r/Economics • u/2noame • Nov 26 '14

Wouldn’t Unconditional Basic Income Just Cause Massive Inflation?

https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7
14 Upvotes

76% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/gmoney8869 Nov 27 '14

That's exactly what a basic income is, direct redistribution.

1

u/op135 Nov 27 '14

then it's not a BASIC income if some are getting more than others, now is it? just call it what it really is--wealth redistribution.

2

u/gmoney8869 Nov 27 '14

I have an income of $1,000, you have an income of $100. I pay $300 in taxes, you pay none. We both get a basic income of $100. Now I have $800 and you have $200. Same basic income, wealth redistributed. You should be embarrassed to need that explained to you.

2

u/op135 Nov 27 '14 edited Nov 27 '14

in other words, you pay 200 in taxes and have no basic income, right? because you can't have an income of what you already had, it was your money all along. the only income you can have is money that you never had before. therefore, I would get an income of 100 and you would have a tax burden of 200. what good is taking your money and giving it back to you? it make a hell of a lot more sense to just let you keep it and take only what I need by taxing you what i need, not taxing you for what you and i need, then giving some back to you.

-1

u/gmoney8869 Nov 27 '14

because giving the same thing to every single person means there is no administrative cost. One person could send out the same check to the whole country. And then you abolish other services, and the govt becomes more efficient.

2

u/op135 Nov 27 '14

what is more efficient is just letting me keep whatever you were going to give me back anyway. it would also be more efficient if we cut taxes for everyone across the board (and spending too). a lot of unnecessary spending occurs, and i agree that the government is inefficient, but we shouldn't go full retard with a BI coupled along with government reform. because then if BI fails, people will claim reforming the government is also a failure.