You lost me when you started talking about forcing people, starting with tax collection and avoidance and on to the Marxist-style income redistribution. I have not done any calculations, but we know that increased automation eventually reduces the cost of everything automated (though not necessarily the price of it). This includes food, clothing, electronics, transportation, basic healthcare (once automated), though not shelter, as one cannot automate land, and there is none of free land left in most places people want to live. So one would expect, naively, that the universal basic income would be low yet enough to provide reasonable basics for everyone, once the housing situation is figured out. Not sure how to solve that one.
as one cannot automate land, and there is none of free land left in most places people want to live.
While you can’t automate land directly you can build taller buildings on it. For Great Stagnation reasons it doesn’t get cheaper to build taller buildings as we would like but if we would actually develop the relevant technology we could solve the issue.
Sorry if I was unclear; I’m not endorsing that logical extreme of the UBI, and I’m also unnerved by many of the policies I describe. (“total control of production by any entity is a terrible unnecessary risk”). The point of the calculation is to show that automation (or a similarly giant productivity gain) is necessary for a good future. Or are you saying it’s so implausible that it’s not worth thinking about?
I think the best argument against basic income is that it transfers vastly more economic power to politicians. That’s what makes me take capital distribution seriously: put it right into people’s hands, away from mob-shaped politicians and denial.
1 and 2. These are what I mean by capital distribution:
Prop up the liberal mixed economy: with a programme of mass employee stock ownership (mostly your 1); or by carving each full-time job into several part-time ones, plus heavy wage subsidies (your 2) (...); or get the government to buy every 18 year old a serious stock portfolio (your 2)
Basic income is also political in your sense (2), since it’s a large government-driven change from the status quo (and, unless we wait for >> 50 years of growth before we implement it, it will likely involve tax hikes *).
One reason to favour building up private stocks (over UBI, a flow) is that this protects people (a bit) from later nativist or populist governments cutting off parts of the population. It still goes through politicians, but only once rather than annually. Not sure what protects against revolutionary appropriation (3) though.
(ESOPs are a relatively apolitical nudge, but I don’t know how much of the problem they’d solve.)
\* World growth this year was 3.1%. Compounding that fifty times gets us $370tn GWP. It’s hard to tell what the ‘average world tax rate’ is at present, but approximate it with public expenditure, around 25% of GWP. If we could only use 25% of $370tn, we’d be roughly where the above long extreme calculation put us: nowhere near enough.
So, which of these don’t “transfer vastly more economic power too politicians”? At least basic income is relatively straightforward monetary taxation and distribution (a flow of meaningless fiat-money). Other meddling in capital ownership (corporate stocks? you want governments to control business ownership?) puts FAR more power in political hands.
You lost me when you started talking about forcing people, starting with tax collection and avoidance and on to the Marxist-style income redistribution. I have not done any calculations, but we know that increased automation eventually reduces the cost of everything automated (though not necessarily the price of it). This includes food, clothing, electronics, transportation, basic healthcare (once automated), though not shelter, as one cannot automate land, and there is none of free land left in most places people want to live. So one would expect, naively, that the universal basic income would be low yet enough to provide reasonable basics for everyone, once the housing situation is figured out. Not sure how to solve that one.
While you can’t automate land directly you can build taller buildings on it. For Great Stagnation reasons it doesn’t get cheaper to build taller buildings as we would like but if we would actually develop the relevant technology we could solve the issue.
Sorry if I was unclear; I’m not endorsing that logical extreme of the UBI, and I’m also unnerved by many of the policies I describe. (“total control of production by any entity is a terrible unnecessary risk”). The point of the calculation is to show that automation (or a similarly giant productivity gain) is necessary for a good future. Or are you saying it’s so implausible that it’s not worth thinking about?
I think the best argument against basic income is that it transfers vastly more economic power to politicians. That’s what makes me take capital distribution seriously: put it right into people’s hands, away from mob-shaped politicians and denial.
Wait. Capital distribution is always one of:
1) historical, status quo with slight changes over time
2) political, backed by threat of state violence
3) revolutionary, backed by actual individual violence
Which mechanism are you taking seriously, thinking that it’s preferable to basic income?
1 and 2. These are what I mean by capital distribution:
Basic income is also political in your sense (2), since it’s a large government-driven change from the status quo (and, unless we wait for >> 50 years of growth before we implement it, it will likely involve tax hikes *).
One reason to favour building up private stocks (over UBI, a flow) is that this protects people (a bit) from later nativist or populist governments cutting off parts of the population. It still goes through politicians, but only once rather than annually. Not sure what protects against revolutionary appropriation (3) though.
(ESOPs are a relatively apolitical nudge, but I don’t know how much of the problem they’d solve.)
\* World growth this year was 3.1%. Compounding that fifty times gets us $370tn GWP. It’s hard to tell what the ‘average world tax rate’ is at present, but approximate it with public expenditure, around 25% of GWP. If we could only use 25% of $370tn, we’d be roughly where the above long extreme calculation put us: nowhere near enough.
So, which of these don’t “transfer vastly more economic power too politicians”? At least basic income is relatively straightforward monetary taxation and distribution (a flow of meaningless fiat-money). Other meddling in capital ownership (corporate stocks? you want governments to control business ownership?) puts FAR more power in political hands.