The Liberal Democrat conference announced a basic income as one of its policies: https://www.libdems.org.uk/f8-ubi Aside from whether they would get into government again, does anyone think it would be a good policy for autistic people as we struggle to find paid employment?
Universal income?
- Thread starter sstiel
- Start date
Pattern-chaser
Active member
Yes, UBI is good for everyone except billionaires, but as they've increased their personal wealth by 27% since Covid started, they don't need our help or our sympathy.
That's one thing to examine about it. Would the government have to examine the assets of every citizen to ensure the well-off and others don't get public money willy-nilly.
Pattern-chaser
Active member
I thought a core principle of UBI was that everyone gets it, even billionaires? Public money is *our* money, yours and mine. UBI uses *our* money to support all of *us*. UBI is UNIVERSAL; it applies to all. The concept of "benefit scroungers" is unhelpful here, I think.
Yes I understand that. UBI is meant to enable someone to survive so it would have to be investigated further because at the moment it has been applied in areas with small populations. https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200624-canadas-forgotten-universal-basic-income-experiment Manitoba provincec in Canada had a scheme as early as 1974.
Pattern-chaser
Active member
Survive? I thought it was supposed to be a little more than that. Not a luxury income, to be sure. But perhaps a basic living wage, enough to cover the essentials of life, and maybe one or two small luxuries?
There have been quite a few pilot schemes over the years. Some have appeared to work well, but all have been discontinued anyway. I think politicians daren't support it, for fear they will be perceived as giving our money away....
Well this virus will have drastic long-term effects and changes; public finances being one. I wonder if the National Autistic Society or any other charitable/campaigning groups for autistic people may take an interest in UBI. Labour and the Liberal Democrats have proposed it and Conservative politicians have looked into it as well.
Thunderchild
Administrator
It's a policy that I think started in the green party. It would be a good idea but to most people it's giving away free money and they object because they don't see the bigger picture. It would of course take jobs away from a lot of government workers who manage the whole system probably at a higher cost than the actual benefits they pay out.
Interesting paper that describes being its origins as being from Thomas Paine in 1797: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/35278953.pdf I don't think it would take jobs away from government workers as you would need a reliable IT infrastructure to ensure citizens were paid.
Thunderchild
Administrator
Ultimately people would be paid anyway. What I am saying is the green party had it as official policy first. But then they have a plan for how to run the world before they even have a plan to get elected.
Pattern-chaser
Active member
I would love to see UBI. When you don't need to work, you can focus on what you'd like to do. Very few people, I think, would choose to do nothing at all. The truth is that our society doesn't need everyone to work, although it obviously couldn't work if no-one wanted to work. But that wouldn't be the case. And those who did work, gaining additional income (and thereby luxuries) over and above their UBI income, could choose what they wanted to do, what really interested them. The quality of such work is much higher, and its product is better too.
Thunderchild
Administrator
With the way jobs are being replaced by technology this just becomes more and more of a problem and pay rates get squeezed. We just need to accept that we all need to live together and with dignity. I think very hard about applying for another job as much as I loath my current one as I could fall flat on my face and loose everything. If I had the sort of safety net of UBI I would be more tempted. It would also make it easier for people to learn new skills and take qualifications and society only ever benefits from being better educated.
Pattern-chaser
Active member
A very few (severely disabled) citizens would need benefits in addition to their UBI income, but this is a pretty small number of people. Most people who worked in the benefits system would need to find something else, as you say. I think tax could be radically simplified too. For a start, there would be no need or point for tax allowances. It might even be that all income (except UBI) could be taxed at one fixed rate. This would simplify employers' paperwork too. And there would be no need for anyone to work directly in tax collection. Employers would pay it directly into the government's coffers.
The cost of UBI still remains significant, but it's nowhere like as big as it first seems to be.
Thunderchild
Administrator
Yes you would need to look at people with particular support needs.
Hm, taxation, I have a plan for that but people who think they know what they are talking about keep poo-pooing me. I would scrap corporation tax and income tax and just increase VAT. VAT contrary to what people like to tell you is incredibly simple. You spend money - x% is added to the price and goes to the tax man. So where items currently are exempt like food they will just have a lower rate. So you now pay 20% income tax, right the base rate of VAT would be 20% and the rate for most stuff is 40%. I am not saying use these exact numbers they are an example and i realize that working out the exact rates will be very contentious.
So a business registers for VAT, it pays 40% on everything and reclaims 20%, simple. As the VAT system stands now it is way simpler and fiddle proof than the income tax system, yo spend, you pay, to spend you obviously earned, so income is taxed. This also sorts out corporation tax beautifully because the VAT is collected by the government where the buyer is located. It demolished corporate tax shenanigans where the tax is not even paid to the country of the person spending the money but the lowest bidder in offshore tax haven market. And yes companies will register anywhere to save any fraction of tax because even a small percentage of a lot is quite some sum.
Hm, taxation, I have a plan for that but people who think they know what they are talking about keep poo-pooing me. I would scrap corporation tax and income tax and just increase VAT. VAT contrary to what people like to tell you is incredibly simple. You spend money - x% is added to the price and goes to the tax man. So where items currently are exempt like food they will just have a lower rate. So you now pay 20% income tax, right the base rate of VAT would be 20% and the rate for most stuff is 40%. I am not saying use these exact numbers they are an example and i realize that working out the exact rates will be very contentious.
So a business registers for VAT, it pays 40% on everything and reclaims 20%, simple. As the VAT system stands now it is way simpler and fiddle proof than the income tax system, yo spend, you pay, to spend you obviously earned, so income is taxed. This also sorts out corporation tax beautifully because the VAT is collected by the government where the buyer is located. It demolished corporate tax shenanigans where the tax is not even paid to the country of the person spending the money but the lowest bidder in offshore tax haven market. And yes companies will register anywhere to save any fraction of tax because even a small percentage of a lot is quite some sum.
Taxing assets instead of income is an interesting proposal albeit the countries that do that tend to small in population and territory. UBI would be good because writing as someone who has claimed Jobseekers' Allowance, I did feel like a sponger and a criminal. The advisers working at the Job Centre could be mocking as well despite the fact my notebook detailing my job search was always full every time I turned up.
Thunderchild
Administrator
No assets does not work so well. Ultimately what scares people is that what they have worked for gets eroded, it is also difficult to value the asset.
I went to a green party conference a few years ago before I got fed up with the conferences themselves and then the party. They had a talk from some people advocating a land tax. Some famous woman (actress of days gone by) was fronting their plan which frankly is all they had that the public could relate to. They argued that the only tax you should pay is on the land you own. This however is unworkable unless we all have the same land use. They were very stubborn and the answer to any question about how this could work was literally "I have 3 degrees so I know better than you, just believe me this is the only way...." Land is an asset. Even if you want to value it based on a use category (residential, farming, industrial, etc) it is still very difficult to tax in proportion to the income the land brings or the value that it has. You could be on "industrial" land manufacturing products, depending on what the products are they could have very different sales values despite requiring the same land/asset to produce. This immediately penalizes some businesses. You could be a business that just say writes programmes and needs very little space and work from home. Even if you classified the residential or part of it as commercial you could still be making a much higher income per sqm than another commercial land occupier. It just does not add up.
i see similar issues with assets. How do you value them? There will be dis-proportionality in a businesses revenue versus it's tax bill compared to other companies paying the same.
Also why should I work all my life to buy a house (because renting costs even more than a mortgage since the financial crash), to then retire and have to pay tax on it when it is where I live. VAT is kind of an asset tax as you are taxed on what you purchase not what you earn. There has been a lot of talk about the economy in this crisis, and yes keeping small businesses alive means that they will pay tax that will repay the debts run up from what the government has spent. But corporations, the really big ones wriggle out of so much tax that the only tax they really pay is VAT, the only sure way to stop loopholes and dodging is to tax the money when it changes hands. Other taxes may also be required but I see the income and corporation tax system as broken. And I say this as a small business owner who would be paying more tax under such a system than I do now but it would be a ubiquitous system that my competitors would have to contend with too so I am not put at a disadvantage like i am now as I don't play loop-hole games.
I went to a green party conference a few years ago before I got fed up with the conferences themselves and then the party. They had a talk from some people advocating a land tax. Some famous woman (actress of days gone by) was fronting their plan which frankly is all they had that the public could relate to. They argued that the only tax you should pay is on the land you own. This however is unworkable unless we all have the same land use. They were very stubborn and the answer to any question about how this could work was literally "I have 3 degrees so I know better than you, just believe me this is the only way...." Land is an asset. Even if you want to value it based on a use category (residential, farming, industrial, etc) it is still very difficult to tax in proportion to the income the land brings or the value that it has. You could be on "industrial" land manufacturing products, depending on what the products are they could have very different sales values despite requiring the same land/asset to produce. This immediately penalizes some businesses. You could be a business that just say writes programmes and needs very little space and work from home. Even if you classified the residential or part of it as commercial you could still be making a much higher income per sqm than another commercial land occupier. It just does not add up.
i see similar issues with assets. How do you value them? There will be dis-proportionality in a businesses revenue versus it's tax bill compared to other companies paying the same.
Also why should I work all my life to buy a house (because renting costs even more than a mortgage since the financial crash), to then retire and have to pay tax on it when it is where I live. VAT is kind of an asset tax as you are taxed on what you purchase not what you earn. There has been a lot of talk about the economy in this crisis, and yes keeping small businesses alive means that they will pay tax that will repay the debts run up from what the government has spent. But corporations, the really big ones wriggle out of so much tax that the only tax they really pay is VAT, the only sure way to stop loopholes and dodging is to tax the money when it changes hands. Other taxes may also be required but I see the income and corporation tax system as broken. And I say this as a small business owner who would be paying more tax under such a system than I do now but it would be a ubiquitous system that my competitors would have to contend with too so I am not put at a disadvantage like i am now as I don't play loop-hole games.
Thunderchild
Administrator
Yes, I do get private eye but i only get as far as the cartoons as i don't have time to read it all in 2 weeks but i did see a big spread I think a month ago about more uncovering of tax dodging. This why I think that we either seriously reform it or just abolish it and increase VAT which would be far simpler.
https://www.private-eye.co.uk/registry Here it is. I wonder how high a British UBI would have to be.
Thunderchild
Administrator
well that is the million dollar question.
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