What Are The Pros And Cons Of A Negative Income Tax System, As Proposed By Milton Friedman?

Here, I’ll gather a list of relevant taxes and strategies, together with revenue projections. There is no agreement on how much a wealth tax, for example, would raise. So I’ll include the range of revenue projections, from conservative skepticism to passionate optimism. For example, since 1982, every Alaskan citizen has received a partial UBI through taxes levied on oil revenues. From the introduction of their partial UBI to the present, Alaska has experienced lower inflation than the rest of the nation. This, despite every citizen receiving an extra ~$1,500 annually. We can apply the Laffer curve to UBI, asking how overall tax revenues respond to the level of UBI.

• This credit, a sum sent each year by the IRS to the working poor, resulted from a counterproposal to the Friedman-Nixon NIT by Democratic Louisiana senator Russell Long .
• Unconditional income enables those who’d prefer spending more of their time engaged in unpaid activities, that they nevertheless consider valuable, to do so.
• Adolescent girls’ school attendance in Malawi rose with no-strings-attached cash grants but making school a mandatory condition for receiving payments had a much larger effect.
• The more unconditional income provided, the less of one’s life-time that must be traded to acquire the goods and services we need.
• Basic income – whether UBI, modernized NIT, or non-universal basic income with a high-level phaseout rate – is one of the most important cultural conversations of the early 21st century.

It remains an open (and highly pertinent!) research question whether these savings would offset the additional costs of means-testing. Accordingly, this kind of tax is only realistic in partnership with reformed taxation of multinational companies and tax havens. VAT’s were conceived in the post-war 20th century, when industries that define 21st century economies were relatively small – finance, insurance, education, and healthcare. Today, these high powered industries would either be beyond the reach of the VAT, or able to pass on the cost burden to consumers.

Optimal Taxation Theory

I’ve just watched this YouTube clip of Milton Friedman discussing a negative income tax. Brazil’s Bolsa Família program has been encouraging in this regard. Beginning in 2004, the program has made modest cash grants to poor families who send their kids to school and the doctor. The country’s poverty rate fell from 26.1% in 2003 to 14.1% in 2009. From 2007 to 2009, Bolsa Família led to an estimated 59% of the reduction in poverty and 140% of the reduction in extreme poverty.

Unless some of the existing welfare is not curtailed, it is very difficult to create fiscal space for the execution of negative income tax. Net income is the difference between the revenues and the expenses of a small business in any given fiscal year. Revenues are the funds from sales of goods or services a business provides to customers. Expenses reflect the costs of producing and delivering goods or services to consumers.

Raising And Reforming Corporate Taxes

So the idea is that if people have a platform to build their lives off, they have resources every month. But some prominent proposals for UBS advocate for services instead of income, providing the physical means for voluntary trade in kind, rather than in cash. These UBS proposals arose out of the UBI movement, sharing their intent while believing direct provision of services is a better use of available funds than direct cash transfers. Crucially, UBS proposals are inconsistent on whether or not UBI is part of the package. A UBS that includes income – and therefore a UBI – as one of the unconditionally provided features is hardly different from most progressive proposals for UBI. This UBS just formalizes the insistence that UBI alone is insufficient, and must be complemented by a broader program of reform.

This article argues the status quo welfare system doesn’t help the poor. Was one of the most famous right-wing advocates for a negative income tax. Adopting a UBI could divert funds away from other welfare programs and hurt the people who need these programs the most. While unemployed individuals can receive benefits, there is no protection from issues like slow wage growth, underemployment, unhealthy work environments or a lack of job security. There are many cities, states, and countries that are experimenting with a universal basic income. Critics argue that creates a disincentive to earn more, which is what could happen with universal basic income, too.

Could A Basic Income Work?​

A guaranteed living wage could also be an incentive for employers to offer better work conditions. The most common criticism of universal basic income is its cost. Most discussions about universal basic income pros and cons remain theoretical due to the limited amount of data available. Countries with universal basic income typically implement short-term experiments for a small section of their population. That data isn’t necessarily representative of the behaviors one would see in the US. The 2008 crisis and the pandemic illustrate situations where a guaranteed living wage would protect the population from economic shocks.

But the subsequent interest owed is not created, so money creation always furthers the deficit that divides money owed from money circulating in the economy. If we can conclude anything from these concerns and speculations, perhaps it’s that moving in the direction of UBI merits prudence. In the face of these uncertainties, we may nevertheless rest assured that UBI would fundamentally change the economy, and in so doing, the kinds of lives we lead. We should speculate as widely as possible, and survey the many possibilities as diligently as we can. A common example is the Alaska Permanent Fund, which taxes all mineral royalties a minimum of 25%. They reason that Alaskan oil belongs to all Alaskans, rather than whoever manages to dig it up first. Anyone who uses the oil must compensate all other collective owners for excluding them from using it.

Negative Income Tax

The payment of in-kind benefits, as opposed to cash, implies that recipients do not know what they need and cannot be trusted to spend money rationally. Secondary markets allow beneficiaries to sell non-cash handouts; the margin on such transactions represents wasted taxpayer money. For instance, a 2015 Kansas law bars recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families—a federal cash grant—from using the benefits to buy tattoos, movie tickets, manicures, or lingerie.

Workers could still receive payment through some form of paid leave for Friday’s lost wages. This was the strategy used by Microsoft Japan when they tested 4-day work weeks, yielding promising results, both morally and economically. By contrast, if basic livelihood is afforded through a FJG, imagine the spiritual plight of a worker consigned to meaningless, pointless labor merely in order to satisfy the work requirement for receiving a living wage.

Futurists’ Ideas Of Basic Income

However, some argue that children constitute a “public good”, and child allowances should be universal. I leave this debate untouched, trusting that either method – a reduced rate NIT income floor, or a child allowance – complement and fulfill the motivations behind this basic income proposal. Or you could set the income cutoff at the economic subsistence level times 2 (1/the chosen rate), which would mean getting rid of taxes for people who should be entirely self sufficient without the governments help. Considering results from the Seattle-Denver experiment, it can be shown that the two-parent families that received $2,700 decreased their earnings by almost $1,800. Therefore, spending $2,700 on transfers to two-parent families in Seattle-Denver increased their income by only $900.

• This is very different from many social welfare programs, in which a household either receives all of a benefit or, if it ceases to qualify, nothing at all.
• If the government is unable to provide quality work for all participants in the program, the outcome is dystopian.
• Paul Samuelson argued in Newsweek that it was an idea whose time had come, and more than 1,200 academic economists signed a petition in support of it.
• Often when this is brought up it turns into an academic discussion when it shouldn’t be.
• The thought is, you should only get access to public benefits if you are participating in the formal labor market and earning an income.
• We may either enact one single, large tax, or we may prefer implementing a series of smaller progressive taxes.
• But as we learn more about the nature of income and wealth inequality, it’s clear that the wealthy make most of their income via capital income, while working classes rely on wages.

There’s a relevant concept in economics known as the Laffer curve. It says that as you increase a tax rate, you’ll raise more revenue until a certain point, after which the tax rate is so high that it discourages people from engaging in the activity, and the tax revenues begin to decline. The capitulation critique, then, does not apply to a poverty level UBI funded by progressive taxation. Far from a nail in the coffin, this points to the conspicuous lack of rigor applied to existing progressive funding proposals for an adequate UBI. If we are to overcome this sense of politically impossibility, we need to put forward realistic funding models.

His estimates yielded a net cost of $539 billion, or 15.7% of the gross cost. In a proposal for a social wealth fund, The People’s Policy Project provides a visual aid that models a potentially digitized NIT platform nicely. Empirical studies are increasingly finding that a VAT is regressive , though debate remains as to precisely how regressive. Some UBI proposals account for this regressivity by setting the payout level – or in our case, the NIT income threshold – $200 above the poverty line.

Fourthly, in theory the cost of negative income tax can be lower than the cost of existing programs mainly due to lower administrative costs. Lastly, the program should not distort the market in the way minimum wage laws or tariffs do.

A UBI could be considered a more humane alternative that treats recipients with more dignity. Besides, letting recipients decide how they want to use the funds could be an important step toward financial responsibility and success. During this time, 2,000 unemployed individuals received a UBI instead of traditional unemployment benefits. While propositions can differ, there are some common characteristics.

Bring in $4,000, and it would receive $3,000, for a total of $7,000. So as the family’s earnings rise, its post-tax income rises, too, preserving the work incentive. This is very different from many social welfare programs, in which a household either receives all of a benefit or, if it ceases to qualify, nothing at all. The all-or-nothing model encourages what social scientists call “poverty traps,” tempting the poor not to improve their situations. A significant portion of the cost could be covered by folding existing means-tested programs that NIT makes redundant. Together, reallocating these revenues into funding the modernized NIT covers $198 billion, annually. In the aforementioned work, Friedman provides five benefits of the negative income tax.

After the increase in popularity of NIT, an experiment sponsored by the US government was conducted between 1968 and 1982 on effects of NIT on labour supply, income, and substitution effects. Both models guarantee a basic income, but there are some significant differences between negative income tax vs UBI. With a universal basic income, everyone receives the same amount, and individuals would pay taxes if their UBI puts them above a certain threshold. One can argue that this system isn’t optimal since some people would receive money and then give it back in the form of a tax payment.

Framing UBI as a social dividend only makes sense if the funding mechanisms draw from areas of society where large private earnings are bolstered by neglecting public contributions. To sufficiently appease free-rider concerns, UBI advocates must demonstrate what sectors of society wind up paying for UBI under their funding proposals.

There is also less role for safety standards, overtime laws, and other such labor regulations because workers are in a better position to be choosy about their jobs. It gives people a base level of resources and lets the market work. Friedman also elaborated and provided two reasons for the hostility from the right. Firstly, he mentions that the right is frightened due to the introduction of a guaranteed minimum income the poor would have a disincentive to improve their well-being. Secondly, the right is not certain about the political outcomes of the NIT, as there exist threats that there will be an upward pressure on the break-even incomes among politicians.