A Universal Basic Income Might Be The Future

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A Quick Word Aid.

I first wanted to talk about your point that your plan was not aligned with socialist ideologies but was aligned with communist ideologies. You seemed to struggle to find the exact wording to use so I wanted to chime in and see if I could help real quick. The plan is not socialist because it is dealing with the end product, cash, and distributing it to ensure that the economic situation can stay the same or even improve due to a safety net allowing those to recover from hardship. This has nothing to do with the production of items or profit and as such can’t be considered socialist.

The Current Welfare Program.

I agree vehemently that our current welfare system is not able to be fine tuned to help people of society correctly without major funding and effort that will never be seen in the American political climate. A much easier and I believe better solution is a UBI like you discussed. It would be interesting to talk about whether the U.S should have a flat amount and should invest in the massive amount of manpower and research to create a different UBI by location based on the cost of living in the area. I would personally like a UBI that was more tailored to each location with the person being required to live in that area a majority of the year in order to stop people from getting a California check while living in a cheap place like Oklahoma. I agree that it would be beneficial for run down areas, job opportunities, and high crime areas. However I don’t think it is the solution to underperforming public schools. Public schools throughout the country get most of their funding from local property taxes. If people are constantly leaving the area the taxes will fall putting the school in even worse shape. I think the actual solution to this problem would be to take the property taxes around the country and divide them in some fashion to all the schools based on how much it takes to operate in the area and the supplies needed. Run down schools would need more funding for the first couple years to get up to code and in acceptable condition while schools already operating with extra budget can cut back for a couple years to allow for more redirection of funds.

What Does It Provide For?

In your proposal you lay out the amount people should get which I for the most part agree with. However you have the elderly getting an extra 150% to help with medical expenses. In my preferred version I would have universal healthcare so there would be no need for an extra amount to cover health expenses if they don’t cost anything anyways. I would still keep the extra 150% though and just have that be social security under the assumption that they need more assistance due to not being able to work as much or at all anymore.

How to Go About It.

I think it is an extremely good idea to use a constitutional amendment because for better or worse politicians would try to change the numbers in the future. I think making it a GDP percentage is an easy way to sidestep the problem of inflation but careful consideration must be taken to ensure that a single good year for the GDP does not bankrupt the U.S in a following bad year. I do take a slight difference in opinion about the amount of tax on those earning a certain amount above whatever is decided. I personally think there should be a hierarchy based tax system that could start at 25% and as you get closer to the top .01% might get closer to a 50 percent tax with the bonus being used to fund rainy day systems that would allow the U.S to pay off debt, finance up and coming businesses, or step in and save institutions that if they go bankrupt would devastate the general populace. For example the great depression when all the banks defaulted. While yes I do want them to take the blame and face massive punishments due to their failure to stay afloat, I would have the federal government step in to save the companies in order to protect the general populace until a suitable replacement is in place or the company is sustainable again. I am in favor of this ONLY if the company is then forced to repay the federal government all the money and assets that were used to save it at a heavy garnish to company profits until their debt is repaid. While yes this is harmful to capitalism and I would prefer the government not be forced to step in and save obviously failing companies, I do believe that if the general public will come to harm because no other company can provide at the same scale as the failing one it should be prevented. I understand that this would not be acceptable to libertarians and that you would lose their support with this change. However you don’t really need the librarians as they make up a small minority of the current political system and the chance they would have of getting a two thirds majority to repeal it is non-existent. As such I believe that the amendment should target both progressives and conservatives. The progressives would love systems like a UBI and conservatives would be onboard if there was still a way for companies to be protected.