I've been wondering about UBI since basically everyone is begging for it at the moment.
So for example, we are 83 million people in Germany. If everyone gets 1000€ per month, that's 996 billion euros per year. Currently, income and expenses are around the same, near 1500 billion euros per year. So usually, there's maybe a few billions euros left over, so how do we almost double the national income? Of course, we tax the rich, but the sheer scale seems like it wouldn't last long. Taxing the industry similarly doesn't seem to work that great, the largest contributors to the total amount of income through taxes are VAT and wage taxes, both around 200 billion euros. Would it be possible to tax the super rich so much that this could work?
I'm upper middle class, and 42% of my pay never even reaches me because of taxes and all the other expenses that are deducted automatically. So I guess at best I can hope that for a year or two the tax increase won't be larger than the 1000€ I'd get from UBI?
Alright.
It is true that when you simply look at the raw numbers that it can seem very questionable and a certain scepticism here is definitively appropriate - but when it comes to social programs it is not a new discussion because when you look at it historically you will find very often the same question, from health care to unemployment insurance, minimum wages and pensions. Who's going to pay for it? It turned out that it was always impossible till someone actually did it and than suddenly it was possible. But try me to give you a different view point here when it comes to the numbers you have. Because a large part of the money the people get will be reinvested into the economy again so this lowers the 996 billion by quite a lot. A trickle-up effect if you so will.
I can not tell how this would look for each nation out there, but in Germany as you're well aware we have the added value tax. So each time someone spends his money trough the basic income a part of that money goes back to the state again. Just as how it does now with the unemployment insurance. Take the people receiving benefits from the Government here in Germany. Nearly all of their money goes directly back in to the economy for food, rent you name it. And this money ends up as profit to anyone who's offering the serivces. You could probably also save a little bit on cutting unnecessary bureaucracy by the UBI particularly in Germany which has many different ways of subsidizing programs like student loans, home assistance and many more The German state alone does already spends 965,5 Billion euros each year on well fare. If you take that in to consideration giving out 1000 or even 1500 euros per month to every citizen doesn't seem that impossible anymore. We certainly do not have this kind of discussions usually when it comes to increasing the defence budged sadly.
But granted, we would still be looking at a relatively high amount of money which would require more taxes on capital gains and financial business which are taxed very low compared to labour in some cases as low like 20% where as labour can be taxed up to 40% depending on how you make the financial transaction tax you could gain trillions per year. Like a financial transaction tax or 0.04% on all financial transactions. Not to mention that many large corporations, like Amazon, Google, Apple and many more pay almost no taxes at all. That for it self is already pretty bad. But considering how important data is becoming in this global economy (see Facebook) we do have to think about new ways of taxation on tech companies anyway.
Yanis Varoufakis talks about his idea on how to finance it here and his way is not focused on taxes :
This kind of question has been around for quit some time and there are many ideas floating around on how to finance it of which some are very simple and others quite complex. Considering how many people actually looked in to the topic - even Milton Friedman the father of neo liberalism had his idea of the UBI - pretty much everyone from a conservative to a progressive can find his preferred method of financing it. Or at the very least something where he might see something he likes. Of course it still ain't easy to actually calculate everything in detail we are talking about very substantial changes in our economy here and any society with the UBI would be a different society to the one we have now there can be no doubts about that. But I think it would be a better society in the end just as how we have today a better society with all the well fare than I don't know, a 100 years ago when people started to think about on how to improve society from a social stand point. What it simply boils down to historically is that we always expanded the circle of people which we allowed to participate in society. But I hope that I could at least give you a new idea. BI mean if we look at the incredible amount of money that was spend in the bail outs of 2008 and which very likely will be spend again to large corporations and financial institutions, probably even in greater amount than 2008, then I do not see money actually as the crucial issue here.
The actual more important and honestly interesting question, do we actually want as a society to actually have a new economic model where labour is separated from wages? We have a very strange definition on how we define success and wages. In our current economy labour is only considered work if you're gating a wage for it and the higher the wage the more importance do we put in it the amount of money you receive for your work is a measure of success but that's actually a very flawed way of defining tasks which are meaningful and actually important for a functioning society. We have many positions which receive no money at all but still are detrimental for a functioning society. Like mothers raising their children. But this is not considered "labour" since they are not receiving wages for it. We also have a lot of work in charity organisations which are equally detrimental to society.
This leads to strange situations where someone designing tanks for the military as engineer can receive a very large wage where as someone nursing his relatives at home gets pretty much nothing at the very least not even close to what you can get in the armaments industry. But which position is now more important for a society?
The fact that you have to actually perform labour where you need a wage to exist means that you're always in a disadvantageous position where you're also forced to accept any job presented to you. Lose your job, for what ever reason and you're not capable of supporting your self anymore. This creates a very high amount of pressure. The UBI, make no mistake, aims at changing that completely. And then it comes down to what you actually personally believe from a philosophical point. Do humans need the "existential fear" (pressure) to do work? Or are humans (generally speaking) capable of finding their own work?
I tend to believe the later. We will always find some work to do. But it will not always be work that gets a wage. But that still doesn't mean that it's less important for society. I mean Imagine if being a mother would be only possible if someone paid you a "wage" for it.
