[heights]

Add a box to all tax returns: Do you wish to donate $100 towards A universal income. The donation will be added to Tax Bill.

[RFEngineer]

“A new economic study found that a UBI of $1000/month to all adults would add $2.5 trillion to the US economy in eight years.”

Sure. It would cost more than $10 trillion just by doing the math assuming 100 million recipients.

Perfect. Take $10T and turn it into $2.5T

[bitt]

Is Obama behind that curtain?

[piasa]

Let them try it with Venezuela first...

since all their other stupid ideas are doing so well there.