57% of Americans cannot pay a $500 bill. 78% say they live paycheck to paycheck. It is not realistic to expect people to be politically functional if they are dealing with scarcity day-to-day. We need to secure people's future with UBI to move forward. pic.twitter.com/U2JqoaGhhB— Andrew Yang (@AndrewYangVFA) November 21, 2018
I don't know if UBI is the solution.
But we do need some solution. The current economy is broken.
But we do need some solution. The current economy is broken.
4 comments:
There are any number of problems with UBI, as attractive as it looks at first glance. One of the biggest is "Who pays?" obviously.
But we already have a *kind* of UBI, in the Earned Income Credit. It just isn't big enough.
Another way to boost income would be to eliminate taxes on all groceries. Right now, in some states (like Arkansas and Louisiana, for instance) taxes on food bought at grocery stores is the same as the tax bought on, say, an dirt bike or a new pair of running shoes or a rental on a limo. Food is being treated as a luxury, in other words.
If the grocery tax was eliminated, that would put a substantial savings in the pocket of poor families. (In many states, food bought in grocery stores is *not* taxed.)
Here in Arkansas, the sales tax on food bought in grocery stores is more than 11%.
The sales tax on food bought in grocery stores is 1.5% in Arkansas (the regular tax is 6.5%)... the 11% tax is for restaurant foods. https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2018/apr/26/grocery-sales-tax-put-on-the-table-2018/
Local taxes might be more regressive, since they can be added on to the state tax.
Right, the tax is 1.5% state-wide, then whatever taxes are added on in each city/county. It's 11% here in the Fort, I should have said. Restaurant food is even more heavily taxed.
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