Comment by jimmywanger
10 years ago
Basic income will have to come with extremely limited immigration EDIT: or immigrants will be ineligible for the income.
That's something that a lot of people miss, that a universal basic income in a developed country (US, Western Europe) corresponds to a lifestyle of the lap of luxury in most other parts of the world.
This is an important point, especially because the first country that implements UBI will be the most attractive country to immigrate to for people who have no value to employers. Many potential immigrants who want to work hard will choose to go to other countries, so the country with UBI will miss out on their productivity and their tax dollars. That would certainly put a burden on the UBI system.
What immigration system allows people who have no desirable skills to immigrate currently?
Th kind in which cities refuse to enforce federal laws, eg, New York.
The developed world already has this problem: Australian unemployment benefits are on the same order as most UBI proposals. The current Australian response is the systematic rape and murder of unauthorised immigrants, which most of the country thinks isn't tough enough. (That is literally true, not a joke.) So this can go very wrong.
Systematic? Citation please.
Version 2 of the transportation system is well known in outline. Undesirable elements are disappeared to remote islands, whose people don't want them there, and whose police, to the extent that there are any, aren't willing to protect them. The resulting rapes and murders are, well, results.
The people in charge of this go to extreme lengths to prevent anyone finding out the details, which is strong circumstantial evidence that they're doing something very wrong, and that they know it.
1 reply →
This isn't immediately obvious to me, especially if basic income is implemented as a negative income tax.
Of course if there are more people beneath the tax threshold you have to pay out more, but that might well be offset by their added contributions to the economy. I'm not saying it definitely will be, but it's not obvious that it won't.