Re: Universal Basic Income
Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2019 8:33 am
I'm gad you mentioned market forces deeps as the concept is so deeply rooted as to be unavoidable. And business and market forces being what they are I could foresee how they would react. If a worker is currently earning say £20,000 and UBI were to be paid as well that worker would be deemed richer , prices would rise , the so called idea of charging what the market can afford would come into play. Furthermore if the government is paying that worker £8000 trough UBI an employer is going to be less inclined to pay that worker more than they can , thus we get to a situation of wage stagnation and rising prices which in turn would probably lead to calls to increase levels of UBI to help people cope. I seriously doubt that such a system would be viable within the economic system we have at the moment but even if it were tried it would have to involve higher taxes for corporations . Taxing the working man to pay him UBI simply wouldn't work as there'd be no "extra" money entering the system , again not rocket science.
Corperations can and do provide jobs although I have always believed foreign investment is something of a double edged sword. When we hear corporation X is making a £100M investment they are simply increasing their own assets and are then taxed at lower rates and export their profits or at least a large percentage of those profits to foreign shareholders . The money rarely stays within the "invested in" country. Take Cadburys for instance. Sold to Kraft , they close down production here and move it to Poland and went from paying over £200M in tax to sod all , pretty hard to put actions like that in a good light.
Corperations can and do provide jobs although I have always believed foreign investment is something of a double edged sword. When we hear corporation X is making a £100M investment they are simply increasing their own assets and are then taxed at lower rates and export their profits or at least a large percentage of those profits to foreign shareholders . The money rarely stays within the "invested in" country. Take Cadburys for instance. Sold to Kraft , they close down production here and move it to Poland and went from paying over £200M in tax to sod all , pretty hard to put actions like that in a good light.