Clearly he misses out the fact - cheap food = full of sugar and other crap to keep costs down.
The only difference between now and the 19th century is that then cheap food was poor quality and often featured things that weren't food (so you were under weight). Now it contains calories that aren't easy to burn off.
If you were a one parent family with say two kids and struggling financially this would seem a cheap way to feed the family for three or four dinners
500g of pasta, one tin of tomatoes and 1kg of chicken is not going to provide 12 dinners, unless they are all for Tiny Tim. What planet are you on?
Two tins of tomatoes.
I am on planet normal - that could easily make one adult and two kids half a weeks dinners
It works out at about 300 calories per meal for 12 meals. An adult needs 2000-2500 calories per day and a child aged 6-12 needs 1600-2200. So 300 for your main meal of the day looks pretty inadequate. I shop and cook for a family of five and I can tell you that your meal would do us for about one dinner, maybe with a bit left over. Our kids are far from fat (in fact most clothes don't fit them because they are too skinny) so we are definitely not overfeeding them.
Fair enough, let them buy double what I suggested - three or four meals for less than £12
I think there is general agreement that people can just about afford to eat a decent diet on benefits as long as they don't buy anything else. Unfortunately people also need to pay for clothes, transport, heating, etc. Some people compound their difficulties by not knowing how to cook (a widespread problem not only affecting the poor; not helped by schools no longer teaching home economics). Some people working long hours and shifts don't have time to cook. Some people don't have the equipment. I just find all this smug wisdom being dispensed by well off people a bit too Marie Antoinette* for my liking. (*I know she was misquoted).
How much do you think is required to feed a family of four 2 children 2 adults per week? As a pound figure?
About £150. Less if the kids are on free school meals. The Food Standards Agency have a report on the cost of a healthy food basket in Northern Ireland in 2018, they have it as £159 for a family of 4 with 2 school age kids. Presumably it is higher in 2020 with inflation, but NI may have higher costs than GB. I think we probably spend about £200/week on food for a family of 5. We don't shop at the cheapest supermarket and get organic meat and milk, but we cook everything from scratch which saves money and don't normally buy any alcohol.
And on uc the least that family would get per week is 229£ the most 253£
Add in 100£ per month for gas and electric 25£ per month for internet two sim only deals for the adults 10£ a month comes to another 33£ a week
So using your figure we come to 183£ leaving them between 46£ a week and 70£ a week
Aha you say they may need to pay some towards rent well lets add in another 100£ a month for rent and 60 for council tax thats another 34£ a week
Still leaves a net of 12£ a week to 36£ a week
Clothes and bus fares. Car needs a repair. Haircuts. Furniture and appliances need to be replaced. School trips. Curtains and bedding. This all assumes your benefits are paid on time, you don't get sanctioned unfairly, you're not subject to the bedroom tax etc.
The last sentence brings us back to UBI...
I'd like to see fair minimum determined by focus group and explicit listing of what, on average, should be covered as basic (what speed of broadband etc etc) year by year. And I'd mandate from government that contract exits are made available for discretionary services for change of circumstances (e.g. get sacked, you may bin Sky Sports: when you so wish)
That I would expect it to almost always work out at pretty much the 60% of median relative poverty line that the right love to whinge about is besides the point. The fact the right like to whinge about it is reason enough to sink government money into making an explicit calculation.
And UBI, plus a restructuring of tax to make good the difference (e.g. if you take UBI, you go on higher tax rates for a period of time, your call. And 'something, something' for the self employed), yes please. And btw, state pension, child benefit, student financing - yes, ultimately, they're going to be UBI too.
The contract exits seem a good idea or for that matter contract breaks. However what did I not list that you consider necessary?
Both adults have a mobile, they have internet access, they have gas and electric,they have food a roof some money left over for discretionary spending on clothes etc. That is by its very definition a safety net. The purpose of benefits is to provide support when you fall on hard times not to provide a living.
UBI is a pipedream that will never happen because it would cost too much. Merely giving every adult in britain 1000£ a month ubi would cost in the region of 480 billion and 1000 a month would not be enough to live on it would probably need to be double that assuming housing benefit and other benefits would be axed. Add in the NHS, defence,schools etc and you are pretty much looking at the entirety of GDP going to the government coffers. When that happens no one is getting enough extra from working to bother. Why would a surgeon do a hugely stressful job when he is not getting a lot more than the ubi recipient
Your maths is completely flawed because you're assuming that it would be new money.
If the UBI replaces the tax-free threshold then it is effectively cost-neutral for anyone over the tax-free threshold. Or is not much extra cash for those above the tax-free threshold.
For anyone on benefits it would replace or supplement the benefits they were getting previously - so again not much extra cash up front.
It should lead to major cost reductions. You could essentially abolish Job Centre Plus and streamline much of HMRC. Job centres should be about helping people find work because they want to rather than because they need to pretend they want to and need to attend meetings or they'll get sanctioned.
Done properly people should actually want to work anyway as the poverty trap the current benefits system creates would be abolished.
A surgeon would be earning well more than the UBI, that is ridiculous. In fact done properly every single person who works would be earning more than the UBI, the UBI would be the floor not the ceiling that benefits currently create.
It is your maths that is flawed I am afraid. The tax free threshold is 12500 or so about a 1000 a month. That saves you paying tax of 200£ a month so giving someone a 1000 a month is a net loss of 800£.
Yes if you abolished housing benefit and uc that would be a saving but lets face it that won't happen and if it did the howls of protest would be huge as people would be getting even less than they are now.
Going back to that family of four they currently get
1100 a month uc 1000 a month housing benefit about 150£ a month reduction on council tax
That is before we add in free school meals, prescriptions etc.
You plan to replace this with 2X1000 ubi leaving them 250£ less well off
In addition you are giving every basic rate tax payer a boost to their pay of 1000£ a month in pay while charging them 200£ more tax
In the case of the employed, the UBI would be *entirely* taxed off their wages and given back to them by the government.
At this point, people then say, why bother?
The point is to make the system utterly dependable. You get your UBI each month, no matter what. Lose your job, UBI etc etc
No forms to fill out, no claims to be made.
This has the important effect of reducing the obstacles to getting a job from unemployment - at the moment, there is a whole dance about signing off benefits etc.
In a UBI system, get some work, get some money, pay some tax. Your UBI cannot be effected.
Well see there is the issue you then have, if for example UBI is 1000 a month and if you work it all gets clawed back....
Working a 37.5 hour week full time means you are working 1950 hours a year. A person working currently and earning 18000 a year loses 12000 automatically to claw back ubi plus the tax to cover the rest of govenment expenditure is probably working 1950 hours a year for 3 to 4000 pounds. A mere 70 to 80 pounds extra in their pocket a week. How many will just say not worth it?
Which is the old, old argument against benefits.....
Yet people do jobs where they get *less* than benefits - rare, but it does happen
Very common are jobs which only make marginally more than benefits. Tons of those. No shortage of applicants...
Go through the numbers I posted and point out where I was mistaken about the extra costs. I already pointed out your error in thinking the tax free allowance gives you a reduction of tax of that amount when it actually equates to saving you paying basic rate tax on the first 1042 a month you earn which at 20% is about 200 a month not a thousand
The tax free rate has a knock-on effect on the higher tax rate take too, although I doubt it's a massive amount.
Yes it does however he is still failing to get the basic point that a tax free allowance of 1000 a month does not give you 1000 in your pocket automatically it just saves you 200 in tax you would of otherwise paid
Say UBI is 1000 per month. And x is your post tax income, y is your income tax
Currently you get - 1000 + x , all paid by your job. Y is sent to the government.
UBI - 1000, your job pays you x. Y + 1000 is sent to the government.
This is only one of a number of ways of dealing with the employed situation for UBI systems.
No you dont this is the mistake you are making you get 1000 of your pay tax free. For example someone earning 17000 a year currently pays 75£ a month in tax and takes home 1417£ a month.
If you remove the tax free allowance altogether they wouldnt be paying 1075 tax they would be paying 275 tax
I think you are missing the point - the tax system would be changed (as part of the UBI). So that take home form employment would be reduced by the UBI amount.
You could think of it as 100% tax on the first £UBI of salary.
So no net effect on the employed person. The money that would have ended up in their bank account will just come from 2 sources.
That defeats the point of doing this.
The point of a UBI scheme (for me at least) is to do away with the iniquity of the fact that currently those on benefits face an effective 85% tax rate if they earn more due to the removal of benefits. By making the benefits universal and fixing the tax system instead they would be just paying tax rather than paying tax and losing benefits at 73% of whatever they earn post-tax.
If you introduce a 100% UBI tax on low earners then it becomes pointless to earn. Which is the problem that is supposed to be getting fixed by having a UBI in the first place.
That is the issue that all benefits systems face. They disincentives work. At the moment, a bottom end job pays benefits + a small amount.
However, people are getting jobs that pay little or more than benefits. Why? The simple answer is that they hope to get a better job.
A UBI isn't about necessarily giving people more money. It is about providing absolute stability to a basic level of income.
ignoring UBI being a good idea as long as incentives to work are in place (as PT says this is the whole point) , I think a better question to ask is that why are entry level or basic jobs paying not much more than benefits? TBF the tory and labour recent governments have both done good with raising minimum wage and tax thresholds for low earners but whilst we live in a virtue signalling media environment that concentrates on need not how hard low earners work (often in shit conditions) then little will change.
One suggested benefit of UBI from the progressive point of view is that it, in effect, will reduce the marginal rate of pay to it's true number.
Think of all those jobs which require benefits to make sense.....
Much of the media coverage and political positions adopted since the Brexit vote has viewed the prospect of leaving the EU as being negative – bad for business, bad for the economy and bad for stability.
But for Scottish fishing, nothing could be further from the truth. Brexit provides a once in a lifetime opportunity to restore normality and give our industry a real chance to prosper once again. ... make no mistake, the size of the prize is enormous, and if the right deal is reached on Brexit, it will turn us back into a world-class seafood harvesting and exporting country.
2021:
This industry now finds itself in the worst of both worlds. Your deal leaves us with shares that not only fall very far short of zonal attachment, but in many cases fail to “bridge the gap” compared to historic catches, and with no ability to leverage more fish from the EU, as they have full access to our waters. This, coupled with the chaos experienced since 1st January in getting fish to market means that many in our industry now fear for their future, rather than look forward to it with optimism and ambition.
UK's R number now between 1.2 and 1.3, from 1 to 1.4 last week.
Which means it may have got better, worse, or be stable!
From https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-r-number-in-the-uk: "SPI-M use several models, each using data from a variety of sources in their estimates of R and growth rate. Epidemiological data, such as hospital admissions, ICU admissions and deaths, usually takes up to 3 weeks to reflect changes in the spread of disease."
They might as well not bother. For example they reported 0.9..1.0 on 11 Dec when the reported case numbers had already been going up for a week.
Clearly he misses out the fact - cheap food = full of sugar and other crap to keep costs down.
The only difference between now and the 19th century is that then cheap food was poor quality and often featured things that weren't food (so you were under weight). Now it contains calories that aren't easy to burn off.
If you were a one parent family with say two kids and struggling financially this would seem a cheap way to feed the family for three or four dinners
500g of pasta, one tin of tomatoes and 1kg of chicken is not going to provide 12 dinners, unless they are all for Tiny Tim. What planet are you on?
Two tins of tomatoes.
I am on planet normal - that could easily make one adult and two kids half a weeks dinners
It works out at about 300 calories per meal for 12 meals. An adult needs 2000-2500 calories per day and a child aged 6-12 needs 1600-2200. So 300 for your main meal of the day looks pretty inadequate. I shop and cook for a family of five and I can tell you that your meal would do us for about one dinner, maybe with a bit left over. Our kids are far from fat (in fact most clothes don't fit them because they are too skinny) so we are definitely not overfeeding them.
Fair enough, let them buy double what I suggested - three or four meals for less than £12
I think there is general agreement that people can just about afford to eat a decent diet on benefits as long as they don't buy anything else. Unfortunately people also need to pay for clothes, transport, heating, etc. Some people compound their difficulties by not knowing how to cook (a widespread problem not only affecting the poor; not helped by schools no longer teaching home economics). Some people working long hours and shifts don't have time to cook. Some people don't have the equipment. I just find all this smug wisdom being dispensed by well off people a bit too Marie Antoinette* for my liking. (*I know she was misquoted).
How much do you think is required to feed a family of four 2 children 2 adults per week? As a pound figure?
About £150. Less if the kids are on free school meals. The Food Standards Agency have a report on the cost of a healthy food basket in Northern Ireland in 2018, they have it as £159 for a family of 4 with 2 school age kids. Presumably it is higher in 2020 with inflation, but NI may have higher costs than GB. I think we probably spend about £200/week on food for a family of 5. We don't shop at the cheapest supermarket and get organic meat and milk, but we cook everything from scratch which saves money and don't normally buy any alcohol.
And on uc the least that family would get per week is 229£ the most 253£
Add in 100£ per month for gas and electric 25£ per month for internet two sim only deals for the adults 10£ a month comes to another 33£ a week
So using your figure we come to 183£ leaving them between 46£ a week and 70£ a week
Aha you say they may need to pay some towards rent well lets add in another 100£ a month for rent and 60 for council tax thats another 34£ a week
Still leaves a net of 12£ a week to 36£ a week
Clothes and bus fares. Car needs a repair. Haircuts. Furniture and appliances need to be replaced. School trips. Curtains and bedding. This all assumes your benefits are paid on time, you don't get sanctioned unfairly, you're not subject to the bedroom tax etc.
The last sentence brings us back to UBI...
I'd like to see fair minimum determined by focus group and explicit listing of what, on average, should be covered as basic (what speed of broadband etc etc) year by year. And I'd mandate from government that contract exits are made available for discretionary services for change of circumstances (e.g. get sacked, you may bin Sky Sports: when you so wish)
That I would expect it to almost always work out at pretty much the 60% of median relative poverty line that the right love to whinge about is besides the point. The fact the right like to whinge about it is reason enough to sink government money into making an explicit calculation.
And UBI, plus a restructuring of tax to make good the difference (e.g. if you take UBI, you go on higher tax rates for a period of time, your call. And 'something, something' for the self employed), yes please. And btw, state pension, child benefit, student financing - yes, ultimately, they're going to be UBI too.
The contract exits seem a good idea or for that matter contract breaks. However what did I not list that you consider necessary?
Both adults have a mobile, they have internet access, they have gas and electric,they have food a roof some money left over for discretionary spending on clothes etc. That is by its very definition a safety net. The purpose of benefits is to provide support when you fall on hard times not to provide a living.
UBI is a pipedream that will never happen because it would cost too much. Merely giving every adult in britain 1000£ a month ubi would cost in the region of 480 billion and 1000 a month would not be enough to live on it would probably need to be double that assuming housing benefit and other benefits would be axed. Add in the NHS, defence,schools etc and you are pretty much looking at the entirety of GDP going to the government coffers. When that happens no one is getting enough extra from working to bother. Why would a surgeon do a hugely stressful job when he is not getting a lot more than the ubi recipient
Your maths is completely flawed because you're assuming that it would be new money.
If the UBI replaces the tax-free threshold then it is effectively cost-neutral for anyone over the tax-free threshold. Or is not much extra cash for those above the tax-free threshold.
For anyone on benefits it would replace or supplement the benefits they were getting previously - so again not much extra cash up front.
It should lead to major cost reductions. You could essentially abolish Job Centre Plus and streamline much of HMRC. Job centres should be about helping people find work because they want to rather than because they need to pretend they want to and need to attend meetings or they'll get sanctioned.
Done properly people should actually want to work anyway as the poverty trap the current benefits system creates would be abolished.
A surgeon would be earning well more than the UBI, that is ridiculous. In fact done properly every single person who works would be earning more than the UBI, the UBI would be the floor not the ceiling that benefits currently create.
It is your maths that is flawed I am afraid. The tax free threshold is 12500 or so about a 1000 a month. That saves you paying tax of 200£ a month so giving someone a 1000 a month is a net loss of 800£.
Yes if you abolished housing benefit and uc that would be a saving but lets face it that won't happen and if it did the howls of protest would be huge as people would be getting even less than they are now.
Going back to that family of four they currently get
1100 a month uc 1000 a month housing benefit about 150£ a month reduction on council tax
That is before we add in free school meals, prescriptions etc.
You plan to replace this with 2X1000 ubi leaving them 250£ less well off
In addition you are giving every basic rate tax payer a boost to their pay of 1000£ a month in pay while charging them 200£ more tax
In the case of the employed, the UBI would be *entirely* taxed off their wages and given back to them by the government.
At this point, people then say, why bother?
The point is to make the system utterly dependable. You get your UBI each month, no matter what. Lose your job, UBI etc etc
No forms to fill out, no claims to be made.
This has the important effect of reducing the obstacles to getting a job from unemployment - at the moment, there is a whole dance about signing off benefits etc.
In a UBI system, get some work, get some money, pay some tax. Your UBI cannot be effected.
Well see there is the issue you then have, if for example UBI is 1000 a month and if you work it all gets clawed back....
Working a 37.5 hour week full time means you are working 1950 hours a year. A person working currently and earning 18000 a year loses 12000 automatically to claw back ubi plus the tax to cover the rest of govenment expenditure is probably working 1950 hours a year for 3 to 4000 pounds. A mere 70 to 80 pounds extra in their pocket a week. How many will just say not worth it?
Which is the old, old argument against benefits.....
Yet people do jobs where they get *less* than benefits - rare, but it does happen
Very common are jobs which only make marginally more than benefits. Tons of those. No shortage of applicants...
Go through the numbers I posted and point out where I was mistaken about the extra costs. I already pointed out your error in thinking the tax free allowance gives you a reduction of tax of that amount when it actually equates to saving you paying basic rate tax on the first 1042 a month you earn which at 20% is about 200 a month not a thousand
The tax free rate has a knock-on effect on the higher tax rate take too, although I doubt it's a massive amount.
Yes it does however he is still failing to get the basic point that a tax free allowance of 1000 a month does not give you 1000 in your pocket automatically it just saves you 200 in tax you would of otherwise paid
Did I blink and miss National Insurance getting abolished?
If you do this properly you merge everything into one. You have just a single UBI (possibly supplemented per child and any other supplementaries getting added to the base figure, like how your tax-free allowance can be adjusted today) and just a single tax rate on any earnings that you have. So it isn't just the tax on Income Tax you need to account for but the tax on National Insurance too.
If someone is earning £12,500 then they should get the UBI plus be taxed on the entire £12,500 with whatever their appropriate tax rate is. If we were to have a 33% tax rate (for Income Tax and NI combined) then that individual would be paying £4,125 in tax.
Currently that individual pays £360 in National Insurance, £0 in Income Tax per annum.
So you could make a UBI of £3,765 without affecting tax rates, giving any extra income to anyone, having any savings, having any growth or anything else. The rest would need to be funded.
Of course by doing this as well anything currently exempt from paying NI (like the elderly that get away without paying it) would now get caught up in NI. As they should.
Which is all well and good but if you want to have ubi that replaces all benefits then it must be enough to live on, 1000 a month per adult is already less than they would get on uc. What tax rate would that be combined....pretty close to 100 when you consider it will go to all adults whether working or not.
Feel free to point out the error in my calculations of what the required tax take would be in the previous thread. Yes I left out ni in calculating but that would only make a difference of 0.12*12500*51,000,000 so subtract another 76 billion of the almost trillion tax take the government would need taking it down to about 880 billion and reducing the extra tax needed to be raised on people to 290 billion on top of the 194 billion it currently takes off them
UBI (not a bad idea but it has to be done right and across the board and be simple) should be funded by wealth and inheritance tax rather than income tax. I believe that all humans today shoudl have some natural inheritance from past society but many do not and it is random depending on wishes of (now) dead people . So increase inheritance or related taxes like wealth and gift tax and say the UBI bit is the universal inheritance
A strange sentiment from someone using the handle "state go away".
Not really i think the state is crap basically because it ends up with benefit schemes like we currently have. I don't like state power and I don't like entitled power (inheritance for instance) , I like individual power , hence this scheme (if done right) would empower individuals .
Clearly he misses out the fact - cheap food = full of sugar and other crap to keep costs down.
The only difference between now and the 19th century is that then cheap food was poor quality and often featured things that weren't food (so you were under weight). Now it contains calories that aren't easy to burn off.
If you were a one parent family with say two kids and struggling financially this would seem a cheap way to feed the family for three or four dinners
500g of pasta, one tin of tomatoes and 1kg of chicken is not going to provide 12 dinners, unless they are all for Tiny Tim. What planet are you on?
Two tins of tomatoes.
I am on planet normal - that could easily make one adult and two kids half a weeks dinners
It works out at about 300 calories per meal for 12 meals. An adult needs 2000-2500 calories per day and a child aged 6-12 needs 1600-2200. So 300 for your main meal of the day looks pretty inadequate. I shop and cook for a family of five and I can tell you that your meal would do us for about one dinner, maybe with a bit left over. Our kids are far from fat (in fact most clothes don't fit them because they are too skinny) so we are definitely not overfeeding them.
Fair enough, let them buy double what I suggested - three or four meals for less than £12
I think there is general agreement that people can just about afford to eat a decent diet on benefits as long as they don't buy anything else. Unfortunately people also need to pay for clothes, transport, heating, etc. Some people compound their difficulties by not knowing how to cook (a widespread problem not only affecting the poor; not helped by schools no longer teaching home economics). Some people working long hours and shifts don't have time to cook. Some people don't have the equipment. I just find all this smug wisdom being dispensed by well off people a bit too Marie Antoinette* for my liking. (*I know she was misquoted).
How much do you think is required to feed a family of four 2 children 2 adults per week? As a pound figure?
About £150. Less if the kids are on free school meals. The Food Standards Agency have a report on the cost of a healthy food basket in Northern Ireland in 2018, they have it as £159 for a family of 4 with 2 school age kids. Presumably it is higher in 2020 with inflation, but NI may have higher costs than GB. I think we probably spend about £200/week on food for a family of 5. We don't shop at the cheapest supermarket and get organic meat and milk, but we cook everything from scratch which saves money and don't normally buy any alcohol.
And on uc the least that family would get per week is 229£ the most 253£
Add in 100£ per month for gas and electric 25£ per month for internet two sim only deals for the adults 10£ a month comes to another 33£ a week
So using your figure we come to 183£ leaving them between 46£ a week and 70£ a week
Aha you say they may need to pay some towards rent well lets add in another 100£ a month for rent and 60 for council tax thats another 34£ a week
Still leaves a net of 12£ a week to 36£ a week
Clothes and bus fares. Car needs a repair. Haircuts. Furniture and appliances need to be replaced. School trips. Curtains and bedding. This all assumes your benefits are paid on time, you don't get sanctioned unfairly, you're not subject to the bedroom tax etc.
The last sentence brings us back to UBI...
I'd like to see fair minimum determined by focus group and explicit listing of what, on average, should be covered as basic (what speed of broadband etc etc) year by year. And I'd mandate from government that contract exits are made available for discretionary services for change of circumstances (e.g. get sacked, you may bin Sky Sports: when you so wish)
That I would expect it to almost always work out at pretty much the 60% of median relative poverty line that the right love to whinge about is besides the point. The fact the right like to whinge about it is reason enough to sink government money into making an explicit calculation.
And UBI, plus a restructuring of tax to make good the difference (e.g. if you take UBI, you go on higher tax rates for a period of time, your call. And 'something, something' for the self employed), yes please. And btw, state pension, child benefit, student financing - yes, ultimately, they're going to be UBI too.
The contract exits seem a good idea or for that matter contract breaks. However what did I not list that you consider necessary?
Both adults have a mobile, they have internet access, they have gas and electric,they have food a roof some money left over for discretionary spending on clothes etc. That is by its very definition a safety net. The purpose of benefits is to provide support when you fall on hard times not to provide a living.
UBI is a pipedream that will never happen because it would cost too much. Merely giving every adult in britain 1000£ a month ubi would cost in the region of 480 billion and 1000 a month would not be enough to live on it would probably need to be double that assuming housing benefit and other benefits would be axed. Add in the NHS, defence,schools etc and you are pretty much looking at the entirety of GDP going to the government coffers. When that happens no one is getting enough extra from working to bother. Why would a surgeon do a hugely stressful job when he is not getting a lot more than the ubi recipient
Your maths is completely flawed because you're assuming that it would be new money.
If the UBI replaces the tax-free threshold then it is effectively cost-neutral for anyone over the tax-free threshold. Or is not much extra cash for those above the tax-free threshold.
For anyone on benefits it would replace or supplement the benefits they were getting previously - so again not much extra cash up front.
It should lead to major cost reductions. You could essentially abolish Job Centre Plus and streamline much of HMRC. Job centres should be about helping people find work because they want to rather than because they need to pretend they want to and need to attend meetings or they'll get sanctioned.
Done properly people should actually want to work anyway as the poverty trap the current benefits system creates would be abolished.
A surgeon would be earning well more than the UBI, that is ridiculous. In fact done properly every single person who works would be earning more than the UBI, the UBI would be the floor not the ceiling that benefits currently create.
It is your maths that is flawed I am afraid. The tax free threshold is 12500 or so about a 1000 a month. That saves you paying tax of 200£ a month so giving someone a 1000 a month is a net loss of 800£.
Yes if you abolished housing benefit and uc that would be a saving but lets face it that won't happen and if it did the howls of protest would be huge as people would be getting even less than they are now.
Going back to that family of four they currently get
1100 a month uc 1000 a month housing benefit about 150£ a month reduction on council tax
That is before we add in free school meals, prescriptions etc.
You plan to replace this with 2X1000 ubi leaving them 250£ less well off
In addition you are giving every basic rate tax payer a boost to their pay of 1000£ a month in pay while charging them 200£ more tax
In the case of the employed, the UBI would be *entirely* taxed off their wages and given back to them by the government.
At this point, people then say, why bother?
The point is to make the system utterly dependable. You get your UBI each month, no matter what. Lose your job, UBI etc etc
No forms to fill out, no claims to be made.
This has the important effect of reducing the obstacles to getting a job from unemployment - at the moment, there is a whole dance about signing off benefits etc.
In a UBI system, get some work, get some money, pay some tax. Your UBI cannot be effected.
Well see there is the issue you then have, if for example UBI is 1000 a month and if you work it all gets clawed back....
Working a 37.5 hour week full time means you are working 1950 hours a year. A person working currently and earning 18000 a year loses 12000 automatically to claw back ubi plus the tax to cover the rest of govenment expenditure is probably working 1950 hours a year for 3 to 4000 pounds. A mere 70 to 80 pounds extra in their pocket a week. How many will just say not worth it?
Which is the old, old argument against benefits.....
Yet people do jobs where they get *less* than benefits - rare, but it does happen
Very common are jobs which only make marginally more than benefits. Tons of those. No shortage of applicants...
Go through the numbers I posted and point out where I was mistaken about the extra costs. I already pointed out your error in thinking the tax free allowance gives you a reduction of tax of that amount when it actually equates to saving you paying basic rate tax on the first 1042 a month you earn which at 20% is about 200 a month not a thousand
The tax free rate has a knock-on effect on the higher tax rate take too, although I doubt it's a massive amount.
Yes it does however he is still failing to get the basic point that a tax free allowance of 1000 a month does not give you 1000 in your pocket automatically it just saves you 200 in tax you would of otherwise paid
Say UBI is 1000 per month. And x is your post tax income, y is your income tax
Currently you get - 1000 + x , all paid by your job. Y is sent to the government.
UBI - 1000, your job pays you x. Y + 1000 is sent to the government.
This is only one of a number of ways of dealing with the employed situation for UBI systems.
No you dont this is the mistake you are making you get 1000 of your pay tax free. For example someone earning 17000 a year currently pays 75£ a month in tax and takes home 1417£ a month.
If you remove the tax free allowance altogether they wouldnt be paying 1075 tax they would be paying 275 tax
I think you are missing the point - the tax system would be changed (as part of the UBI). So that take home form employment would be reduced by the UBI amount.
You could think of it as 100% tax on the first £UBI of salary.
So no net effect on the employed person. The money that would have ended up in their bank account will just come from 2 sources.
That defeats the point of doing this.
The point of a UBI scheme (for me at least) is to do away with the iniquity of the fact that currently those on benefits face an effective 85% tax rate if they earn more due to the removal of benefits. By making the benefits universal and fixing the tax system instead they would be just paying tax rather than paying tax and losing benefits at 73% of whatever they earn post-tax.
If you introduce a 100% UBI tax on low earners then it becomes pointless to earn. Which is the problem that is supposed to be getting fixed by having a UBI in the first place.
That is the issue that all benefits systems face. They disincentives work. At the moment, a bottom end job pays benefits + a small amount.
However, people are getting jobs that pay little or more than benefits. Why? The simple answer is that they hope to get a better job.
A UBI isn't about necessarily giving people more money. It is about providing absolute stability to a basic level of income.
ignoring UBI being a good idea as long as incentives to work are in place (as PT says this is the whole point) , I think a better question to ask is that why are entry level or basic jobs paying not much more than benefits? TBF the tory and labour recent governments have both done good with raising minimum wage and tax thresholds for low earners but whilst we live in a virtue signalling media environment that concentrates on need not how hard low earners work (often in shit conditions) then little will change.
Because of the 73% 'tax' on the withdrawal of benefits, that is why.
Someone earns £9 per hour, that should be much more than benefits. But if they're past the NI and Income Tax threshold they face a marginal tax rate of 33%, so its really £6 per hour they take home.
£6 per hour marginal should still be better than benefits. But as they're currently receiving benefits they lose 73% to 'make up' for the fact they 'don't need' the benefits. So their benefits are reduced by £4.38
So now the person working "for £9 per hour" is actually taking home £1.62 per hour. It is pathetic.
Lets say an employer offers someone to work a full shift on their day off as overtime. Someone not on benefits earns £45 in extra take home pay. Someone on benefits gets £12.21 in extra take home pay.
Much of the media coverage and political positions adopted since the Brexit vote has viewed the prospect of leaving the EU as being negative – bad for business, bad for the economy and bad for stability.
But for Scottish fishing, nothing could be further from the truth. Brexit provides a once in a lifetime opportunity to restore normality and give our industry a real chance to prosper once again. ... make no mistake, the size of the prize is enormous, and if the right deal is reached on Brexit, it will turn us back into a world-class seafood harvesting and exporting country.
2021:
This industry now finds itself in the worst of both worlds. Your deal leaves us with shares that not only fall very far short of zonal attachment, but in many cases fail to “bridge the gap” compared to historic catches, and with no ability to leverage more fish from the EU, as they have full access to our waters. This, coupled with the chaos experienced since 1st January in getting fish to market means that many in our industry now fear for their future, rather than look forward to it with optimism and ambition.
The point of a UBI scheme (for me at least) is to do away with the iniquity of the fact that currently those on benefits face an effective 85% tax rate if they earn more due to the removal of benefits. By making the benefits universal and fixing the tax system instead they would be just paying tax rather than paying tax and losing benefits at 73% of whatever they earn post-tax.
If you introduce a 100% UBI tax on low earners then it becomes pointless to earn. Which is the problem that is supposed to be getting fixed by having a UBI in the first place.
Any rate of tax on low earners with a UBI system is going to be very high by necessity - which is where the idea of UBI falls apart as it will discourage people from working.
For instance if you give a UBI of £10000 but expect those that are earning £30000 to be net contributors to the tax base you need a tax rate of 50% just to cover UBI before anything else.
Now you could set UBI at £5000 but that is less benefit than even a single 23 year old male would receive over a year.
If you're on benefits currently you're already on a real 85% marginal tax rate essentially. That is the existing system today. So if you go to a 50% tax rate instead of an 85% tax rate that is a major improvement not a worsening of the situation.
What ethical reason is there to charge people a real marginal tax rate of 85%? Let alone the poorest of society?
Though your maths are flawed. At a 50% tax rate you would need to be earning £20,000 to be a net contributer to the tax base.
Personally figures from the air I would suggest a £1000 per month UBI, with a 40% tax rate, increasing to 50% after £100k per annum. No National Insurance, no exceptions.
That would mean someone not earning would get £12,000 UBI. Someone earning £30k would pay £0 tax and get £0 in benefits, anyone earning under £30k per annum would be a net recipient, only those earning over £30k would be net contributers. All incomes including pensions are taxed at the full rate.
You have forgotten the other 410 billion a year that gets spent on stuff like the nhs and defence? That also needs to be paid for
Meanwhile, the first Moderna vaccine was given in Norway on Friday.
In Germany too, after the first 60,000 doses arrived on Monday.
Do we know if this is a set of trial run batches or is the production like now up and running at decent capacity? As initially Moderna said ths wouldn't be ready until March time.
UK's R number now between 1.2 and 1.3, from 1 to 1.4 last week.
Which means it may have got better, worse, or be stable!
From https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-r-number-in-the-uk: "SPI-M use several models, each using data from a variety of sources in their estimates of R and growth rate. Epidemiological data, such as hospital admissions, ICU admissions and deaths, usually takes up to 3 weeks to reflect changes in the spread of disease."
They might as well not bother. For example they reported 0.9..1.0 on 11 Dec when the reported case numbers had already been going up for a week.
Hmmm. Using MaxPBs formula on hospital admissions gives -
While clearly ludicrous, this kind of checklist is crucial for safety in clinical practice. Having regretably spent too much time in hospital in the past, and been very familiar with the repetitive checking (I'm still the same bloody patient as I was yesterday, I'm in an isolation room!) its been interesting to see the other side of this, via academic research into error prevention and reporting in clinic. Of course she isn't pregnant at 99, but when we get to the 40-50 year old its an entirely valid question, and surely easier to just ask everyone.
Habit formation is only achieved by automatically doing the task whenever the trigger is present.
Error rates in following habitual procedures is in the order of 1:10,000. Error rates in following rules-based procedures (if this, then that; if 40 this, if 99 that) increase dramatically to the 1:200-2,000 range, depending on whether it is a rules procedure with which the operator is well versed, or a rule they have to reference during implementation.
It is worth the odd idiotic question to get a 5- to 50-fold reduction in error rates, particularly where high consequence errors are involved.
29% of Registered GOP voters disapprove or are not sure about Donald Trump? And less than half strongly approve of him?
Not all hope is lost about everyone in the the GOP yet.
Trump really is the American Corbyn. Once he's gone even the majority of Republicans will want to be moving away from him as fast as they can I expect.
Trump got 47% in 2020 and suffered a narrow defeat, Corbyn got 32% in 2019 and suffered a landslide defeat, that is the difference
7 million votes behind and 74 electoral votes behind is NOT a narrow defeat!
How many votes would have needed to change hands for Trump to win? Not many.
Don't worry we can always ask Europol for their copy...oh wait.
I haven't read the story - but surely they back up their records
They do, but they deleted it from the PNC and the servers it was connected to.
I fear, genuinely, that this was a cock up caused by the 40,000 alerts relating to European criminals have already been deleted from the PNC after Britain’s deal with the EU in the last few days.
Clearly he misses out the fact - cheap food = full of sugar and other crap to keep costs down.
The only difference between now and the 19th century is that then cheap food was poor quality and often featured things that weren't food (so you were under weight). Now it contains calories that aren't easy to burn off.
If you were a one parent family with say two kids and struggling financially this would seem a cheap way to feed the family for three or four dinners
500g of pasta, one tin of tomatoes and 1kg of chicken is not going to provide 12 dinners, unless they are all for Tiny Tim. What planet are you on?
Two tins of tomatoes.
I am on planet normal - that could easily make one adult and two kids half a weeks dinners
It works out at about 300 calories per meal for 12 meals. An adult needs 2000-2500 calories per day and a child aged 6-12 needs 1600-2200. So 300 for your main meal of the day looks pretty inadequate. I shop and cook for a family of five and I can tell you that your meal would do us for about one dinner, maybe with a bit left over. Our kids are far from fat (in fact most clothes don't fit them because they are too skinny) so we are definitely not overfeeding them.
Fair enough, let them buy double what I suggested - three or four meals for less than £12
I think there is general agreement that people can just about afford to eat a decent diet on benefits as long as they don't buy anything else. Unfortunately people also need to pay for clothes, transport, heating, etc. Some people compound their difficulties by not knowing how to cook (a widespread problem not only affecting the poor; not helped by schools no longer teaching home economics). Some people working long hours and shifts don't have time to cook. Some people don't have the equipment. I just find all this smug wisdom being dispensed by well off people a bit too Marie Antoinette* for my liking. (*I know she was misquoted).
How much do you think is required to feed a family of four 2 children 2 adults per week? As a pound figure?
About £150. Less if the kids are on free school meals. The Food Standards Agency have a report on the cost of a healthy food basket in Northern Ireland in 2018, they have it as £159 for a family of 4 with 2 school age kids. Presumably it is higher in 2020 with inflation, but NI may have higher costs than GB. I think we probably spend about £200/week on food for a family of 5. We don't shop at the cheapest supermarket and get organic meat and milk, but we cook everything from scratch which saves money and don't normally buy any alcohol.
And on uc the least that family would get per week is 229£ the most 253£
Add in 100£ per month for gas and electric 25£ per month for internet two sim only deals for the adults 10£ a month comes to another 33£ a week
So using your figure we come to 183£ leaving them between 46£ a week and 70£ a week
Aha you say they may need to pay some towards rent well lets add in another 100£ a month for rent and 60 for council tax thats another 34£ a week
Still leaves a net of 12£ a week to 36£ a week
Clothes and bus fares. Car needs a repair. Haircuts. Furniture and appliances need to be replaced. School trips. Curtains and bedding. This all assumes your benefits are paid on time, you don't get sanctioned unfairly, you're not subject to the bedroom tax etc.
The last sentence brings us back to UBI...
I'd like to see fair minimum determined by focus group and explicit listing of what, on average, should be covered as basic (what speed of broadband etc etc) year by year. And I'd mandate from government that contract exits are made available for discretionary services for change of circumstances (e.g. get sacked, you may bin Sky Sports: when you so wish)
That I would expect it to almost always work out at pretty much the 60% of median relative poverty line that the right love to whinge about is besides the point. The fact the right like to whinge about it is reason enough to sink government money into making an explicit calculation.
And UBI, plus a restructuring of tax to make good the difference (e.g. if you take UBI, you go on higher tax rates for a period of time, your call. And 'something, something' for the self employed), yes please. And btw, state pension, child benefit, student financing - yes, ultimately, they're going to be UBI too.
The contract exits seem a good idea or for that matter contract breaks. However what did I not list that you consider necessary?
Both adults have a mobile, they have internet access, they have gas and electric,they have food a roof some money left over for discretionary spending on clothes etc. That is by its very definition a safety net. The purpose of benefits is to provide support when you fall on hard times not to provide a living.
UBI is a pipedream that will never happen because it would cost too much. Merely giving every adult in britain 1000£ a month ubi would cost in the region of 480 billion and 1000 a month would not be enough to live on it would probably need to be double that assuming housing benefit and other benefits would be axed. Add in the NHS, defence,schools etc and you are pretty much looking at the entirety of GDP going to the government coffers. When that happens no one is getting enough extra from working to bother. Why would a surgeon do a hugely stressful job when he is not getting a lot more than the ubi recipient
Your maths is completely flawed because you're assuming that it would be new money.
If the UBI replaces the tax-free threshold then it is effectively cost-neutral for anyone over the tax-free threshold. Or is not much extra cash for those above the tax-free threshold.
For anyone on benefits it would replace or supplement the benefits they were getting previously - so again not much extra cash up front.
It should lead to major cost reductions. You could essentially abolish Job Centre Plus and streamline much of HMRC. Job centres should be about helping people find work because they want to rather than because they need to pretend they want to and need to attend meetings or they'll get sanctioned.
Done properly people should actually want to work anyway as the poverty trap the current benefits system creates would be abolished.
A surgeon would be earning well more than the UBI, that is ridiculous. In fact done properly every single person who works would be earning more than the UBI, the UBI would be the floor not the ceiling that benefits currently create.
It is your maths that is flawed I am afraid. The tax free threshold is 12500 or so about a 1000 a month. That saves you paying tax of 200£ a month so giving someone a 1000 a month is a net loss of 800£.
Yes if you abolished housing benefit and uc that would be a saving but lets face it that won't happen and if it did the howls of protest would be huge as people would be getting even less than they are now.
Going back to that family of four they currently get
1100 a month uc 1000 a month housing benefit about 150£ a month reduction on council tax
That is before we add in free school meals, prescriptions etc.
You plan to replace this with 2X1000 ubi leaving them 250£ less well off
In addition you are giving every basic rate tax payer a boost to their pay of 1000£ a month in pay while charging them 200£ more tax
In the case of the employed, the UBI would be *entirely* taxed off their wages and given back to them by the government.
At this point, people then say, why bother?
The point is to make the system utterly dependable. You get your UBI each month, no matter what. Lose your job, UBI etc etc
No forms to fill out, no claims to be made.
This has the important effect of reducing the obstacles to getting a job from unemployment - at the moment, there is a whole dance about signing off benefits etc.
In a UBI system, get some work, get some money, pay some tax. Your UBI cannot be effected.
Well see there is the issue you then have, if for example UBI is 1000 a month and if you work it all gets clawed back....
Working a 37.5 hour week full time means you are working 1950 hours a year. A person working currently and earning 18000 a year loses 12000 automatically to claw back ubi plus the tax to cover the rest of govenment expenditure is probably working 1950 hours a year for 3 to 4000 pounds. A mere 70 to 80 pounds extra in their pocket a week. How many will just say not worth it?
Which is the old, old argument against benefits.....
Yet people do jobs where they get *less* than benefits - rare, but it does happen
Very common are jobs which only make marginally more than benefits. Tons of those. No shortage of applicants...
Go through the numbers I posted and point out where I was mistaken about the extra costs. I already pointed out your error in thinking the tax free allowance gives you a reduction of tax of that amount when it actually equates to saving you paying basic rate tax on the first 1042 a month you earn which at 20% is about 200 a month not a thousand
The tax free rate has a knock-on effect on the higher tax rate take too, although I doubt it's a massive amount.
Yes it does however he is still failing to get the basic point that a tax free allowance of 1000 a month does not give you 1000 in your pocket automatically it just saves you 200 in tax you would of otherwise paid
Did I blink and miss National Insurance getting abolished?
If you do this properly you merge everything into one. You have just a single UBI (possibly supplemented per child and any other supplementaries getting added to the base figure, like how your tax-free allowance can be adjusted today) and just a single tax rate on any earnings that you have. So it isn't just the tax on Income Tax you need to account for but the tax on National Insurance too.
If someone is earning £12,500 then they should get the UBI plus be taxed on the entire £12,500 with whatever their appropriate tax rate is. If we were to have a 33% tax rate (for Income Tax and NI combined) then that individual would be paying £4,125 in tax.
Currently that individual pays £360 in National Insurance, £0 in Income Tax per annum.
So you could make a UBI of £3,765 without affecting tax rates, giving any extra income to anyone, having any savings, having any growth or anything else. The rest would need to be funded.
Of course by doing this as well anything currently exempt from paying NI (like the elderly that get away without paying it) would now get caught up in NI. As they should.
Which is all well and good but if you want to have ubi that replaces all benefits then it must be enough to live on, 1000 a month per adult is already less than they would get on uc. What tax rate would that be combined....pretty close to 100 when you consider it will go to all adults whether working or not.
Feel free to point out the error in my calculations of what the required tax take would be in the previous thread. Yes I left out ni in calculating but that would only make a difference of 0.12*12500*51,000,000 so subtract another 76 billion of the almost trillion tax take the government would need taking it down to about 880 billion and reducing the extra tax needed to be raised on people to 290 billion on top of the 194 billion it currently takes off them
UBI (not a bad idea but it has to be done right and across the board and be simple) should be funded by wealth and inheritance tax rather than income tax. I believe that all humans today shoudl have some natural inheritance from past society but many do not and it is random depending on wishes of (now) dead people . So increase inheritance or related taxes like wealth and gift tax and say the UBI bit is the universal inheritance
A strange sentiment from someone using the handle "state go away".
Not really i think the state is crap basically because it ends up with benefit schemes like we currently have. I don't like state power and I don't like entitled power (inheritance for instance) , I like individual power , hence this scheme (if done right) would empower individuals .
Clearly he misses out the fact - cheap food = full of sugar and other crap to keep costs down.
The only difference between now and the 19th century is that then cheap food was poor quality and often featured things that weren't food (so you were under weight). Now it contains calories that aren't easy to burn off.
If you were a one parent family with say two kids and struggling financially this would seem a cheap way to feed the family for three or four dinners
500g of pasta, one tin of tomatoes and 1kg of chicken is not going to provide 12 dinners, unless they are all for Tiny Tim. What planet are you on?
Two tins of tomatoes.
I am on planet normal - that could easily make one adult and two kids half a weeks dinners
It works out at about 300 calories per meal for 12 meals. An adult needs 2000-2500 calories per day and a child aged 6-12 needs 1600-2200. So 300 for your main meal of the day looks pretty inadequate. I shop and cook for a family of five and I can tell you that your meal would do us for about one dinner, maybe with a bit left over. Our kids are far from fat (in fact most clothes don't fit them because they are too skinny) so we are definitely not overfeeding them.
Fair enough, let them buy double what I suggested - three or four meals for less than £12
I think there is general agreement that people can just about afford to eat a decent diet on benefits as long as they don't buy anything else. Unfortunately people also need to pay for clothes, transport, heating, etc. Some people compound their difficulties by not knowing how to cook (a widespread problem not only affecting the poor; not helped by schools no longer teaching home economics). Some people working long hours and shifts don't have time to cook. Some people don't have the equipment. I just find all this smug wisdom being dispensed by well off people a bit too Marie Antoinette* for my liking. (*I know she was misquoted).
How much do you think is required to feed a family of four 2 children 2 adults per week? As a pound figure?
About £150. Less if the kids are on free school meals. The Food Standards Agency have a report on the cost of a healthy food basket in Northern Ireland in 2018, they have it as £159 for a family of 4 with 2 school age kids. Presumably it is higher in 2020 with inflation, but NI may have higher costs than GB. I think we probably spend about £200/week on food for a family of 5. We don't shop at the cheapest supermarket and get organic meat and milk, but we cook everything from scratch which saves money and don't normally buy any alcohol.
And on uc the least that family would get per week is 229£ the most 253£
Add in 100£ per month for gas and electric 25£ per month for internet two sim only deals for the adults 10£ a month comes to another 33£ a week
So using your figure we come to 183£ leaving them between 46£ a week and 70£ a week
Aha you say they may need to pay some towards rent well lets add in another 100£ a month for rent and 60 for council tax thats another 34£ a week
Still leaves a net of 12£ a week to 36£ a week
Clothes and bus fares. Car needs a repair. Haircuts. Furniture and appliances need to be replaced. School trips. Curtains and bedding. This all assumes your benefits are paid on time, you don't get sanctioned unfairly, you're not subject to the bedroom tax etc.
The last sentence brings us back to UBI...
I'd like to see fair minimum determined by focus group and explicit listing of what, on average, should be covered as basic (what speed of broadband etc etc) year by year. And I'd mandate from government that contract exits are made available for discretionary services for change of circumstances (e.g. get sacked, you may bin Sky Sports: when you so wish)
That I would expect it to almost always work out at pretty much the 60% of median relative poverty line that the right love to whinge about is besides the point. The fact the right like to whinge about it is reason enough to sink government money into making an explicit calculation.
And UBI, plus a restructuring of tax to make good the difference (e.g. if you take UBI, you go on higher tax rates for a period of time, your call. And 'something, something' for the self employed), yes please. And btw, state pension, child benefit, student financing - yes, ultimately, they're going to be UBI too.
The contract exits seem a good idea or for that matter contract breaks. However what did I not list that you consider necessary?
Both adults have a mobile, they have internet access, they have gas and electric,they have food a roof some money left over for discretionary spending on clothes etc. That is by its very definition a safety net. The purpose of benefits is to provide support when you fall on hard times not to provide a living.
UBI is a pipedream that will never happen because it would cost too much. Merely giving every adult in britain 1000£ a month ubi would cost in the region of 480 billion and 1000 a month would not be enough to live on it would probably need to be double that assuming housing benefit and other benefits would be axed. Add in the NHS, defence,schools etc and you are pretty much looking at the entirety of GDP going to the government coffers. When that happens no one is getting enough extra from working to bother. Why would a surgeon do a hugely stressful job when he is not getting a lot more than the ubi recipient
Your maths is completely flawed because you're assuming that it would be new money.
If the UBI replaces the tax-free threshold then it is effectively cost-neutral for anyone over the tax-free threshold. Or is not much extra cash for those above the tax-free threshold.
For anyone on benefits it would replace or supplement the benefits they were getting previously - so again not much extra cash up front.
It should lead to major cost reductions. You could essentially abolish Job Centre Plus and streamline much of HMRC. Job centres should be about helping people find work because they want to rather than because they need to pretend they want to and need to attend meetings or they'll get sanctioned.
Done properly people should actually want to work anyway as the poverty trap the current benefits system creates would be abolished.
A surgeon would be earning well more than the UBI, that is ridiculous. In fact done properly every single person who works would be earning more than the UBI, the UBI would be the floor not the ceiling that benefits currently create.
It is your maths that is flawed I am afraid. The tax free threshold is 12500 or so about a 1000 a month. That saves you paying tax of 200£ a month so giving someone a 1000 a month is a net loss of 800£.
Yes if you abolished housing benefit and uc that would be a saving but lets face it that won't happen and if it did the howls of protest would be huge as people would be getting even less than they are now.
Going back to that family of four they currently get
1100 a month uc 1000 a month housing benefit about 150£ a month reduction on council tax
That is before we add in free school meals, prescriptions etc.
You plan to replace this with 2X1000 ubi leaving them 250£ less well off
In addition you are giving every basic rate tax payer a boost to their pay of 1000£ a month in pay while charging them 200£ more tax
In the case of the employed, the UBI would be *entirely* taxed off their wages and given back to them by the government.
At this point, people then say, why bother?
The point is to make the system utterly dependable. You get your UBI each month, no matter what. Lose your job, UBI etc etc
No forms to fill out, no claims to be made.
This has the important effect of reducing the obstacles to getting a job from unemployment - at the moment, there is a whole dance about signing off benefits etc.
In a UBI system, get some work, get some money, pay some tax. Your UBI cannot be effected.
Well see there is the issue you then have, if for example UBI is 1000 a month and if you work it all gets clawed back....
Working a 37.5 hour week full time means you are working 1950 hours a year. A person working currently and earning 18000 a year loses 12000 automatically to claw back ubi plus the tax to cover the rest of govenment expenditure is probably working 1950 hours a year for 3 to 4000 pounds. A mere 70 to 80 pounds extra in their pocket a week. How many will just say not worth it?
Which is the old, old argument against benefits.....
Yet people do jobs where they get *less* than benefits - rare, but it does happen
Very common are jobs which only make marginally more than benefits. Tons of those. No shortage of applicants...
Go through the numbers I posted and point out where I was mistaken about the extra costs. I already pointed out your error in thinking the tax free allowance gives you a reduction of tax of that amount when it actually equates to saving you paying basic rate tax on the first 1042 a month you earn which at 20% is about 200 a month not a thousand
The tax free rate has a knock-on effect on the higher tax rate take too, although I doubt it's a massive amount.
Yes it does however he is still failing to get the basic point that a tax free allowance of 1000 a month does not give you 1000 in your pocket automatically it just saves you 200 in tax you would of otherwise paid
Did I blink and miss National Insurance getting abolished?
If you do this properly you merge everything into one. You have just a single UBI (possibly supplemented per child and any other supplementaries getting added to the base figure, like how your tax-free allowance can be adjusted today) and just a single tax rate on any earnings that you have. So it isn't just the tax on Income Tax you need to account for but the tax on National Insurance too.
If someone is earning £12,500 then they should get the UBI plus be taxed on the entire £12,500 with whatever their appropriate tax rate is. If we were to have a 33% tax rate (for Income Tax and NI combined) then that individual would be paying £4,125 in tax.
Currently that individual pays £360 in National Insurance, £0 in Income Tax per annum.
So you could make a UBI of £3,765 without affecting tax rates, giving any extra income to anyone, having any savings, having any growth or anything else. The rest would need to be funded.
Of course by doing this as well anything currently exempt from paying NI (like the elderly that get away without paying it) would now get caught up in NI. As they should.
Which is all well and good but if you want to have ubi that replaces all benefits then it must be enough to live on, 1000 a month per adult is already less than they would get on uc. What tax rate would that be combined....pretty close to 100 when you consider it will go to all adults whether working or not.
Feel free to point out the error in my calculations of what the required tax take would be in the previous thread. Yes I left out ni in calculating but that would only make a difference of 0.12*12500*51,000,000 so subtract another 76 billion of the almost trillion tax take the government would need taking it down to about 880 billion and reducing the extra tax needed to be raised on people to 290 billion on top of the 194 billion it currently takes off them
UBI (not a bad idea but it has to be done right and across the board and be simple) should be funded by wealth and inheritance tax rather than income tax. I believe that all humans today shoudl have some natural inheritance from past society but many do not and it is random depending on wishes of (now) dead people . So increase inheritance or related taxes like wealth and gift tax and say the UBI bit is the universal inheritance
A strange sentiment from someone using the handle "state go away".
Not really i think the state is crap basically because it ends up with benefit schemes like we currently have. I don't like state power and I don't like entitled power (inheritance for instance) , I like individual power , hence this scheme (if done right) would empower individuals .
Quite.
Some years ago, I was watching TV and a documentary following a "benefits team" around came up. They had got a live one! A man guilty of supporting his children, while claiming to be separated. Both mother and farther on benefits.
Guilty of supporting his children.
I din't actually destroy the TV at that point, but......
Clearly he misses out the fact - cheap food = full of sugar and other crap to keep costs down.
The only difference between now and the 19th century is that then cheap food was poor quality and often featured things that weren't food (so you were under weight). Now it contains calories that aren't easy to burn off.
If you were a one parent family with say two kids and struggling financially this would seem a cheap way to feed the family for three or four dinners
500g of pasta, one tin of tomatoes and 1kg of chicken is not going to provide 12 dinners, unless they are all for Tiny Tim. What planet are you on?
Two tins of tomatoes.
I am on planet normal - that could easily make one adult and two kids half a weeks dinners
It works out at about 300 calories per meal for 12 meals. An adult needs 2000-2500 calories per day and a child aged 6-12 needs 1600-2200. So 300 for your main meal of the day looks pretty inadequate. I shop and cook for a family of five and I can tell you that your meal would do us for about one dinner, maybe with a bit left over. Our kids are far from fat (in fact most clothes don't fit them because they are too skinny) so we are definitely not overfeeding them.
Fair enough, let them buy double what I suggested - three or four meals for less than £12
I think there is general agreement that people can just about afford to eat a decent diet on benefits as long as they don't buy anything else. Unfortunately people also need to pay for clothes, transport, heating, etc. Some people compound their difficulties by not knowing how to cook (a widespread problem not only affecting the poor; not helped by schools no longer teaching home economics). Some people working long hours and shifts don't have time to cook. Some people don't have the equipment. I just find all this smug wisdom being dispensed by well off people a bit too Marie Antoinette* for my liking. (*I know she was misquoted).
How much do you think is required to feed a family of four 2 children 2 adults per week? As a pound figure?
About £150. Less if the kids are on free school meals. The Food Standards Agency have a report on the cost of a healthy food basket in Northern Ireland in 2018, they have it as £159 for a family of 4 with 2 school age kids. Presumably it is higher in 2020 with inflation, but NI may have higher costs than GB. I think we probably spend about £200/week on food for a family of 5. We don't shop at the cheapest supermarket and get organic meat and milk, but we cook everything from scratch which saves money and don't normally buy any alcohol.
And on uc the least that family would get per week is 229£ the most 253£
Add in 100£ per month for gas and electric 25£ per month for internet two sim only deals for the adults 10£ a month comes to another 33£ a week
So using your figure we come to 183£ leaving them between 46£ a week and 70£ a week
Aha you say they may need to pay some towards rent well lets add in another 100£ a month for rent and 60 for council tax thats another 34£ a week
Still leaves a net of 12£ a week to 36£ a week
Clothes and bus fares. Car needs a repair. Haircuts. Furniture and appliances need to be replaced. School trips. Curtains and bedding. This all assumes your benefits are paid on time, you don't get sanctioned unfairly, you're not subject to the bedroom tax etc.
The last sentence brings us back to UBI...
I'd like to see fair minimum determined by focus group and explicit listing of what, on average, should be covered as basic (what speed of broadband etc etc) year by year. And I'd mandate from government that contract exits are made available for discretionary services for change of circumstances (e.g. get sacked, you may bin Sky Sports: when you so wish)
That I would expect it to almost always work out at pretty much the 60% of median relative poverty line that the right love to whinge about is besides the point. The fact the right like to whinge about it is reason enough to sink government money into making an explicit calculation.
And UBI, plus a restructuring of tax to make good the difference (e.g. if you take UBI, you go on higher tax rates for a period of time, your call. And 'something, something' for the self employed), yes please. And btw, state pension, child benefit, student financing - yes, ultimately, they're going to be UBI too.
The contract exits seem a good idea or for that matter contract breaks. However what did I not list that you consider necessary?
Both adults have a mobile, they have internet access, they have gas and electric,they have food a roof some money left over for discretionary spending on clothes etc. That is by its very definition a safety net. The purpose of benefits is to provide support when you fall on hard times not to provide a living.
UBI is a pipedream that will never happen because it would cost too much. Merely giving every adult in britain 1000£ a month ubi would cost in the region of 480 billion and 1000 a month would not be enough to live on it would probably need to be double that assuming housing benefit and other benefits would be axed. Add in the NHS, defence,schools etc and you are pretty much looking at the entirety of GDP going to the government coffers. When that happens no one is getting enough extra from working to bother. Why would a surgeon do a hugely stressful job when he is not getting a lot more than the ubi recipient
Your maths is completely flawed because you're assuming that it would be new money.
If the UBI replaces the tax-free threshold then it is effectively cost-neutral for anyone over the tax-free threshold. Or is not much extra cash for those above the tax-free threshold.
For anyone on benefits it would replace or supplement the benefits they were getting previously - so again not much extra cash up front.
It should lead to major cost reductions. You could essentially abolish Job Centre Plus and streamline much of HMRC. Job centres should be about helping people find work because they want to rather than because they need to pretend they want to and need to attend meetings or they'll get sanctioned.
Done properly people should actually want to work anyway as the poverty trap the current benefits system creates would be abolished.
A surgeon would be earning well more than the UBI, that is ridiculous. In fact done properly every single person who works would be earning more than the UBI, the UBI would be the floor not the ceiling that benefits currently create.
It is your maths that is flawed I am afraid. The tax free threshold is 12500 or so about a 1000 a month. That saves you paying tax of 200£ a month so giving someone a 1000 a month is a net loss of 800£.
Yes if you abolished housing benefit and uc that would be a saving but lets face it that won't happen and if it did the howls of protest would be huge as people would be getting even less than they are now.
Going back to that family of four they currently get
1100 a month uc 1000 a month housing benefit about 150£ a month reduction on council tax
That is before we add in free school meals, prescriptions etc.
You plan to replace this with 2X1000 ubi leaving them 250£ less well off
In addition you are giving every basic rate tax payer a boost to their pay of 1000£ a month in pay while charging them 200£ more tax
In the case of the employed, the UBI would be *entirely* taxed off their wages and given back to them by the government.
At this point, people then say, why bother?
The point is to make the system utterly dependable. You get your UBI each month, no matter what. Lose your job, UBI etc etc
No forms to fill out, no claims to be made.
This has the important effect of reducing the obstacles to getting a job from unemployment - at the moment, there is a whole dance about signing off benefits etc.
In a UBI system, get some work, get some money, pay some tax. Your UBI cannot be effected.
Well see there is the issue you then have, if for example UBI is 1000 a month and if you work it all gets clawed back....
Working a 37.5 hour week full time means you are working 1950 hours a year. A person working currently and earning 18000 a year loses 12000 automatically to claw back ubi plus the tax to cover the rest of govenment expenditure is probably working 1950 hours a year for 3 to 4000 pounds. A mere 70 to 80 pounds extra in their pocket a week. How many will just say not worth it?
Which is the old, old argument against benefits.....
Yet people do jobs where they get *less* than benefits - rare, but it does happen
Very common are jobs which only make marginally more than benefits. Tons of those. No shortage of applicants...
Go through the numbers I posted and point out where I was mistaken about the extra costs. I already pointed out your error in thinking the tax free allowance gives you a reduction of tax of that amount when it actually equates to saving you paying basic rate tax on the first 1042 a month you earn which at 20% is about 200 a month not a thousand
The tax free rate has a knock-on effect on the higher tax rate take too, although I doubt it's a massive amount.
Yes it does however he is still failing to get the basic point that a tax free allowance of 1000 a month does not give you 1000 in your pocket automatically it just saves you 200 in tax you would of otherwise paid
Did I blink and miss National Insurance getting abolished?
If you do this properly you merge everything into one. You have just a single UBI (possibly supplemented per child and any other supplementaries getting added to the base figure, like how your tax-free allowance can be adjusted today) and just a single tax rate on any earnings that you have. So it isn't just the tax on Income Tax you need to account for but the tax on National Insurance too.
If someone is earning £12,500 then they should get the UBI plus be taxed on the entire £12,500 with whatever their appropriate tax rate is. If we were to have a 33% tax rate (for Income Tax and NI combined) then that individual would be paying £4,125 in tax.
Currently that individual pays £360 in National Insurance, £0 in Income Tax per annum.
So you could make a UBI of £3,765 without affecting tax rates, giving any extra income to anyone, having any savings, having any growth or anything else. The rest would need to be funded.
Of course by doing this as well anything currently exempt from paying NI (like the elderly that get away without paying it) would now get caught up in NI. As they should.
Which is all well and good but if you want to have ubi that replaces all benefits then it must be enough to live on, 1000 a month per adult is already less than they would get on uc. What tax rate would that be combined....pretty close to 100 when you consider it will go to all adults whether working or not.
Feel free to point out the error in my calculations of what the required tax take would be in the previous thread. Yes I left out ni in calculating but that would only make a difference of 0.12*12500*51,000,000 so subtract another 76 billion of the almost trillion tax take the government would need taking it down to about 880 billion and reducing the extra tax needed to be raised on people to 290 billion on top of the 194 billion it currently takes off them
UBI (not a bad idea but it has to be done right and across the board and be simple) should be funded by wealth and inheritance tax rather than income tax. I believe that all humans today shoudl have some natural inheritance from past society but many do not and it is random depending on wishes of (now) dead people . So increase inheritance or related taxes like wealth and gift tax and say the UBI bit is the universal inheritance
A strange sentiment from someone using the handle "state go away".
Not really i think the state is crap basically because it ends up with benefit schemes like we currently have. I don't like state power and I don't like entitled power (inheritance for instance) , I like individual power , hence this scheme (if done right) would empower individuals .
The problem is that if you fund something by taxing wealth on an ongoing basis, the tax take declines year-on-year as wealth stores decline, and eventually you have to find a new source of funding. It seems unlikely that stored wealth would accumulate fast enough to cover the annual benefit payments needed to make UBI work.
Over-80s who were due to receive their jab at Newcastle's Centre for Life were told they could re-book rather than risk making a trip in the icy conditions.
More widespread bad weather predicted...incoming another Indy front-page saying vaccine roll out is a disaster.
Clearly he misses out the fact - cheap food = full of sugar and other crap to keep costs down.
The only difference between now and the 19th century is that then cheap food was poor quality and often featured things that weren't food (so you were under weight). Now it contains calories that aren't easy to burn off.
If you were a one parent family with say two kids and struggling financially this would seem a cheap way to feed the family for three or four dinners
500g of pasta, one tin of tomatoes and 1kg of chicken is not going to provide 12 dinners, unless they are all for Tiny Tim. What planet are you on?
Two tins of tomatoes.
I am on planet normal - that could easily make one adult and two kids half a weeks dinners
It works out at about 300 calories per meal for 12 meals. An adult needs 2000-2500 calories per day and a child aged 6-12 needs 1600-2200. So 300 for your main meal of the day looks pretty inadequate. I shop and cook for a family of five and I can tell you that your meal would do us for about one dinner, maybe with a bit left over. Our kids are far from fat (in fact most clothes don't fit them because they are too skinny) so we are definitely not overfeeding them.
Fair enough, let them buy double what I suggested - three or four meals for less than £12
I think there is general agreement that people can just about afford to eat a decent diet on benefits as long as they don't buy anything else. Unfortunately people also need to pay for clothes, transport, heating, etc. Some people compound their difficulties by not knowing how to cook (a widespread problem not only affecting the poor; not helped by schools no longer teaching home economics). Some people working long hours and shifts don't have time to cook. Some people don't have the equipment. I just find all this smug wisdom being dispensed by well off people a bit too Marie Antoinette* for my liking. (*I know she was misquoted).
How much do you think is required to feed a family of four 2 children 2 adults per week? As a pound figure?
About £150. Less if the kids are on free school meals. The Food Standards Agency have a report on the cost of a healthy food basket in Northern Ireland in 2018, they have it as £159 for a family of 4 with 2 school age kids. Presumably it is higher in 2020 with inflation, but NI may have higher costs than GB. I think we probably spend about £200/week on food for a family of 5. We don't shop at the cheapest supermarket and get organic meat and milk, but we cook everything from scratch which saves money and don't normally buy any alcohol.
And on uc the least that family would get per week is 229£ the most 253£
Add in 100£ per month for gas and electric 25£ per month for internet two sim only deals for the adults 10£ a month comes to another 33£ a week
So using your figure we come to 183£ leaving them between 46£ a week and 70£ a week
Aha you say they may need to pay some towards rent well lets add in another 100£ a month for rent and 60 for council tax thats another 34£ a week
Still leaves a net of 12£ a week to 36£ a week
Clothes and bus fares. Car needs a repair. Haircuts. Furniture and appliances need to be replaced. School trips. Curtains and bedding. This all assumes your benefits are paid on time, you don't get sanctioned unfairly, you're not subject to the bedroom tax etc.
The last sentence brings us back to UBI...
I'd like to see fair minimum determined by focus group and explicit listing of what, on average, should be covered as basic (what speed of broadband etc etc) year by year. And I'd mandate from government that contract exits are made available for discretionary services for change of circumstances (e.g. get sacked, you may bin Sky Sports: when you so wish)
That I would expect it to almost always work out at pretty much the 60% of median relative poverty line that the right love to whinge about is besides the point. The fact the right like to whinge about it is reason enough to sink government money into making an explicit calculation.
And UBI, plus a restructuring of tax to make good the difference (e.g. if you take UBI, you go on higher tax rates for a period of time, your call. And 'something, something' for the self employed), yes please. And btw, state pension, child benefit, student financing - yes, ultimately, they're going to be UBI too.
The contract exits seem a good idea or for that matter contract breaks. However what did I not list that you consider necessary?
Both adults have a mobile, they have internet access, they have gas and electric,they have food a roof some money left over for discretionary spending on clothes etc. That is by its very definition a safety net. The purpose of benefits is to provide support when you fall on hard times not to provide a living.
UBI is a pipedream that will never happen because it would cost too much. Merely giving every adult in britain 1000£ a month ubi would cost in the region of 480 billion and 1000 a month would not be enough to live on it would probably need to be double that assuming housing benefit and other benefits would be axed. Add in the NHS, defence,schools etc and you are pretty much looking at the entirety of GDP going to the government coffers. When that happens no one is getting enough extra from working to bother. Why would a surgeon do a hugely stressful job when he is not getting a lot more than the ubi recipient
Your maths is completely flawed because you're assuming that it would be new money.
If the UBI replaces the tax-free threshold then it is effectively cost-neutral for anyone over the tax-free threshold. Or is not much extra cash for those above the tax-free threshold.
For anyone on benefits it would replace or supplement the benefits they were getting previously - so again not much extra cash up front.
It should lead to major cost reductions. You could essentially abolish Job Centre Plus and streamline much of HMRC. Job centres should be about helping people find work because they want to rather than because they need to pretend they want to and need to attend meetings or they'll get sanctioned.
Done properly people should actually want to work anyway as the poverty trap the current benefits system creates would be abolished.
A surgeon would be earning well more than the UBI, that is ridiculous. In fact done properly every single person who works would be earning more than the UBI, the UBI would be the floor not the ceiling that benefits currently create.
It is your maths that is flawed I am afraid. The tax free threshold is 12500 or so about a 1000 a month. That saves you paying tax of 200£ a month so giving someone a 1000 a month is a net loss of 800£.
Yes if you abolished housing benefit and uc that would be a saving but lets face it that won't happen and if it did the howls of protest would be huge as people would be getting even less than they are now.
Going back to that family of four they currently get
1100 a month uc 1000 a month housing benefit about 150£ a month reduction on council tax
That is before we add in free school meals, prescriptions etc.
You plan to replace this with 2X1000 ubi leaving them 250£ less well off
In addition you are giving every basic rate tax payer a boost to their pay of 1000£ a month in pay while charging them 200£ more tax
In the case of the employed, the UBI would be *entirely* taxed off their wages and given back to them by the government.
At this point, people then say, why bother?
The point is to make the system utterly dependable. You get your UBI each month, no matter what. Lose your job, UBI etc etc
No forms to fill out, no claims to be made.
This has the important effect of reducing the obstacles to getting a job from unemployment - at the moment, there is a whole dance about signing off benefits etc.
In a UBI system, get some work, get some money, pay some tax. Your UBI cannot be effected.
Well see there is the issue you then have, if for example UBI is 1000 a month and if you work it all gets clawed back....
Working a 37.5 hour week full time means you are working 1950 hours a year. A person working currently and earning 18000 a year loses 12000 automatically to claw back ubi plus the tax to cover the rest of govenment expenditure is probably working 1950 hours a year for 3 to 4000 pounds. A mere 70 to 80 pounds extra in their pocket a week. How many will just say not worth it?
Which is the old, old argument against benefits.....
Yet people do jobs where they get *less* than benefits - rare, but it does happen
Very common are jobs which only make marginally more than benefits. Tons of those. No shortage of applicants...
Go through the numbers I posted and point out where I was mistaken about the extra costs. I already pointed out your error in thinking the tax free allowance gives you a reduction of tax of that amount when it actually equates to saving you paying basic rate tax on the first 1042 a month you earn which at 20% is about 200 a month not a thousand
The tax free rate has a knock-on effect on the higher tax rate take too, although I doubt it's a massive amount.
Yes it does however he is still failing to get the basic point that a tax free allowance of 1000 a month does not give you 1000 in your pocket automatically it just saves you 200 in tax you would of otherwise paid
Say UBI is 1000 per month. And x is your post tax income, y is your income tax
Currently you get - 1000 + x , all paid by your job. Y is sent to the government.
UBI - 1000, your job pays you x. Y + 1000 is sent to the government.
This is only one of a number of ways of dealing with the employed situation for UBI systems.
No you dont this is the mistake you are making you get 1000 of your pay tax free. For example someone earning 17000 a year currently pays 75£ a month in tax and takes home 1417£ a month.
If you remove the tax free allowance altogether they wouldnt be paying 1075 tax they would be paying 275 tax
I think you are missing the point - the tax system would be changed (as part of the UBI). So that take home form employment would be reduced by the UBI amount.
You could think of it as 100% tax on the first £UBI of salary.
So no net effect on the employed person. The money that would have ended up in their bank account will just come from 2 sources.
That defeats the point of doing this.
The point of a UBI scheme (for me at least) is to do away with the iniquity of the fact that currently those on benefits face an effective 85% tax rate if they earn more due to the removal of benefits. By making the benefits universal and fixing the tax system instead they would be just paying tax rather than paying tax and losing benefits at 73% of whatever they earn post-tax.
If you introduce a 100% UBI tax on low earners then it becomes pointless to earn. Which is the problem that is supposed to be getting fixed by having a UBI in the first place.
That is the issue that all benefits systems face. They disincentives work. At the moment, a bottom end job pays benefits + a small amount.
However, people are getting jobs that pay little or more than benefits. Why? The simple answer is that they hope to get a better job.
A UBI isn't about necessarily giving people more money. It is about providing absolute stability to a basic level of income.
ignoring UBI being a good idea as long as incentives to work are in place (as PT says this is the whole point) , I think a better question to ask is that why are entry level or basic jobs paying not much more than benefits? TBF the tory and labour recent governments have both done good with raising minimum wage and tax thresholds for low earners but whilst we live in a virtue signalling media environment that concentrates on need not how hard low earners work (often in shit conditions) then little will change.
Because of the 73% 'tax' on the withdrawal of benefits, that is why.
Someone earns £9 per hour, that should be much more than benefits. But if they're past the NI and Income Tax threshold they face a marginal tax rate of 33%, so its really £6 per hour they take home.
£6 per hour marginal should still be better than benefits. But as they're currently receiving benefits they lose 73% to 'make up' for the fact they 'don't need' the benefits. So their benefits are reduced by £4.38
So now the person working "for £9 per hour" is actually taking home £1.62 per hour. It is pathetic.
Lets say an employer offers someone to work a full shift on their day off as overtime. Someone not on benefits earns £45 in extra take home pay. Someone on benefits gets £12.21 in extra take home pay.
In principle, it should be possible to configure a UBI such that everyone pays/receives roughly the same net taxes/benefits as they currently do, but with much less administrative hassle and intrusion, and much more incentive to work.
I'm not sure why so many people struggle to understand this. I suspect it's because they don't want to. Some on the right baulk at giving people money for nothing, while some on the left can't abide the state giving money to people who don't necessarily need it. They really need to take a more holistic view!
Over-80s who were due to receive their jab at Newcastle's Centre for Life were told they could re-book rather than risk making a trip in the icy conditions.
More widespread bad weather predicted...incoming another Indy front-page saying vaccine roll out is a disaster.
Which is understandable , so why not go down the list to more mobile groups in the meantime. Never be too rigid with groupings is a good lesson in life generally!
My old mum (75-79 group, no underlying conditions) got a call today to be vaccinated at a new local vaccination centre, first appointment offered was in 2 working days.
The point of a UBI scheme (for me at least) is to do away with the iniquity of the fact that currently those on benefits face an effective 85% tax rate if they earn more due to the removal of benefits. By making the benefits universal and fixing the tax system instead they would be just paying tax rather than paying tax and losing benefits at 73% of whatever they earn post-tax.
If you introduce a 100% UBI tax on low earners then it becomes pointless to earn. Which is the problem that is supposed to be getting fixed by having a UBI in the first place.
Any rate of tax on low earners with a UBI system is going to be very high by necessity - which is where the idea of UBI falls apart as it will discourage people from working.
For instance if you give a UBI of £10000 but expect those that are earning £30000 to be net contributors to the tax base you need a tax rate of 50% just to cover UBI before anything else.
Now you could set UBI at £5000 but that is less benefit than even a single 23 year old male would receive over a year.
If you're on benefits currently you're already on a real 85% marginal tax rate essentially. That is the existing system today. So if you go to a 50% tax rate instead of an 85% tax rate that is a major improvement not a worsening of the situation.
What ethical reason is there to charge people a real marginal tax rate of 85%? Let alone the poorest of society?
Though your maths are flawed. At a 50% tax rate you would need to be earning £20,000 to be a net contributer to the tax base.
Personally figures from the air I would suggest a £1000 per month UBI, with a 40% tax rate, increasing to 50% after £100k per annum. No National Insurance, no exceptions.
That would mean someone not earning would get £12,000 UBI. Someone earning £30k would pay £0 tax and get £0 in benefits, anyone earning under £30k per annum would be a net recipient, only those earning over £30k would be net contributers. All incomes including pensions are taxed at the full rate.
You have forgotten the other 410 billion a year that gets spent on stuff like the nhs and defence? That also needs to be paid for
Which is will be, by those earning more, as already happens.
A few other things to take away from the bill. You've calculated the UBI going to everyone - it should only go to adults (with a smaller supplementary for children) and also I would not give it to migrants until they become a citizen. Currently you could say anyone whose status says "no recourse to public funds" would not get it - and going forwards post-Brexit we could say that is everyone who comes here. So people who come here to work would get taxed on every penny they earn but not receive any UBI, so they would need to ensure they can support themselves from what they earn.
UK's R number now between 1.2 and 1.3, from 1 to 1.4 last week.
Which means it may have got better, worse, or be stable!
From https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-r-number-in-the-uk: "SPI-M use several models, each using data from a variety of sources in their estimates of R and growth rate. Epidemiological data, such as hospital admissions, ICU admissions and deaths, usually takes up to 3 weeks to reflect changes in the spread of disease."
They might as well not bother. For example they reported 0.9..1.0 on 11 Dec when the reported case numbers had already been going up for a week.
Hmmm. Using MaxPBs formula on hospital admissions gives -
I'm not saying the number is wrong. I am saying it is outdated because it's based on lagged data. On the cases website and in the media it gets presented as if it shows what's happening right now, when in fact it's what happened two or three weeks ago.
I suppose there's not too much harm in overstating R now, but understating it when cases were accelerating might have played a part in delaying the December restrictions.
My old mum (75-79 group, no underlying conditions) got a call today to be vaccinated at a new local vaccination centre, first appointment offered was in 2 working days.
The point of a UBI scheme (for me at least) is to do away with the iniquity of the fact that currently those on benefits face an effective 85% tax rate if they earn more due to the removal of benefits. By making the benefits universal and fixing the tax system instead they would be just paying tax rather than paying tax and losing benefits at 73% of whatever they earn post-tax.
If you introduce a 100% UBI tax on low earners then it becomes pointless to earn. Which is the problem that is supposed to be getting fixed by having a UBI in the first place.
Any rate of tax on low earners with a UBI system is going to be very high by necessity - which is where the idea of UBI falls apart as it will discourage people from working.
For instance if you give a UBI of £10000 but expect those that are earning £30000 to be net contributors to the tax base you need a tax rate of 50% just to cover UBI before anything else.
Now you could set UBI at £5000 but that is less benefit than even a single 23 year old male would receive over a year.
If you're on benefits currently you're already on a real 85% marginal tax rate essentially. That is the existing system today. So if you go to a 50% tax rate instead of an 85% tax rate that is a major improvement not a worsening of the situation.
What ethical reason is there to charge people a real marginal tax rate of 85%? Let alone the poorest of society?
Though your maths are flawed. At a 50% tax rate you would need to be earning £20,000 to be a net contributer to the tax base.
Personally figures from the air I would suggest a £1000 per month UBI, with a 40% tax rate, increasing to 50% after £100k per annum. No National Insurance, no exceptions.
That would mean someone not earning would get £12,000 UBI. Someone earning £30k would pay £0 tax and get £0 in benefits, anyone earning under £30k per annum would be a net recipient, only those earning over £30k would be net contributers. All incomes including pensions are taxed at the full rate.
You have forgotten the other 410 billion a year that gets spent on stuff like the nhs and defence? That also needs to be paid for
Which is will be, by those earning more, as already happens.
A few other things to take away from the bill. You've calculated the UBI going to everyone - it should only go to adults (with a smaller supplementary for children) and also I would not give it to migrants until they become a citizen. Currently you could say anyone whose status says "no recourse to public funds" would not get it - and going forwards post-Brexit we could say that is everyone who comes here. So people who come here to work would get taxed on every penny they earn but not receive any UBI, so they would need to ensure they can support themselves from what they earn.
I calculated using 51,000,000 as about the number of adults in the uk. How many of those dont have recourse to public funds? Not even sure where to find a figure for that
My old mum (75-79 group, no underlying conditions) got a call today to be vaccinated at a new local vaccination centre, first appointment offered was in 2 working days.
Impressive.
That's interesting, I didn't know they'd moved on to the under 80s age category.
UK's R number now between 1.2 and 1.3, from 1 to 1.4 last week.
Which means it may have got better, worse, or be stable!
From https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-r-number-in-the-uk: "SPI-M use several models, each using data from a variety of sources in their estimates of R and growth rate. Epidemiological data, such as hospital admissions, ICU admissions and deaths, usually takes up to 3 weeks to reflect changes in the spread of disease."
They might as well not bother. For example they reported 0.9..1.0 on 11 Dec when the reported case numbers had already been going up for a week.
Hmmm. Using MaxPBs formula on hospital admissions gives -
I'm not saying the number is wrong. I am saying it is outdated because it's based on lagged data. On the cases website and in the media it gets presented as if it shows what's happening right now, when in fact it's what happened two or three weeks ago.
I suppose there's not too much harm in overstating R now, but understating it when cases were accelerating might have played a part in delaying the December restrictions.
I think we are in agreement, actually - three weeks back on that chart... R was rising.
Extraordinary Scottish fisherman’s Federation letter - body most often quoted by ministers/ best access to Govt/ backers of Brexit approach now saying Govt has left it in “worst of both worlds...many in seafood supply chain fear they will not survive..”
SFF letter to PM: “You and your Government have spun a line about a 25% uplift in quota for the UK, but you know this is not true, and your deal does not deliver that...”
Basically Boris Johnson has treated (Scottish) Fisherman with all the fidelity he gave to his wives.
Who feels more cucked by BJ, the DUP or the fisher folk?
The DUP, he went to the DUP conference and said no PM could ever put a border in the Irish Sea, then went and did that.
I don't think he cucked the fishing people to that level.
The Irish thing in particular showed Boris Johnson's capacity for lying. This was no nudge nudge private stitch up - although one has little doubt he is world class in that space too - this was shameless in-yer-face mendacity boomed out from the stage to thousands live and millions watching. Quite amazing bit of business. Yes, other politicians lie and have lied, and yes, there have been previous PMs whose integrity was questionable, but this guy, this Johnson, he is something else.
The point of a UBI scheme (for me at least) is to do away with the iniquity of the fact that currently those on benefits face an effective 85% tax rate if they earn more due to the removal of benefits. By making the benefits universal and fixing the tax system instead they would be just paying tax rather than paying tax and losing benefits at 73% of whatever they earn post-tax.
If you introduce a 100% UBI tax on low earners then it becomes pointless to earn. Which is the problem that is supposed to be getting fixed by having a UBI in the first place.
Any rate of tax on low earners with a UBI system is going to be very high by necessity - which is where the idea of UBI falls apart as it will discourage people from working.
For instance if you give a UBI of £10000 but expect those that are earning £30000 to be net contributors to the tax base you need a tax rate of 50% just to cover UBI before anything else.
Now you could set UBI at £5000 but that is less benefit than even a single 23 year old male would receive over a year.
If you're on benefits currently you're already on a real 85% marginal tax rate essentially. That is the existing system today. So if you go to a 50% tax rate instead of an 85% tax rate that is a major improvement not a worsening of the situation.
What ethical reason is there to charge people a real marginal tax rate of 85%? Let alone the poorest of society?
Though your maths are flawed. At a 50% tax rate you would need to be earning £20,000 to be a net contributer to the tax base.
Personally figures from the air I would suggest a £1000 per month UBI, with a 40% tax rate, increasing to 50% after £100k per annum. No National Insurance, no exceptions.
That would mean someone not earning would get £12,000 UBI. Someone earning £30k would pay £0 tax and get £0 in benefits, anyone earning under £30k per annum would be a net recipient, only those earning over £30k would be net contributers. All incomes including pensions are taxed at the full rate.
You have forgotten the other 410 billion a year that gets spent on stuff like the nhs and defence? That also needs to be paid for
Which is will be, by those earning more, as already happens.
A few other things to take away from the bill. You've calculated the UBI going to everyone - it should only go to adults (with a smaller supplementary for children) and also I would not give it to migrants until they become a citizen. Currently you could say anyone whose status says "no recourse to public funds" would not get it - and going forwards post-Brexit we could say that is everyone who comes here. So people who come here to work would get taxed on every penny they earn but not receive any UBI, so they would need to ensure they can support themselves from what they earn.
I calculated using 51,000,000 as about the number of adults in the uk. How many of those dont have recourse to public funds? Not even sure where to find a figure for that
1.4 million.
Going forwards we could and should include EEA migrants in this. Level playing field.
My old mum (75-79 group, no underlying conditions) got a call today to be vaccinated at a new local vaccination centre, first appointment offered was in 2 working days.
Impressive.
That's interesting, I didn't know they'd moved on to the under 80s age category.
I suspect that the jabbers will start to think they are in the film " The curious case of Benjamin Britain " as the weeks progress
My old mum (75-79 group, no underlying conditions) got a call today to be vaccinated at a new local vaccination centre, first appointment offered was in 2 working days.
Impressive.
That's interesting, I didn't know they'd moved on to the under 80s age category.
Yes, just today in her part of Greater Manchester, apparently. So relieved.
Clearly he misses out the fact - cheap food = full of sugar and other crap to keep costs down.
The only difference between now and the 19th century is that then cheap food was poor quality and often featured things that weren't food (so you were under weight). Now it contains calories that aren't easy to burn off.
If you were a one parent family with say two kids and struggling financially this would seem a cheap way to feed the family for three or four dinners
500g of pasta, one tin of tomatoes and 1kg of chicken is not going to provide 12 dinners, unless they are all for Tiny Tim. What planet are you on?
Two tins of tomatoes.
I am on planet normal - that could easily make one adult and two kids half a weeks dinners
It works out at about 300 calories per meal for 12 meals. An adult needs 2000-2500 calories per day and a child aged 6-12 needs 1600-2200. So 300 for your main meal of the day looks pretty inadequate. I shop and cook for a family of five and I can tell you that your meal would do us for about one dinner, maybe with a bit left over. Our kids are far from fat (in fact most clothes don't fit them because they are too skinny) so we are definitely not overfeeding them.
Fair enough, let them buy double what I suggested - three or four meals for less than £12
I think there is general agreement that people can just about afford to eat a decent diet on benefits as long as they don't buy anything else. Unfortunately people also need to pay for clothes, transport, heating, etc. Some people compound their difficulties by not knowing how to cook (a widespread problem not only affecting the poor; not helped by schools no longer teaching home economics). Some people working long hours and shifts don't have time to cook. Some people don't have the equipment. I just find all this smug wisdom being dispensed by well off people a bit too Marie Antoinette* for my liking. (*I know she was misquoted).
How much do you think is required to feed a family of four 2 children 2 adults per week? As a pound figure?
About £150. Less if the kids are on free school meals. The Food Standards Agency have a report on the cost of a healthy food basket in Northern Ireland in 2018, they have it as £159 for a family of 4 with 2 school age kids. Presumably it is higher in 2020 with inflation, but NI may have higher costs than GB. I think we probably spend about £200/week on food for a family of 5. We don't shop at the cheapest supermarket and get organic meat and milk, but we cook everything from scratch which saves money and don't normally buy any alcohol.
And on uc the least that family would get per week is 229£ the most 253£
Add in 100£ per month for gas and electric 25£ per month for internet two sim only deals for the adults 10£ a month comes to another 33£ a week
So using your figure we come to 183£ leaving them between 46£ a week and 70£ a week
Aha you say they may need to pay some towards rent well lets add in another 100£ a month for rent and 60 for council tax thats another 34£ a week
Still leaves a net of 12£ a week to 36£ a week
Clothes and bus fares. Car needs a repair. Haircuts. Furniture and appliances need to be replaced. School trips. Curtains and bedding. This all assumes your benefits are paid on time, you don't get sanctioned unfairly, you're not subject to the bedroom tax etc.
The last sentence brings us back to UBI...
I'd like to see fair minimum determined by focus group and explicit listing of what, on average, should be covered as basic (what speed of broadband etc etc) year by year. And I'd mandate from government that contract exits are made available for discretionary services for change of circumstances (e.g. get sacked, you may bin Sky Sports: when you so wish)
That I would expect it to almost always work out at pretty much the 60% of median relative poverty line that the right love to whinge about is besides the point. The fact the right like to whinge about it is reason enough to sink government money into making an explicit calculation.
And UBI, plus a restructuring of tax to make good the difference (e.g. if you take UBI, you go on higher tax rates for a period of time, your call. And 'something, something' for the self employed), yes please. And btw, state pension, child benefit, student financing - yes, ultimately, they're going to be UBI too.
The contract exits seem a good idea or for that matter contract breaks. However what did I not list that you consider necessary?
Both adults have a mobile, they have internet access, they have gas and electric,they have food a roof some money left over for discretionary spending on clothes etc. That is by its very definition a safety net. The purpose of benefits is to provide support when you fall on hard times not to provide a living.
UBI is a pipedream that will never happen because it would cost too much. Merely giving every adult in britain 1000£ a month ubi would cost in the region of 480 billion and 1000 a month would not be enough to live on it would probably need to be double that assuming housing benefit and other benefits would be axed. Add in the NHS, defence,schools etc and you are pretty much looking at the entirety of GDP going to the government coffers. When that happens no one is getting enough extra from working to bother. Why would a surgeon do a hugely stressful job when he is not getting a lot more than the ubi recipient
Your maths is completely flawed because you're assuming that it would be new money.
If the UBI replaces the tax-free threshold then it is effectively cost-neutral for anyone over the tax-free threshold. Or is not much extra cash for those above the tax-free threshold.
For anyone on benefits it would replace or supplement the benefits they were getting previously - so again not much extra cash up front.
It should lead to major cost reductions. You could essentially abolish Job Centre Plus and streamline much of HMRC. Job centres should be about helping people find work because they want to rather than because they need to pretend they want to and need to attend meetings or they'll get sanctioned.
Done properly people should actually want to work anyway as the poverty trap the current benefits system creates would be abolished.
A surgeon would be earning well more than the UBI, that is ridiculous. In fact done properly every single person who works would be earning more than the UBI, the UBI would be the floor not the ceiling that benefits currently create.
It is your maths that is flawed I am afraid. The tax free threshold is 12500 or so about a 1000 a month. That saves you paying tax of 200£ a month so giving someone a 1000 a month is a net loss of 800£.
Yes if you abolished housing benefit and uc that would be a saving but lets face it that won't happen and if it did the howls of protest would be huge as people would be getting even less than they are now.
Going back to that family of four they currently get
1100 a month uc 1000 a month housing benefit about 150£ a month reduction on council tax
That is before we add in free school meals, prescriptions etc.
You plan to replace this with 2X1000 ubi leaving them 250£ less well off
In addition you are giving every basic rate tax payer a boost to their pay of 1000£ a month in pay while charging them 200£ more tax
In the case of the employed, the UBI would be *entirely* taxed off their wages and given back to them by the government.
At this point, people then say, why bother?
The point is to make the system utterly dependable. You get your UBI each month, no matter what. Lose your job, UBI etc etc
No forms to fill out, no claims to be made.
This has the important effect of reducing the obstacles to getting a job from unemployment - at the moment, there is a whole dance about signing off benefits etc.
In a UBI system, get some work, get some money, pay some tax. Your UBI cannot be effected.
Well see there is the issue you then have, if for example UBI is 1000 a month and if you work it all gets clawed back....
Working a 37.5 hour week full time means you are working 1950 hours a year. A person working currently and earning 18000 a year loses 12000 automatically to claw back ubi plus the tax to cover the rest of govenment expenditure is probably working 1950 hours a year for 3 to 4000 pounds. A mere 70 to 80 pounds extra in their pocket a week. How many will just say not worth it?
Which is the old, old argument against benefits.....
Yet people do jobs where they get *less* than benefits - rare, but it does happen
Very common are jobs which only make marginally more than benefits. Tons of those. No shortage of applicants...
Go through the numbers I posted and point out where I was mistaken about the extra costs. I already pointed out your error in thinking the tax free allowance gives you a reduction of tax of that amount when it actually equates to saving you paying basic rate tax on the first 1042 a month you earn which at 20% is about 200 a month not a thousand
The tax free rate has a knock-on effect on the higher tax rate take too, although I doubt it's a massive amount.
Yes it does however he is still failing to get the basic point that a tax free allowance of 1000 a month does not give you 1000 in your pocket automatically it just saves you 200 in tax you would of otherwise paid
Did I blink and miss National Insurance getting abolished?
If you do this properly you merge everything into one. You have just a single UBI (possibly supplemented per child and any other supplementaries getting added to the base figure, like how your tax-free allowance can be adjusted today) and just a single tax rate on any earnings that you have. So it isn't just the tax on Income Tax you need to account for but the tax on National Insurance too.
If someone is earning £12,500 then they should get the UBI plus be taxed on the entire £12,500 with whatever their appropriate tax rate is. If we were to have a 33% tax rate (for Income Tax and NI combined) then that individual would be paying £4,125 in tax.
Currently that individual pays £360 in National Insurance, £0 in Income Tax per annum.
So you could make a UBI of £3,765 without affecting tax rates, giving any extra income to anyone, having any savings, having any growth or anything else. The rest would need to be funded.
Of course by doing this as well anything currently exempt from paying NI (like the elderly that get away without paying it) would now get caught up in NI. As they should.
Which is all well and good but if you want to have ubi that replaces all benefits then it must be enough to live on, 1000 a month per adult is already less than they would get on uc. What tax rate would that be combined....pretty close to 100 when you consider it will go to all adults whether working or not.
Feel free to point out the error in my calculations of what the required tax take would be in the previous thread. Yes I left out ni in calculating but that would only make a difference of 0.12*12500*51,000,000 so subtract another 76 billion of the almost trillion tax take the government would need taking it down to about 880 billion and reducing the extra tax needed to be raised on people to 290 billion on top of the 194 billion it currently takes off them
UBI (not a bad idea but it has to be done right and across the board and be simple) should be funded by wealth and inheritance tax rather than income tax. I believe that all humans today shoudl have some natural inheritance from past society but many do not and it is random depending on wishes of (now) dead people . So increase inheritance or related taxes like wealth and gift tax and say the UBI bit is the universal inheritance
I am not against the idea of UBI itself. What I am against is this idea that we can have ubi that is reasonable and not have to raise taxation to pay for it
How would the numbers look with a UBI of £1000/month (untaxed) plus a flat rate of 50% on all additional income?
50% is a lower marginal rate than most people on benefits end up with.
At £40k earnings, you've have an income of £32k, roughly what you'd get now. Below that you'd do slightly better than now, above that slightly worse. It wouldn't be far off parity, but without the pitfalls.
My old mum (75-79 group, no underlying conditions) got a call today to be vaccinated at a new local vaccination centre, first appointment offered was in 2 working days.
Impressive.
This is the first time in my adult life that I have ever wished I was older. I want that jab.
Think I might try a cheeky call. If I make the effort to go the centre - Lords cricket ground - would they fit me in?
Clearly he misses out the fact - cheap food = full of sugar and other crap to keep costs down.
The only difference between now and the 19th century is that then cheap food was poor quality and often featured things that weren't food (so you were under weight). Now it contains calories that aren't easy to burn off.
If you were a one parent family with say two kids and struggling financially this would seem a cheap way to feed the family for three or four dinners
500g of pasta, one tin of tomatoes and 1kg of chicken is not going to provide 12 dinners, unless they are all for Tiny Tim. What planet are you on?
Two tins of tomatoes.
I am on planet normal - that could easily make one adult and two kids half a weeks dinners
It works out at about 300 calories per meal for 12 meals. An adult needs 2000-2500 calories per day and a child aged 6-12 needs 1600-2200. So 300 for your main meal of the day looks pretty inadequate. I shop and cook for a family of five and I can tell you that your meal would do us for about one dinner, maybe with a bit left over. Our kids are far from fat (in fact most clothes don't fit them because they are too skinny) so we are definitely not overfeeding them.
Fair enough, let them buy double what I suggested - three or four meals for less than £12
I think there is general agreement that people can just about afford to eat a decent diet on benefits as long as they don't buy anything else. Unfortunately people also need to pay for clothes, transport, heating, etc. Some people compound their difficulties by not knowing how to cook (a widespread problem not only affecting the poor; not helped by schools no longer teaching home economics). Some people working long hours and shifts don't have time to cook. Some people don't have the equipment. I just find all this smug wisdom being dispensed by well off people a bit too Marie Antoinette* for my liking. (*I know she was misquoted).
How much do you think is required to feed a family of four 2 children 2 adults per week? As a pound figure?
About £150. Less if the kids are on free school meals. The Food Standards Agency have a report on the cost of a healthy food basket in Northern Ireland in 2018, they have it as £159 for a family of 4 with 2 school age kids. Presumably it is higher in 2020 with inflation, but NI may have higher costs than GB. I think we probably spend about £200/week on food for a family of 5. We don't shop at the cheapest supermarket and get organic meat and milk, but we cook everything from scratch which saves money and don't normally buy any alcohol.
And on uc the least that family would get per week is 229£ the most 253£
Add in 100£ per month for gas and electric 25£ per month for internet two sim only deals for the adults 10£ a month comes to another 33£ a week
So using your figure we come to 183£ leaving them between 46£ a week and 70£ a week
Aha you say they may need to pay some towards rent well lets add in another 100£ a month for rent and 60 for council tax thats another 34£ a week
Still leaves a net of 12£ a week to 36£ a week
Clothes and bus fares. Car needs a repair. Haircuts. Furniture and appliances need to be replaced. School trips. Curtains and bedding. This all assumes your benefits are paid on time, you don't get sanctioned unfairly, you're not subject to the bedroom tax etc.
The last sentence brings us back to UBI...
I'd like to see fair minimum determined by focus group and explicit listing of what, on average, should be covered as basic (what speed of broadband etc etc) year by year. And I'd mandate from government that contract exits are made available for discretionary services for change of circumstances (e.g. get sacked, you may bin Sky Sports: when you so wish)
That I would expect it to almost always work out at pretty much the 60% of median relative poverty line that the right love to whinge about is besides the point. The fact the right like to whinge about it is reason enough to sink government money into making an explicit calculation.
And UBI, plus a restructuring of tax to make good the difference (e.g. if you take UBI, you go on higher tax rates for a period of time, your call. And 'something, something' for the self employed), yes please. And btw, state pension, child benefit, student financing - yes, ultimately, they're going to be UBI too.
The contract exits seem a good idea or for that matter contract breaks. However what did I not list that you consider necessary?
Both adults have a mobile, they have internet access, they have gas and electric,they have food a roof some money left over for discretionary spending on clothes etc. That is by its very definition a safety net. The purpose of benefits is to provide support when you fall on hard times not to provide a living.
UBI is a pipedream that will never happen because it would cost too much. Merely giving every adult in britain 1000£ a month ubi would cost in the region of 480 billion and 1000 a month would not be enough to live on it would probably need to be double that assuming housing benefit and other benefits would be axed. Add in the NHS, defence,schools etc and you are pretty much looking at the entirety of GDP going to the government coffers. When that happens no one is getting enough extra from working to bother. Why would a surgeon do a hugely stressful job when he is not getting a lot more than the ubi recipient
Your maths is completely flawed because you're assuming that it would be new money.
If the UBI replaces the tax-free threshold then it is effectively cost-neutral for anyone over the tax-free threshold. Or is not much extra cash for those above the tax-free threshold.
For anyone on benefits it would replace or supplement the benefits they were getting previously - so again not much extra cash up front.
It should lead to major cost reductions. You could essentially abolish Job Centre Plus and streamline much of HMRC. Job centres should be about helping people find work because they want to rather than because they need to pretend they want to and need to attend meetings or they'll get sanctioned.
Done properly people should actually want to work anyway as the poverty trap the current benefits system creates would be abolished.
A surgeon would be earning well more than the UBI, that is ridiculous. In fact done properly every single person who works would be earning more than the UBI, the UBI would be the floor not the ceiling that benefits currently create.
It is your maths that is flawed I am afraid. The tax free threshold is 12500 or so about a 1000 a month. That saves you paying tax of 200£ a month so giving someone a 1000 a month is a net loss of 800£.
Yes if you abolished housing benefit and uc that would be a saving but lets face it that won't happen and if it did the howls of protest would be huge as people would be getting even less than they are now.
Going back to that family of four they currently get
1100 a month uc 1000 a month housing benefit about 150£ a month reduction on council tax
That is before we add in free school meals, prescriptions etc.
You plan to replace this with 2X1000 ubi leaving them 250£ less well off
In addition you are giving every basic rate tax payer a boost to their pay of 1000£ a month in pay while charging them 200£ more tax
In the case of the employed, the UBI would be *entirely* taxed off their wages and given back to them by the government.
At this point, people then say, why bother?
The point is to make the system utterly dependable. You get your UBI each month, no matter what. Lose your job, UBI etc etc
No forms to fill out, no claims to be made.
This has the important effect of reducing the obstacles to getting a job from unemployment - at the moment, there is a whole dance about signing off benefits etc.
In a UBI system, get some work, get some money, pay some tax. Your UBI cannot be effected.
Well see there is the issue you then have, if for example UBI is 1000 a month and if you work it all gets clawed back....
Working a 37.5 hour week full time means you are working 1950 hours a year. A person working currently and earning 18000 a year loses 12000 automatically to claw back ubi plus the tax to cover the rest of govenment expenditure is probably working 1950 hours a year for 3 to 4000 pounds. A mere 70 to 80 pounds extra in their pocket a week. How many will just say not worth it?
Which is the old, old argument against benefits.....
Yet people do jobs where they get *less* than benefits - rare, but it does happen
Very common are jobs which only make marginally more than benefits. Tons of those. No shortage of applicants...
Go through the numbers I posted and point out where I was mistaken about the extra costs. I already pointed out your error in thinking the tax free allowance gives you a reduction of tax of that amount when it actually equates to saving you paying basic rate tax on the first 1042 a month you earn which at 20% is about 200 a month not a thousand
The tax free rate has a knock-on effect on the higher tax rate take too, although I doubt it's a massive amount.
Yes it does however he is still failing to get the basic point that a tax free allowance of 1000 a month does not give you 1000 in your pocket automatically it just saves you 200 in tax you would of otherwise paid
Did I blink and miss National Insurance getting abolished?
If you do this properly you merge everything into one. You have just a single UBI (possibly supplemented per child and any other supplementaries getting added to the base figure, like how your tax-free allowance can be adjusted today) and just a single tax rate on any earnings that you have. So it isn't just the tax on Income Tax you need to account for but the tax on National Insurance too.
If someone is earning £12,500 then they should get the UBI plus be taxed on the entire £12,500 with whatever their appropriate tax rate is. If we were to have a 33% tax rate (for Income Tax and NI combined) then that individual would be paying £4,125 in tax.
Currently that individual pays £360 in National Insurance, £0 in Income Tax per annum.
So you could make a UBI of £3,765 without affecting tax rates, giving any extra income to anyone, having any savings, having any growth or anything else. The rest would need to be funded.
Of course by doing this as well anything currently exempt from paying NI (like the elderly that get away without paying it) would now get caught up in NI. As they should.
Which is all well and good but if you want to have ubi that replaces all benefits then it must be enough to live on, 1000 a month per adult is already less than they would get on uc. What tax rate would that be combined....pretty close to 100 when you consider it will go to all adults whether working or not.
Feel free to point out the error in my calculations of what the required tax take would be in the previous thread. Yes I left out ni in calculating but that would only make a difference of 0.12*12500*51,000,000 so subtract another 76 billion of the almost trillion tax take the government would need taking it down to about 880 billion and reducing the extra tax needed to be raised on people to 290 billion on top of the 194 billion it currently takes off them
It is worth remembering that tax would be paid on all income incremental to the UBI, so the tax take would move up markedly in the event it was implemented.
Clearly he misses out the fact - cheap food = full of sugar and other crap to keep costs down.
The only difference between now and the 19th century is that then cheap food was poor quality and often featured things that weren't food (so you were under weight). Now it contains calories that aren't easy to burn off.
If you were a one parent family with say two kids and struggling financially this would seem a cheap way to feed the family for three or four dinners
500g of pasta, one tin of tomatoes and 1kg of chicken is not going to provide 12 dinners, unless they are all for Tiny Tim. What planet are you on?
Two tins of tomatoes.
I am on planet normal - that could easily make one adult and two kids half a weeks dinners
It works out at about 300 calories per meal for 12 meals. An adult needs 2000-2500 calories per day and a child aged 6-12 needs 1600-2200. So 300 for your main meal of the day looks pretty inadequate. I shop and cook for a family of five and I can tell you that your meal would do us for about one dinner, maybe with a bit left over. Our kids are far from fat (in fact most clothes don't fit them because they are too skinny) so we are definitely not overfeeding them.
Fair enough, let them buy double what I suggested - three or four meals for less than £12
I think there is general agreement that people can just about afford to eat a decent diet on benefits as long as they don't buy anything else. Unfortunately people also need to pay for clothes, transport, heating, etc. Some people compound their difficulties by not knowing how to cook (a widespread problem not only affecting the poor; not helped by schools no longer teaching home economics). Some people working long hours and shifts don't have time to cook. Some people don't have the equipment. I just find all this smug wisdom being dispensed by well off people a bit too Marie Antoinette* for my liking. (*I know she was misquoted).
How much do you think is required to feed a family of four 2 children 2 adults per week? As a pound figure?
About £150. Less if the kids are on free school meals. The Food Standards Agency have a report on the cost of a healthy food basket in Northern Ireland in 2018, they have it as £159 for a family of 4 with 2 school age kids. Presumably it is higher in 2020 with inflation, but NI may have higher costs than GB. I think we probably spend about £200/week on food for a family of 5. We don't shop at the cheapest supermarket and get organic meat and milk, but we cook everything from scratch which saves money and don't normally buy any alcohol.
And on uc the least that family would get per week is 229£ the most 253£
Add in 100£ per month for gas and electric 25£ per month for internet two sim only deals for the adults 10£ a month comes to another 33£ a week
So using your figure we come to 183£ leaving them between 46£ a week and 70£ a week
Aha you say they may need to pay some towards rent well lets add in another 100£ a month for rent and 60 for council tax thats another 34£ a week
Still leaves a net of 12£ a week to 36£ a week
Clothes and bus fares. Car needs a repair. Haircuts. Furniture and appliances need to be replaced. School trips. Curtains and bedding. This all assumes your benefits are paid on time, you don't get sanctioned unfairly, you're not subject to the bedroom tax etc.
The last sentence brings us back to UBI...
I'd like to see fair minimum determined by focus group and explicit listing of what, on average, should be covered as basic (what speed of broadband etc etc) year by year. And I'd mandate from government that contract exits are made available for discretionary services for change of circumstances (e.g. get sacked, you may bin Sky Sports: when you so wish)
That I would expect it to almost always work out at pretty much the 60% of median relative poverty line that the right love to whinge about is besides the point. The fact the right like to whinge about it is reason enough to sink government money into making an explicit calculation.
And UBI, plus a restructuring of tax to make good the difference (e.g. if you take UBI, you go on higher tax rates for a period of time, your call. And 'something, something' for the self employed), yes please. And btw, state pension, child benefit, student financing - yes, ultimately, they're going to be UBI too.
The contract exits seem a good idea or for that matter contract breaks. However what did I not list that you consider necessary?
Both adults have a mobile, they have internet access, they have gas and electric,they have food a roof some money left over for discretionary spending on clothes etc. That is by its very definition a safety net. The purpose of benefits is to provide support when you fall on hard times not to provide a living.
UBI is a pipedream that will never happen because it would cost too much. Merely giving every adult in britain 1000£ a month ubi would cost in the region of 480 billion and 1000 a month would not be enough to live on it would probably need to be double that assuming housing benefit and other benefits would be axed. Add in the NHS, defence,schools etc and you are pretty much looking at the entirety of GDP going to the government coffers. When that happens no one is getting enough extra from working to bother. Why would a surgeon do a hugely stressful job when he is not getting a lot more than the ubi recipient
Your maths is completely flawed because you're assuming that it would be new money.
If the UBI replaces the tax-free threshold then it is effectively cost-neutral for anyone over the tax-free threshold. Or is not much extra cash for those above the tax-free threshold.
For anyone on benefits it would replace or supplement the benefits they were getting previously - so again not much extra cash up front.
It should lead to major cost reductions. You could essentially abolish Job Centre Plus and streamline much of HMRC. Job centres should be about helping people find work because they want to rather than because they need to pretend they want to and need to attend meetings or they'll get sanctioned.
Done properly people should actually want to work anyway as the poverty trap the current benefits system creates would be abolished.
A surgeon would be earning well more than the UBI, that is ridiculous. In fact done properly every single person who works would be earning more than the UBI, the UBI would be the floor not the ceiling that benefits currently create.
It is your maths that is flawed I am afraid. The tax free threshold is 12500 or so about a 1000 a month. That saves you paying tax of 200£ a month so giving someone a 1000 a month is a net loss of 800£.
Yes if you abolished housing benefit and uc that would be a saving but lets face it that won't happen and if it did the howls of protest would be huge as people would be getting even less than they are now.
Going back to that family of four they currently get
1100 a month uc 1000 a month housing benefit about 150£ a month reduction on council tax
That is before we add in free school meals, prescriptions etc.
You plan to replace this with 2X1000 ubi leaving them 250£ less well off
In addition you are giving every basic rate tax payer a boost to their pay of 1000£ a month in pay while charging them 200£ more tax
In the case of the employed, the UBI would be *entirely* taxed off their wages and given back to them by the government.
At this point, people then say, why bother?
The point is to make the system utterly dependable. You get your UBI each month, no matter what. Lose your job, UBI etc etc
No forms to fill out, no claims to be made.
This has the important effect of reducing the obstacles to getting a job from unemployment - at the moment, there is a whole dance about signing off benefits etc.
In a UBI system, get some work, get some money, pay some tax. Your UBI cannot be effected.
Well see there is the issue you then have, if for example UBI is 1000 a month and if you work it all gets clawed back....
Working a 37.5 hour week full time means you are working 1950 hours a year. A person working currently and earning 18000 a year loses 12000 automatically to claw back ubi plus the tax to cover the rest of govenment expenditure is probably working 1950 hours a year for 3 to 4000 pounds. A mere 70 to 80 pounds extra in their pocket a week. How many will just say not worth it?
Which is the old, old argument against benefits.....
Yet people do jobs where they get *less* than benefits - rare, but it does happen
Very common are jobs which only make marginally more than benefits. Tons of those. No shortage of applicants...
Go through the numbers I posted and point out where I was mistaken about the extra costs. I already pointed out your error in thinking the tax free allowance gives you a reduction of tax of that amount when it actually equates to saving you paying basic rate tax on the first 1042 a month you earn which at 20% is about 200 a month not a thousand
The tax free rate has a knock-on effect on the higher tax rate take too, although I doubt it's a massive amount.
Yes it does however he is still failing to get the basic point that a tax free allowance of 1000 a month does not give you 1000 in your pocket automatically it just saves you 200 in tax you would of otherwise paid
Did I blink and miss National Insurance getting abolished?
If you do this properly you merge everything into one. You have just a single UBI (possibly supplemented per child and any other supplementaries getting added to the base figure, like how your tax-free allowance can be adjusted today) and just a single tax rate on any earnings that you have. So it isn't just the tax on Income Tax you need to account for but the tax on National Insurance too.
If someone is earning £12,500 then they should get the UBI plus be taxed on the entire £12,500 with whatever their appropriate tax rate is. If we were to have a 33% tax rate (for Income Tax and NI combined) then that individual would be paying £4,125 in tax.
Currently that individual pays £360 in National Insurance, £0 in Income Tax per annum.
So you could make a UBI of £3,765 without affecting tax rates, giving any extra income to anyone, having any savings, having any growth or anything else. The rest would need to be funded.
Of course by doing this as well anything currently exempt from paying NI (like the elderly that get away without paying it) would now get caught up in NI. As they should.
Which is all well and good but if you want to have ubi that replaces all benefits then it must be enough to live on, 1000 a month per adult is already less than they would get on uc. What tax rate would that be combined....pretty close to 100 when you consider it will go to all adults whether working or not.
Feel free to point out the error in my calculations of what the required tax take would be in the previous thread. Yes I left out ni in calculating but that would only make a difference of 0.12*12500*51,000,000 so subtract another 76 billion of the almost trillion tax take the government would need taking it down to about 880 billion and reducing the extra tax needed to be raised on people to 290 billion on top of the 194 billion it currently takes off them
UBI (not a bad idea but it has to be done right and across the board and be simple) should be funded by wealth and inheritance tax rather than income tax. I believe that all humans today shoudl have some natural inheritance from past society but many do not and it is random depending on wishes of (now) dead people . So increase inheritance or related taxes like wealth and gift tax and say the UBI bit is the universal inheritance
I am not against the idea of UBI itself. What I am against is this idea that we can have ubi that is reasonable and not have to raise taxation to pay for it
How would the numbers look with a UBI of £1000/month (untaxed) plus a flat rate of 50% on all additional income?
50% is a lower marginal rate than most people on benefits end up with.
At £40k earnings, you've have an income of £32k, roughly what you'd get now. Below that you'd do slightly better than now, above that slightly worse. It wouldn't be far off parity, but without the pitfalls.
and get rid of the resentment of others getting benefits (as you get them as well!) which does neither current recipients or current thinkers of this any good . So win win
If Francis is right and we cleared 300k vaccinations yesterday, I will be the first to say 'hats off.'
Would be a supreme effort given much of the north and Scotland got hammered by heavy snowfall yesterday.
More snow to come tonight, across the Pennines again but also into the South East and East Anglia. Be interested to see if we southerners can cope as well!
Not sure what you are on about, the Independent front page the other day said the government had already failed to meet the vaccine target.
While clearly ludicrous, this kind of checklist is crucial for safety in clinical practice. Having regretably spent too much time in hospital in the past, and been very familiar with the repetitive checking (I'm still the same bloody patient as I was yesterday, I'm in an isolation room!) its been interesting to see the other side of this, via academic research into error prevention and reporting in clinic. Of course she isn't pregnant at 99, but when we get to the 40-50 year old its an entirely valid question, and surely easier to just ask everyone.
There has been a lot of study of pilots in these circumstances, and the evidence is checklists work.
The point of a UBI scheme (for me at least) is to do away with the iniquity of the fact that currently those on benefits face an effective 85% tax rate if they earn more due to the removal of benefits. By making the benefits universal and fixing the tax system instead they would be just paying tax rather than paying tax and losing benefits at 73% of whatever they earn post-tax.
If you introduce a 100% UBI tax on low earners then it becomes pointless to earn. Which is the problem that is supposed to be getting fixed by having a UBI in the first place.
Any rate of tax on low earners with a UBI system is going to be very high by necessity - which is where the idea of UBI falls apart as it will discourage people from working.
For instance if you give a UBI of £10000 but expect those that are earning £30000 to be net contributors to the tax base you need a tax rate of 50% just to cover UBI before anything else.
Now you could set UBI at £5000 but that is less benefit than even a single 23 year old male would receive over a year.
If you're on benefits currently you're already on a real 85% marginal tax rate essentially. That is the existing system today. So if you go to a 50% tax rate instead of an 85% tax rate that is a major improvement not a worsening of the situation.
What ethical reason is there to charge people a real marginal tax rate of 85%? Let alone the poorest of society?
Though your maths are flawed. At a 50% tax rate you would need to be earning £20,000 to be a net contributer to the tax base.
Personally figures from the air I would suggest a £1000 per month UBI, with a 40% tax rate, increasing to 50% after £100k per annum. No National Insurance, no exceptions.
That would mean someone not earning would get £12,000 UBI. Someone earning £30k would pay £0 tax and get £0 in benefits, anyone earning under £30k per annum would be a net recipient, only those earning over £30k would be net contributers. All incomes including pensions are taxed at the full rate.
You have forgotten the other 410 billion a year that gets spent on stuff like the nhs and defence? That also needs to be paid for
Which is will be, by those earning more, as already happens.
A few other things to take away from the bill. You've calculated the UBI going to everyone - it should only go to adults (with a smaller supplementary for children) and also I would not give it to migrants until they become a citizen. Currently you could say anyone whose status says "no recourse to public funds" would not get it - and going forwards post-Brexit we could say that is everyone who comes here. So people who come here to work would get taxed on every penny they earn but not receive any UBI, so they would need to ensure they can support themselves from what they earn.
I calculated using 51,000,000 as about the number of adults in the uk. How many of those dont have recourse to public funds? Not even sure where to find a figure for that
1.4 million.
Going forwards we could and should include EEA migrants in this. Level playing field.
Ok then so call it 49,000,000....pay them all ubi of 12k a year, That is still 588,000,000,000 paid out in ubi the cost of everything the government does - welfare is circa 410,000,000 so that is 998,000,000,000 to find. Sutract the clawback of the tax free allowance and 360 per month from every working adult so (360x12)x33,000,000 which is 142,000,000,000.
That leaves us at 998,000,000,000 - 142,000,000,000 = 856,000,000,000.
Current total tax take is 635,000,000,000. So somewhere we have to increase taxation to bring in another 221 billion
My old mum (75-79 group, no underlying conditions) got a call today to be vaccinated at a new local vaccination centre, first appointment offered was in 2 working days.
Impressive.
That's interesting, I didn't know they'd moved on to the under 80s age category.
Yes, just today in her part of Greater Manchester, apparently. So relieved.
My dad too (77, in Essex, also no underlying conditions - he takes statins, I think, but that's it). Was phoned on Tuesday and booked in for Monday, then phoned again yesterday and asked if he could come today as they had some stocks needed using up*. He said yes, now has received first dose of Pfizer vaccine.
* Not sure whether to read into this a cock-up as they belatedly realised they had to be used by today or being proactive after others cancelled, maybe for bad weather (not sure if it's been bad in Essex, has been pretty grim up here)
My old mum (75-79 group, no underlying conditions) got a call today to be vaccinated at a new local vaccination centre, first appointment offered was in 2 working days.
Impressive.
That's interesting, I didn't know they'd moved on to the under 80s age category.
Group 4 (all adults, clinically extremely vulnerable) done in London today.
My old mum (75-79 group, no underlying conditions) got a call today to be vaccinated at a new local vaccination centre, first appointment offered was in 2 working days.
Impressive.
That's interesting, I didn't know they'd moved on to the under 80s age category.
I know of a 71yo who received a vaccine on Wednesday. Big local differences. My part of Bucks only started vaccinations today and my 84yo father-in-law has not heard anything. It seems to be down to how well organised & run the local health services are. Some have been proactive, others have waited and are running well behind.
My old mum (75-79 group, no underlying conditions) got a call today to be vaccinated at a new local vaccination centre, first appointment offered was in 2 working days.
Impressive.
This is the first time in my adult life that I have ever wished I was older. I want that jab.
Think I might try a cheeky call. If I make the effort to go the centre - Lords cricket ground - would they fit me in?
Two friends, under 80, but with 'underlying health conditions', but not shielding, have appointments. One in about half-an-hour of the time of writing this.
While clearly ludicrous, this kind of checklist is crucial for safety in clinical practice. Having regretably spent too much time in hospital in the past, and been very familiar with the repetitive checking (I'm still the same bloody patient as I was yesterday, I'm in an isolation room!) its been interesting to see the other side of this, via academic research into error prevention and reporting in clinic. Of course she isn't pregnant at 99, but when we get to the 40-50 year old its an entirely valid question, and surely easier to just ask everyone.
There has been a lot of study of pilots in these circumstances, and the evidence is checklists work.
Yes - I've been to a few seminars on the topic (mostly after my hospital shenanigans) and seen the evidence. In a way it seemed trivial, but getting two nurses to check the label on the drugs going into your body is small beer considering the risk of getting it wrong...
Yes, it seems China and EU nations, particularly the EU and Eurozone driving powers Germany and France, are now the countries which most dislike us globally.
We are much more popular in India and South Asia, the Americas, Australia and the Middle East. We are also still popular in Hong Kong as opposed to mainland China for obvious reasons.
Clearly he misses out the fact - cheap food = full of sugar and other crap to keep costs down.
The only difference between now and the 19th century is that then cheap food was poor quality and often featured things that weren't food (so you were under weight). Now it contains calories that aren't easy to burn off.
If you were a one parent family with say two kids and struggling financially this would seem a cheap way to feed the family for three or four dinners
500g of pasta, one tin of tomatoes and 1kg of chicken is not going to provide 12 dinners, unless they are all for Tiny Tim. What planet are you on?
Two tins of tomatoes.
I am on planet normal - that could easily make one adult and two kids half a weeks dinners
It works out at about 300 calories per meal for 12 meals. An adult needs 2000-2500 calories per day and a child aged 6-12 needs 1600-2200. So 300 for your main meal of the day looks pretty inadequate. I shop and cook for a family of five and I can tell you that your meal would do us for about one dinner, maybe with a bit left over. Our kids are far from fat (in fact most clothes don't fit them because they are too skinny) so we are definitely not overfeeding them.
Fair enough, let them buy double what I suggested - three or four meals for less than £12
I think there is general agreement that people can just about afford to eat a decent diet on benefits as long as they don't buy anything else. Unfortunately people also need to pay for clothes, transport, heating, etc. Some people compound their difficulties by not knowing how to cook (a widespread problem not only affecting the poor; not helped by schools no longer teaching home economics). Some people working long hours and shifts don't have time to cook. Some people don't have the equipment. I just find all this smug wisdom being dispensed by well off people a bit too Marie Antoinette* for my liking. (*I know she was misquoted).
How much do you think is required to feed a family of four 2 children 2 adults per week? As a pound figure?
About £150. Less if the kids are on free school meals. The Food Standards Agency have a report on the cost of a healthy food basket in Northern Ireland in 2018, they have it as £159 for a family of 4 with 2 school age kids. Presumably it is higher in 2020 with inflation, but NI may have higher costs than GB. I think we probably spend about £200/week on food for a family of 5. We don't shop at the cheapest supermarket and get organic meat and milk, but we cook everything from scratch which saves money and don't normally buy any alcohol.
And on uc the least that family would get per week is 229£ the most 253£
Add in 100£ per month for gas and electric 25£ per month for internet two sim only deals for the adults 10£ a month comes to another 33£ a week
So using your figure we come to 183£ leaving them between 46£ a week and 70£ a week
Aha you say they may need to pay some towards rent well lets add in another 100£ a month for rent and 60 for council tax thats another 34£ a week
Still leaves a net of 12£ a week to 36£ a week
Clothes and bus fares. Car needs a repair. Haircuts. Furniture and appliances need to be replaced. School trips. Curtains and bedding. This all assumes your benefits are paid on time, you don't get sanctioned unfairly, you're not subject to the bedroom tax etc.
The last sentence brings us back to UBI...
I'd like to see fair minimum determined by focus group and explicit listing of what, on average, should be covered as basic (what speed of broadband etc etc) year by year. And I'd mandate from government that contract exits are made available for discretionary services for change of circumstances (e.g. get sacked, you may bin Sky Sports: when you so wish)
That I would expect it to almost always work out at pretty much the 60% of median relative poverty line that the right love to whinge about is besides the point. The fact the right like to whinge about it is reason enough to sink government money into making an explicit calculation.
And UBI, plus a restructuring of tax to make good the difference (e.g. if you take UBI, you go on higher tax rates for a period of time, your call. And 'something, something' for the self employed), yes please. And btw, state pension, child benefit, student financing - yes, ultimately, they're going to be UBI too.
The contract exits seem a good idea or for that matter contract breaks. However what did I not list that you consider necessary?
Both adults have a mobile, they have internet access, they have gas and electric,they have food a roof some money left over for discretionary spending on clothes etc. That is by its very definition a safety net. The purpose of benefits is to provide support when you fall on hard times not to provide a living.
UBI is a pipedream that will never happen because it would cost too much. Merely giving every adult in britain 1000£ a month ubi would cost in the region of 480 billion and 1000 a month would not be enough to live on it would probably need to be double that assuming housing benefit and other benefits would be axed. Add in the NHS, defence,schools etc and you are pretty much looking at the entirety of GDP going to the government coffers. When that happens no one is getting enough extra from working to bother. Why would a surgeon do a hugely stressful job when he is not getting a lot more than the ubi recipient
Your maths is completely flawed because you're assuming that it would be new money.
If the UBI replaces the tax-free threshold then it is effectively cost-neutral for anyone over the tax-free threshold. Or is not much extra cash for those above the tax-free threshold.
For anyone on benefits it would replace or supplement the benefits they were getting previously - so again not much extra cash up front.
It should lead to major cost reductions. You could essentially abolish Job Centre Plus and streamline much of HMRC. Job centres should be about helping people find work because they want to rather than because they need to pretend they want to and need to attend meetings or they'll get sanctioned.
Done properly people should actually want to work anyway as the poverty trap the current benefits system creates would be abolished.
A surgeon would be earning well more than the UBI, that is ridiculous. In fact done properly every single person who works would be earning more than the UBI, the UBI would be the floor not the ceiling that benefits currently create.
It is your maths that is flawed I am afraid. The tax free threshold is 12500 or so about a 1000 a month. That saves you paying tax of 200£ a month so giving someone a 1000 a month is a net loss of 800£.
Yes if you abolished housing benefit and uc that would be a saving but lets face it that won't happen and if it did the howls of protest would be huge as people would be getting even less than they are now.
Going back to that family of four they currently get
1100 a month uc 1000 a month housing benefit about 150£ a month reduction on council tax
That is before we add in free school meals, prescriptions etc.
You plan to replace this with 2X1000 ubi leaving them 250£ less well off
In addition you are giving every basic rate tax payer a boost to their pay of 1000£ a month in pay while charging them 200£ more tax
In the case of the employed, the UBI would be *entirely* taxed off their wages and given back to them by the government.
At this point, people then say, why bother?
The point is to make the system utterly dependable. You get your UBI each month, no matter what. Lose your job, UBI etc etc
No forms to fill out, no claims to be made.
This has the important effect of reducing the obstacles to getting a job from unemployment - at the moment, there is a whole dance about signing off benefits etc.
In a UBI system, get some work, get some money, pay some tax. Your UBI cannot be effected.
Well see there is the issue you then have, if for example UBI is 1000 a month and if you work it all gets clawed back....
Working a 37.5 hour week full time means you are working 1950 hours a year. A person working currently and earning 18000 a year loses 12000 automatically to claw back ubi plus the tax to cover the rest of govenment expenditure is probably working 1950 hours a year for 3 to 4000 pounds. A mere 70 to 80 pounds extra in their pocket a week. How many will just say not worth it?
Which is the old, old argument against benefits.....
Yet people do jobs where they get *less* than benefits - rare, but it does happen
Very common are jobs which only make marginally more than benefits. Tons of those. No shortage of applicants...
Go through the numbers I posted and point out where I was mistaken about the extra costs. I already pointed out your error in thinking the tax free allowance gives you a reduction of tax of that amount when it actually equates to saving you paying basic rate tax on the first 1042 a month you earn which at 20% is about 200 a month not a thousand
The tax free rate has a knock-on effect on the higher tax rate take too, although I doubt it's a massive amount.
Yes it does however he is still failing to get the basic point that a tax free allowance of 1000 a month does not give you 1000 in your pocket automatically it just saves you 200 in tax you would of otherwise paid
Did I blink and miss National Insurance getting abolished?
If you do this properly you merge everything into one. You have just a single UBI (possibly supplemented per child and any other supplementaries getting added to the base figure, like how your tax-free allowance can be adjusted today) and just a single tax rate on any earnings that you have. So it isn't just the tax on Income Tax you need to account for but the tax on National Insurance too.
If someone is earning £12,500 then they should get the UBI plus be taxed on the entire £12,500 with whatever their appropriate tax rate is. If we were to have a 33% tax rate (for Income Tax and NI combined) then that individual would be paying £4,125 in tax.
Currently that individual pays £360 in National Insurance, £0 in Income Tax per annum.
So you could make a UBI of £3,765 without affecting tax rates, giving any extra income to anyone, having any savings, having any growth or anything else. The rest would need to be funded.
Of course by doing this as well anything currently exempt from paying NI (like the elderly that get away without paying it) would now get caught up in NI. As they should.
Which is all well and good but if you want to have ubi that replaces all benefits then it must be enough to live on, 1000 a month per adult is already less than they would get on uc. What tax rate would that be combined....pretty close to 100 when you consider it will go to all adults whether working or not.
Feel free to point out the error in my calculations of what the required tax take would be in the previous thread. Yes I left out ni in calculating but that would only make a difference of 0.12*12500*51,000,000 so subtract another 76 billion of the almost trillion tax take the government would need taking it down to about 880 billion and reducing the extra tax needed to be raised on people to 290 billion on top of the 194 billion it currently takes off them
UBI (not a bad idea but it has to be done right and across the board and be simple) should be funded by wealth and inheritance tax rather than income tax. I believe that all humans today shoudl have some natural inheritance from past society but many do not and it is random depending on wishes of (now) dead people . So increase inheritance or related taxes like wealth and gift tax and say the UBI bit is the universal inheritance
I am not against the idea of UBI itself. What I am against is this idea that we can have ubi that is reasonable and not have to raise taxation to pay for it
How would the numbers look with a UBI of £1000/month (untaxed) plus a flat rate of 50% on all additional income?
50% is a lower marginal rate than most people on benefits end up with.
At £40k earnings, you've have an income of £32k, roughly what you'd get now. Below that you'd do slightly better than now, above that slightly worse. It wouldn't be far off parity, but without the pitfalls.
and get rid of the resentment of others getting benefits (as you get them as well!) which does neither current recipients or current thinkers of this any good . So win win
It would also eliminate the poverty trap that gets people into vicious debt spirals. Let us say that someone gets a bill of £100 they need to pay (or wants to save that towards an expenditure or holiday). With a minimum wage of £10 per hour (which it will be soon so use that as a clean number) and a 50% tax rate someone on minimum wage would need to pick up 20 extra hours of minimum wage overtime in a month to earn that much extra
Someone on welfare at £10 per hour currently would need to pick up over 55 hours of overtime to earn £100 extra.
Fascinating, I suspect this is as much an insight into a country's overall international reputation as anything else. The US is the world leader in pharmaceutical research so to be viewed in the middle of the pack illustrates how Trump has tarnished the brand. We are still looked on quite positively by Asia and our ex colonies but the Europeans don't like us, especially the French and Germans, a sad reflection on Brexit. Countries in Asia really believe their own publicity. The US too, compared to other Western countries, although for a large and insular country maybe that's to be expected. And people really trust the Germans - which goes to show that international reputations really can be rehabilitated through good behaviour.
My old mum (75-79 group, no underlying conditions) got a call today to be vaccinated at a new local vaccination centre, first appointment offered was in 2 working days.
Impressive.
This is the first time in my adult life that I have ever wished I was older. I want that jab.
Think I might try a cheeky call. If I make the effort to go the centre - Lords cricket ground - would they fit me in?
Two friends, under 80, but with 'underlying health conditions', but not shielding, have appointments. One in about half-an-hour of the time of writing this.
Vaccination does seem to be noticeably ramping up, hopefully the supplies are flowing as expected and numbers will continue to increase rapidly.
Whilst many mistakes have been made, the vaccination system does look at this stage to be working as intended.
29% of Registered GOP voters disapprove or are not sure about Donald Trump? And less than half strongly approve of him?
Not all hope is lost about everyone in the the GOP yet.
Trump really is the American Corbyn. Once he's gone even the majority of Republicans will want to be moving away from him as fast as they can I expect.
Trump got 47% in 2020 and suffered a narrow defeat, Corbyn got 32% in 2019 and suffered a landslide defeat, that is the difference
7 million votes behind and 74 electoral votes behind is NOT a narrow defeat!
How many votes would have needed to change hands for Trump to win? Not many.
... but more than for Hillary to have won in 2016.
My old mum (75-79 group, no underlying conditions) got a call today to be vaccinated at a new local vaccination centre, first appointment offered was in 2 working days.
Impressive.
My Mum's in the same group. Her GP practice did their first jab of any kind this morning. Needless to say I'm slightly less impressed.
Exam went well by the way. Thank god they are all over.
Time to get drunk and immediately forget everything you learnt?
That is what one is meant to do after exams, right?
My last final finished at 1pm (I think, or maybe it was 12). 12 minutes later we had our first round in. 2 hours 12 minutes later I was asleep.....! Had a cracking night after the tactical nap, tho!
The most "nationalist" (i.e. vote for vaccine from their own country) are in China (+83), India (+68) Singapore (+61) and Australia (+57)*. Germany (+44) and the UK (+40) are ahead of vaccine sceptics USA & France (+36).
*Ironic - Australian vaccine was a "bust" - as it was based on inactivated HIV, the vaccinated starting returning positive HIV tests!
If ever there was a Worldvision song contest this information would be useful to bet on who gets votes from which countries . Poland would just about give us the douze points!
The most "nationalist" (i.e. vote for vaccine from their own country) are in China (+83), India (+68) Singapore (+61) and Australia (+57)*. Germany (+44) and the UK (+40) are ahead of vaccine sceptics USA & France (+36).
*Ironic - Australian vaccine was a "bust" - as it was based on inactivated HIV, the vaccinated starting returning positive HIV tests!
For real those people actually now have HIV? Shit.
My old mum (75-79 group, no underlying conditions) got a call today to be vaccinated at a new local vaccination centre, first appointment offered was in 2 working days.
Impressive.
This is the first time in my adult life that I have ever wished I was older. I want that jab.
Think I might try a cheeky call. If I make the effort to go the centre - Lords cricket ground - would they fit me in?
Two friends, under 80, but with 'underlying health conditions', but not shielding, have appointments. One in about half-an-hour of the time of writing this.
Vaccination does seem to be noticeably ramping up, hopefully the supplies are flowing as expected and numbers will continue to increase rapidly.
Whilst many mistakes have been made, the vaccination system does look at this stage to be working as intended.
The most "nationalist" (i.e. vote for vaccine from their own country) are in China (+83), India (+68) Singapore (+61) and Australia (+57)*. Germany (+44) and the UK (+40) are ahead of vaccine sceptics USA & France (+36).
*Ironic - Australian vaccine was a "bust" - as it was based on inactivated HIV, the vaccinated starting returning positive HIV tests!
For real those people actually now have HIV? Shit.
The most "nationalist" (i.e. vote for vaccine from their own country) are in China (+83), India (+68) Singapore (+61) and Australia (+57)*. Germany (+44) and the UK (+40) are ahead of vaccine sceptics USA & France (+36).
*Ironic - Australian vaccine was a "bust" - as it was based on inactivated HIV, the vaccinated starting returning positive HIV tests!
For real those people actually now have HIV? Shit.
No they don't, but it must have been a massive shock for them. Inactive HIV just seems like a poor choice anyway, especially when cold viruses are available.
My old mum (75-79 group, no underlying conditions) got a call today to be vaccinated at a new local vaccination centre, first appointment offered was in 2 working days.
Impressive.
This is the first time in my adult life that I have ever wished I was older. I want that jab.
Think I might try a cheeky call. If I make the effort to go the centre - Lords cricket ground - would they fit me in?
Two friends, under 80, but with 'underlying health conditions', but not shielding, have appointments. One in about half-an-hour of the time of writing this.
Right. I'm going to give it a go then. Get down there, pleading look, "gizza jab."
The most "nationalist" (i.e. vote for vaccine from their own country) are in China (+83), India (+68) Singapore (+61) and Australia (+57)*. Germany (+44) and the UK (+40) are ahead of vaccine sceptics USA & France (+36).
*Ironic - Australian vaccine was a "bust" - as it was based on inactivated HIV, the vaccinated starting returning positive HIV tests!
For real those people actually now have HIV? Shit.
The most "nationalist" (i.e. vote for vaccine from their own country) are in China (+83), India (+68) Singapore (+61) and Australia (+57)*. Germany (+44) and the UK (+40) are ahead of vaccine sceptics USA & France (+36).
*Ironic - Australian vaccine was a "bust" - as it was based on inactivated HIV, the vaccinated starting returning positive HIV tests!
For real those people actually now have HIV? Shit.
No. They just returned positive tests.
That must have been a fun meeting -
"What inactive viruses do you have lying around the lab, Bruce, that we can use as a basis for a vacinne?" "Well, Bruce, I've got some spare inactive HIV. Tons of it." "Top-notch, Bruce. We'll go with that. No one will mind."
The point of a UBI scheme (for me at least) is to do away with the iniquity of the fact that currently those on benefits face an effective 85% tax rate if they earn more due to the removal of benefits. By making the benefits universal and fixing the tax system instead they would be just paying tax rather than paying tax and losing benefits at 73% of whatever they earn post-tax.
If you introduce a 100% UBI tax on low earners then it becomes pointless to earn. Which is the problem that is supposed to be getting fixed by having a UBI in the first place.
Any rate of tax on low earners with a UBI system is going to be very high by necessity - which is where the idea of UBI falls apart as it will discourage people from working.
For instance if you give a UBI of £10000 but expect those that are earning £30000 to be net contributors to the tax base you need a tax rate of 50% just to cover UBI before anything else.
Now you could set UBI at £5000 but that is less benefit than even a single 23 year old male would receive over a year.
If you're on benefits currently you're already on a real 85% marginal tax rate essentially. That is the existing system today. So if you go to a 50% tax rate instead of an 85% tax rate that is a major improvement not a worsening of the situation.
What ethical reason is there to charge people a real marginal tax rate of 85%? Let alone the poorest of society?
Though your maths are flawed. At a 50% tax rate you would need to be earning £20,000 to be a net contributer to the tax base.
Personally figures from the air I would suggest a £1000 per month UBI, with a 40% tax rate, increasing to 50% after £100k per annum. No National Insurance, no exceptions.
That would mean someone not earning would get £12,000 UBI. Someone earning £30k would pay £0 tax and get £0 in benefits, anyone earning under £30k per annum would be a net recipient, only those earning over £30k would be net contributers. All incomes including pensions are taxed at the full rate.
You have forgotten the other 410 billion a year that gets spent on stuff like the nhs and defence? That also needs to be paid for
Which is will be, by those earning more, as already happens.
A few other things to take away from the bill. You've calculated the UBI going to everyone - it should only go to adults (with a smaller supplementary for children) and also I would not give it to migrants until they become a citizen. Currently you could say anyone whose status says "no recourse to public funds" would not get it - and going forwards post-Brexit we could say that is everyone who comes here. So people who come here to work would get taxed on every penny they earn but not receive any UBI, so they would need to ensure they can support themselves from what they earn.
I calculated using 51,000,000 as about the number of adults in the uk. How many of those dont have recourse to public funds? Not even sure where to find a figure for that
1.4 million.
Going forwards we could and should include EEA migrants in this. Level playing field.
Ok then so call it 49,000,000....pay them all ubi of 12k a year, That is still 588,000,000,000 paid out in ubi the cost of everything the government does - welfare is circa 410,000,000 so that is 998,000,000,000 to find. Sutract the clawback of the tax free allowance and 360 per month from every working adult so (360x12)x33,000,000 which is 142,000,000,000.
That leaves us at 998,000,000,000 - 142,000,000,000 = 856,000,000,000.
Current total tax take is 635,000,000,000. So somewhere we have to increase taxation to bring in another 221 billion
You haven't factored in any billions of cost savings whatsoever from streamlining the DWP and abolishing Jobcentre requirements etc
You haven't factored in the fact that extra income people will be receiving will be spent, raising VAT.
You haven't factored in the fact we currently have a deficit and so could in the future, within reason.
You haven't factored in people working more hours once their tax rate marginal is slashed so thus paying more in taxes (as well as bringing about general economic growth).
You haven't factored in the multiplier effects on the above.
And so on and so forth.
I don't care if you believe in the Laffer Curve or not, there's no reason in my mind to believe that taxing people over 80% of the income is not to the right of the Laffer Curve for many people. Reducing marginal tax rates from over 80% to 50% will have beneficial consequentials that need to be taken into account.
The most "nationalist" (i.e. vote for vaccine from their own country) are in China (+83), India (+68) Singapore (+61) and Australia (+57)*. Germany (+44) and the UK (+40) are ahead of vaccine sceptics USA & France (+36).
*Ironic - Australian vaccine was a "bust" - as it was based on inactivated HIV, the vaccinated starting returning positive HIV tests!
For real those people actually now have HIV? Shit.
No - they don't have HIV now, just the test for it is returning positive (not unlike the controversy over PCR and covid for recovered patients. The PCR is able to amplify long dead strands from the Covid and thus return a 'positive' test in someone who no longer has the diesease. Similarly I am in remission for a type of leukeamia. I used to have three monthly checks for relapse that always returned a number, just the number was below a threshold that indicates relapse.
Comments
Think of all those jobs which require benefits to make sense.....
https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/business/what-to-do-if-youve-been-shafted-by-brexit-by-a-brexiter-20210115204286
"SPI-M use several models, each using data from a variety of sources in their estimates of R and growth rate. Epidemiological data, such as hospital admissions, ICU admissions and deaths, usually takes up to 3 weeks to reflect changes in the spread of disease."
They might as well not bother. For example they reported 0.9..1.0 on 11 Dec when the reported case numbers had already been going up for a week.
Someone earns £9 per hour, that should be much more than benefits. But if they're past the NI and Income Tax threshold they face a marginal tax rate of 33%, so its really £6 per hour they take home.
£6 per hour marginal should still be better than benefits. But as they're currently receiving benefits they lose 73% to 'make up' for the fact they 'don't need' the benefits. So their benefits are reduced by £4.38
So now the person working "for £9 per hour" is actually taking home £1.62 per hour. It is pathetic.
Lets say an employer offers someone to work a full shift on their day off as overtime. Someone not on benefits earns £45 in extra take home pay. Someone on benefits gets £12.21 in extra take home pay.
28 day figures, deaths to the 1st of January
Ons chart for same period
www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQJ1kUiXlYU
Error rates in following habitual procedures is in the order of 1:10,000. Error rates in following rules-based procedures (if this, then that; if 40 this, if 99 that) increase dramatically to the 1:200-2,000 range, depending on whether it is a rules procedure with which the operator is well versed, or a rule they have to reference during implementation.
It is worth the odd idiotic question to get a 5- to 50-fold reduction in error rates, particularly where high consequence errors are involved.
I fear, genuinely, that this was a cock up caused by the 40,000 alerts relating to European criminals have already been deleted from the PNC after Britain’s deal with the EU in the last few days.
Some years ago, I was watching TV and a documentary following a "benefits team" around came up. They had got a live one! A man guilty of supporting his children, while claiming to be separated. Both mother and farther on benefits.
Guilty of supporting his children.
I din't actually destroy the TV at that point, but......
More widespread bad weather predicted...incoming another Indy front-page saying vaccine roll out is a disaster.
I'm not sure why so many people struggle to understand this. I suspect it's because they don't want to. Some on the right baulk at giving people money for nothing, while some on the left can't abide the state giving money to people who don't necessarily need it. They really need to take a more holistic view!
"Experts warn number of people in Britain could have shrunk by 1.3million - biggest decline since WWII - amid exodus of foreign-born workers"
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9150821/UK-population-shrunk-1-3million-amid-pandemic.html#comments
https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1350100392634417152
Impressive.
A few other things to take away from the bill. You've calculated the UBI going to everyone - it should only go to adults (with a smaller supplementary for children) and also I would not give it to migrants until they become a citizen. Currently you could say anyone whose status says "no recourse to public funds" would not get it - and going forwards post-Brexit we could say that is everyone who comes here. So people who come here to work would get taxed on every penny they earn but not receive any UBI, so they would need to ensure they can support themselves from what they earn.
I suppose there's not too much harm in overstating R now, but understating it when cases were accelerating might have played a part in delaying the December restrictions.
Going forwards we could and should include EEA migrants in this. Level playing field.
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/about-us/how-citizens-advice-works/media/press-releases/citizens-advice-reveals-nearly-14m-have-no-access-to-welfare-safety-net/
50% is a lower marginal rate than most people on benefits end up with.
At £40k earnings, you've have an income of £32k, roughly what you'd get now. Below that you'd do slightly better than now, above that slightly worse. It wouldn't be far off parity, but without the pitfalls.
Think I might try a cheeky call. If I make the effort to go the centre - Lords cricket ground - would they fit me in?
That leaves us at 998,000,000,000 - 142,000,000,000 = 856,000,000,000.
Current total tax take is 635,000,000,000. So somewhere we have to increase taxation to bring in another 221 billion
* Not sure whether to read into this a cock-up as they belatedly realised they had to be used by today or being proactive after others cancelled, maybe for bad weather (not sure if it's been bad in Essex, has been pretty grim up here)
We are much more popular in India and South Asia, the Americas, Australia and the Middle East. We are also still popular in Hong Kong as opposed to mainland China for obvious reasons.
Strawberry, Basil and Balsamic Pizza.
https://cookieandkate.com/strawberry-basil-and-balsamic-pizza/
Someone on welfare at £10 per hour currently would need to pick up over 55 hours of overtime to earn £100 extra.
Whilst many mistakes have been made, the vaccination system does look at this stage to be working as intended.
Needless to say I'm slightly less impressed.
My last final finished at 1pm (I think, or maybe it was 12). 12 minutes later we had our first round in. 2 hours 12 minutes later I was asleep.....! Had a cracking night after the tactical nap, tho!
The most "nationalist" (i.e. vote for vaccine from their own country) are in China (+83), India (+68) Singapore (+61) and Australia (+57)*. Germany (+44) and the UK (+40) are ahead of vaccine sceptics USA & France (+36).
*Ironic - Australian vaccine was a "bust" - as it was based on inactivated HIV, the vaccinated starting returning positive HIV tests!
I'll report back later.
And it probably wouldn't help to protest that it's manufactured in India...
It does look as if production and finishing is going to be a big issue.
Those 3-4 week boosters are not going to be happening on schedule, or so it looks.
"What inactive viruses do you have lying around the lab, Bruce, that we can use as a basis for a vacinne?"
"Well, Bruce, I've got some spare inactive HIV. Tons of it."
"Top-notch, Bruce. We'll go with that. No one will mind."
You haven't factored in the fact that extra income people will be receiving will be spent, raising VAT.
You haven't factored in the fact we currently have a deficit and so could in the future, within reason.
You haven't factored in people working more hours once their tax rate marginal is slashed so thus paying more in taxes (as well as bringing about general economic growth).
You haven't factored in the multiplier effects on the above.
And so on and so forth.
I don't care if you believe in the Laffer Curve or not, there's no reason in my mind to believe that taxing people over 80% of the income is not to the right of the Laffer Curve for many people. Reducing marginal tax rates from over 80% to 50% will have beneficial consequentials that need to be taken into account.