Universal Basic Income

 

Suzanne

And Jesus was a sailor
When He walked upon the water
And He spent a long time watching
From His lonely wooden tower
And when He knew for certain
Only drowning men could see Him
He said, "All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them

Sailors should know about tides and boats.

A rising tide raises all boats.  Donald J. Trump Junior famously said of averages that “I would imagine that 50% are below average, that's how math works.” I know that he is a graduate of the Wharton School, but also I took classes at the Wharton School when I attended UPenn’s Towne School of Engineering.  Let’s give DJTJ the benefit of the doubt that he was merely drunk in class when averages were taught, and not merely grifting again, but he is confusing the mean with the median.  The average is the centrality of the normal, which is the median.  In normal distributions, the mean and the median are equal, but when distributions are not normal they do not have to be the same.  Taking advantage of those who confuse the two is NOT a nice thing. https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2018/08/wonderful-world-dont-know-much-about.html

A rising tide rises all boats means that as the tide, median, increases, then every boat should rise by the same amount.  Not that a few boats should rise by more than the tide and many more boats should be sunk, but that is actually what has happened.  Let’s be kind and say that it was by accident and not design.

The distribution of income is reported by the US Census Bureau.  The distribution of that income in 1968, in 2021 dollars, fits a hyperbolic tangent.  It also fits a hyperbolic tangent in 2021. That is not suprising since a statistical distribution should fit a hyperbolic tangent.  But the distribution in 1968 had a de facto Universal Basic Income, UBI, of almost $10.5 thousand.  The distribution in 2021 also fits a de facto Universal Basic Income, but it is negative $1.2 thousand. The number of households and income grew from 1968 to 2021.  If all of that increase in income was applied to everyone, then the distribution would stay the same, but the distribution was actually shifted towards higher incomes.  But by insisting that policies that should ensure that there is NO Universal Basic Income, and the distribution of income at zero percent should be as close to zero as possible, while the incomes for the top 20% are remarkedly similar, the incomes for the remaining percents are severely decreased.  By sinking all of those boats you might make the upper income yachts raise higher, but if you had just distributed income normally, then the end result would have been the same. 

And the amount of Universal Basic Income is not enormous. If  income tax is 20% of the total income and 0.4 % of the increase in taxes between 1968 and 2021 was shared among the total households in 2021, it would amount to $68 thousand per household.  And THAT is how math really works.