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Could We Fund a Universal Basic Income with Universal Basic Assets? (fastcompany.com)
Universal Basic Incomes aren't really the issue, argues Fast Company staff writer Ben Schiller. "It's how you find $2 trillion to pay for it."
One answer may come in the form of "universal basic assets" (UBA). UBA can mean a fund of publicly-owned infrastructure or revenue streams -- like Alaska's Permanent Fund which pays residents up to $2,000 a year from state oil taxes. Or, it can mean actual assets that drive down the cost of living, like tuition-free education and free public broadband. There are lots of proposals going around now that fall into these two camps...
Entrepreneur Peter Barnes has called for the creation of a Sky Trust that would both limit the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and provide revenue from carbon taxes. These "carbon dividends" solve two problems at once: income inequality and climate change. He would also tax corporations for using natural resources, on the thinking that the atmosphere, minerals and fresh water around us represent a "joint inheritance." He would also tax speculative financial transactions and use of the electromagnetic spectrum. The U.K. think-tank IPPR recently proposed a similar "sovereign wealth fund owned by and run in the interests of citizens." It would finance the fund with "a scrip tax of up to 3% requiring businesses to issue equity to the government, or pay a tax of equivalent value," sales of land owned by the U.K. monarchy, and higher inheritance taxes.
Blockchain can help. Blockchain technology could offer a way to divide publicly-owned infrastructure so it's genuinely publicly-owned. We could issue tokenized securities in the assets around us giving everyone a stake in their environment. Then they could trade those tokens on exchanges, like they were cryptocurrencies, or use the tokens as collateral on loans.
Entrepreneur Peter Barnes has called for the creation of a Sky Trust that would both limit the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and provide revenue from carbon taxes. These "carbon dividends" solve two problems at once: income inequality and climate change. He would also tax corporations for using natural resources, on the thinking that the atmosphere, minerals and fresh water around us represent a "joint inheritance." He would also tax speculative financial transactions and use of the electromagnetic spectrum. The U.K. think-tank IPPR recently proposed a similar "sovereign wealth fund owned by and run in the interests of citizens." It would finance the fund with "a scrip tax of up to 3% requiring businesses to issue equity to the government, or pay a tax of equivalent value," sales of land owned by the U.K. monarchy, and higher inheritance taxes.
Blockchain can help. Blockchain technology could offer a way to divide publicly-owned infrastructure so it's genuinely publicly-owned. We could issue tokenized securities in the assets around us giving everyone a stake in their environment. Then they could trade those tokens on exchanges, like they were cryptocurrencies, or use the tokens as collateral on loans.
If it's something like oil or natural resources, then maybe. The real question is whether there's enough of them and they're valuable enough.
The Nordic countries are rich in oil, low in population, and have been investing that money and it's working out for them. There may not be quite enough to go around for larger populations, though.
Figures, that the globalist and socialist answer to technology that could free mankind from government control is to try to chain him to government forever. There is no need for 'Universal Basic Income' as its being envisioned. With new technology people will be able to and should be encouraged to live and provide for themselves independently with at most a very basic safety network not all that much more substantial than whats available now and can be provided by family and friends or the local community not some monolithic government authority that should wither away.
Publicly owned infrastructure used to be called Communism, but I guess they needed some re-branding.
UBI and UBA are common items in Saudi Arabia
They have oil, lots of it, and the oil generated so much money for them they did not know how to spend it, so they wasted a lot of the money
Not long ago the oil price tanked, and the Saudi government felt the pinch and stopped the UBI --- lot of rioting as the result (many people killed too)
So if the lazy millennials are thinking of getting something for nothing, please look at Saudi Arabia
Blockchain can help. Blockchain technology could offer a way to divide publicly-owned infrastructure so it's genuinely publicly-owned
Bullshit. First of all, blockchains only work when the tokens have sufficient value, otherwise there's no incentive for miners. Secondly, even in the case of the most successful blockchain, Bitcoin, we have 99% of the miner capacity in the hands of a few big players, not the general public.
So how do you control for population growth? Hundreds of millions of unemployed people with nothing to do but fuck. If you pay for babies, you get more babies. And since there is no more need to compete for resources, they will all be little morons.
The total US stock market value is only about 60 trillion. Even taking a 10% stake in every company on the stock market would not come close to covering your 2 trillion a year price tag. people don't seem to comprehend just how huge a number that is. that is more than half the current US total tax revenue. perhaps if you see it with all the Zero's you might comprehend what a fuck load of money that is 2,000,000,000,000. Now then start thinking about how fucking huge a set of assets you require to consistently generate that income, it would need to be 40-50 trillion dollars in assets owned by the state to generate it and even then you are only giving people a paltry amount, not enough to actually live on,
Redistributing wealth gained from selling nationalized natural resources, ok, but that's not sustainable everywhere to the point to fund a UBI. What happens when electric vehicles drive down demand for oil? When coal electric generation is less profitable than solar? There goes your carbon tax income, too. Even for resources that won't become obsolete, it's presumed that a country is selling its resources more than it's importing i.e. running a trade surplus, and obviously not every nation can have a trade surplus.
What's the benefit of free tuition when 70% of people go on to University and there are too few teachers and too few field-related jobs to support all of the degrees being earned? I thought AI was going to create structural unemployment anyways, even those who are University-educated. Free broadband I'm cool with, since it's basic infrastructure and ought to be nationalized like roadways and water pipes; it's easy to throttle ethically, unlike say electricity use where some will abuse it (cryptocoin mining) yet causing brownouts is troublesome (your electric heater shutting down in winter).
Localities charging businesses to use the air, water and minerals already exists. Pollution regulations, and cap-and-trade, cover the air. Mineral and water rights are sold just like land, and businesses can buy water directly from a locality as well. Businesses have to pay for a license to use electromagnetic spectrum, too. These may not technically be 'taxes' but the effect is the same.
The 'use blockchain to split public assets and then trade them like cryptocoins' idea is asinine. I give it a week before the usual suspects buy up all the cryptoassets, cornering the market, effectively privatizing public assets.
The only good idea here is taxing speculation, as e.g. a percentage of the value of every securities trade rather than the net profit on the balance sheet at the end of the year. This has been suggested many times before, though.
My personally preferred idea for a UBI:
Step one: utilize eminent domain law to buy out and nationalize ALL land and residential buildings in the country. People/buildings can remain where they are. Step two: implement SANE rental prices for contractual use of land, decided by calculation of objective measures of the land's value, thus making it immune to bubbles. Step three: free housing for everyone, no more paying to live in an apartment.
Obvious caveats: needs efficient enough bureaucracy (ha!) to not run into the red-tape problems Cuba did with nationalized residences. How to decide who gets to live where, if they get a house versus an apartment, how many square feet? Waiting lists; less-picky people get preference, encouraging people to only ask for the minimum they require. Councils of engineers, social planners and architects will decide when buildings need to be torn down for safety reasons, and what kind of new residences to erect and where.
IMO if people have free housing, the other details don't matter so much. Food is relatively cheap and there are plenty of food banks/food stamp programs that already help with that. Water and broadband would be free, you'd only pay for electricity and gas (although honestly, how much gas can someone use? nationalize that too, why not...)
Wait, how're we going to pay for all that nationalizing of land and residences? By nationalizing the patent and public research system. The government now owns all patents, no more worrying about first to file; on the upside, they will fight infringement in court on their own dime (and are thus motivated to spend money not to grant obvious/overbroad patents, although selective enforcement could be a problem), and let the filer keep 20% of any licensing revenues. Public research leads to public patents, the people get 100% of licensing fees. Ditch software patents while you're at it. Eventually, as new technology emerges and takes over, ~80% of all wealth will be nationalized due to patent licensing, with businesses who utilize those patents owning about 20%
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Why do i imagine this being said in an almost pleading tone of voice?
This is an old proposal - it has been around for decades. But I don't think it is going to happen, and the reason is simple:
Being rich means being in control. In control of your own life, your own destiny. A universal income would give poor people a similar level of control over their lives, a level they do not currently have. And many people do no think that is a good idea, for a wide range of reasons from envy to paternalism.
Publicly owned infrastructure used to be called Communism, but I guess they needed some re-branding.
No. Communism is public ownership of all assets. If there are still private assets it is not Communism. Communism is something rather more dramatic than most of the people who throw around the world Communism mean, but in recent years this has generally been done on purpose so that any idea that is not pure unfettered neoliberal capitalism can be shot down as 'crazy communism'.
Of course no country has actually ever had pure unfettered neo-liberal capitalism either, and very few people believe you can organise a society effectively without any form of 'community regulation of the means of production' - you know, things like food and drug safety standards, a centralised military and police force, competition and fraud rules for commerce. Stuff that is actually on the spectrum of Socialism (albeit the lighter end)
In the end though, this is all about trying to claim ownership of words so that the historical connotations associated with that word in popular culture can be loaded against an idea you don't like. So it doesn't matter what the merits of this idea actually are (and I question many of them), by claiming it is 'Communism' people will cease evaluating the idea rationally and just reject it because it is associated with bad stuff. In many ways, I think one of the most influential aspects of the1980s economic reforms was associating them with the word 'free'.
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In the future the vast majority of people will be living in squalor. There is no way to avoid it.
Wrong.
It's just the opposite.
AI means production and transportation costs for food, housing, clothing, electricity, goods, services, etc etc etc will fall drastically to the point where cost is almost meaningless.
People will no longer be dependent on government, Governments are panicking.and this plan is TPTB's response to thwart that individual liberty and independence from government that AI will enable.
Gotta keep 'em on the plantation!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Now argue against the 90% of UBI proposals that don't involve printing money.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
AI means production and transportation costs for food, housing, clothing, electricity, goods, services, etc etc etc will fall drastically to the point where cost is almost meaningless.
Actually, we already have something today which could cost nearly nothing to produce: cryptocurrency. In fact, you can download Bitcoin's source code and modify it to spit out as many coins as you want (but you won't be able to spend them, since you'd have created a "fork"). The scarcity of Bitcoin is simply an agreed-upon constraint of everyone running the one-true-Bitcoin software.
I think it's far more likely we're in for a future similar to the depiction of Quark's in Star Trek DS9, where people were more than happy to pay for food and beverages, even if they came right out of a replicator.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
The example of Alaska is poor because naturally many states don't have resources that can be leveraged to provide 2000 dollars to each resident per year.
What is more, even alaska's oil reserves are finite. What happens when that runs out? And it will.
And it gets worse... you have to concede that this would just go federal... where in all national resources would go into some sort of federal pot to be spit up. But that's no good because once divided you won't have enough. Do the math.
But its worse than that because even if you did have enough... it would again be finite.
And worse than that because even if it weren't finite there would still be market fluctuation that would cause the pay out to change. That payout change would render the UBA unreliable. If you cached extra funds in good years to level out the payment in bad years then the payment would be more reliable but down turns or upturns in the commodities markets can last decades. Are you going to cache reserves to last decades? Come now.
And it gets worse because even if you didn't have any of those problems subsidizing the population in this manner would almost certainly lead to run away consumption. It would not be in the interest of the public to have population growth because that would be more mouths to divide the money between. And yet the UBA or UBI or really any radical expansion in the welfare system would encourage people to join just to suck at the tit.
It gets worse than that too because our agency in our republics is directly related to our economic logistical utility to the society. It was that increase in logistical utility that ended the rule of the nobles. Old Feudal style economies were not competitive because societies that did not grant agency to their valuable workers were not competitive. Economics is largely a question of motivating people. If individuals have more leverage then they must be bargained with to motivate them to work. If their labor is of no value then they have no leverage. The UBI and UBA concepts argue that large portions of the population will be of no value. One must hope that doesn't happen because if it does and the situation sustains throughout time then it is inevitable that they'll suffer extreme tyranny and possibly genocide.
The UBI and UBA are at best... death sentences... they are a suicide pact. At best. At worst they fail for screwing up an almost endless list of economic problems that are pretty obvious. But assuming you can deal with that, the ultimate political consequences will be fatal.
I would not advocate these policies unless you have nothing but malice in your heart for the people that will receive it.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
If you pay people to do fuck-all, a lot of them will do exactly that. In the US and the UK, we have the example of the corrosive effects of multi-generational dependency and in the Middle East, you can see that it doesn't get better just by giving people more money.
This is not even touching on the issue that government can only give away what it takes forcibly from those who produce it, and fuck that noise.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Shouldn't be that hard. The stock market is worth $30 trillion and that's just publically traded stock.
Indeed this is an issue faced on reservations too. In places where shared ownership reservation lands were turned into individual owned plots, much of that land eventually became owned by a few outside corporations. This is not a new experience, per post USSR Russia, but rather it is a very old trick.
Jobs are not a central issue for what is to come as jobs will virtually vanish. For example, in the past we took natural resources and apply labor and export products. That meant that the income taxes for the investors and workers supplied the government with money. But now we can take the human effort out of production. We simply use machines to turn natural resources into products for export. there are very few workers to tax and less jobs every few months. so what can we do. Assign a basic income to each person of $3,000 per month. Fro that require the person to select a stock to purchase and hold for 30 days. Those that made money on their stock could receive the profit or let it be re-invested in a separate account. income tax would only be calculated to the stock market earnings that you placed in a second, long term account. The investment requirement would be made on the same day that the pay check comes to you and you can not make any changes until the next pay day and then you must make the investment that same day. now the good parts are that since every person is assigned to different days of the month the stock market is made stable with more moderate swings in value. Next those that spent time and studied what they should invest in would establish a social pecking order which seems to be important for humans. So some people would still earn more than others. Those humans who remain in jobs will be highly taxed so that taking that $3,000 a month is attractive and the difference between working and non working adults is not so great. Obviously businesses might be facing heavier taxes. And that is fair. After all with little to no human employees all a business does is take from the common elements of this world and trade it for cash elsewhere with no particular good done for the citizens of a nation. The real fun may start when AI devices are defined as legal persons and they apply their massive intelligence to acquiring cash and control of other companies. Imagine a large company like IBM investing all of its resources perpetually in building ever smarter computers.
Finland is ending its Universal Basic Income experiment.
Your dream, much like the success of communism, is dead.
Perhaps if you focus on the root causes of many ills in society(lack of focus on the spurning of education and civility in Serbian population groups), youâ(TM)d stumble upon an answer. But I highly doubt it.
it attempts to give "to each according to their need"
without requiring "From each according to their ability."
... what they really want is a honest paycheck and to be empowered, listened to and respected for what they contribute. Society should be providing free employment, not free pay. Give a job to anyone who asks for one. Is that really so difficult to do or understand?
However, I also believe that the upper class won't go for anything that takes away their power, like the fear of losing your job gives them. Until this power over employment is taken away from the powerful the rest of us will only ever be wage slaves.
"Blockchain could help"
Yeah, so could a practically infinite number of other things. The 'put blockchain in everything' era of "ideas" is getting old fast. It's all very reminiscent of the game development space about four years ago when every game pitch was " IN VR!"
But the point is that 90% of the people already get this money. Either in form of welfare, pension, health care support, tax free allowance etc. Most of these could be reduced if a basic income is provided. Only a few people fall through the cracks of our systems, and those would benefit.
So it is less about the money, it is more about empowering the poor, rather than making them jump through hoops. Which is exactly why I think it is not going to happen.
...is still communism. Transferring vast amounts of wealth from the corporations and wealthy to the common people for the common good always sounds like a great idea in theory. But the practical results have pretty consistently proven disastrous.
Humans seem to need motivation to work and achieve. They need to feel like a big reward is possible, even if it's practically out of reach for most people. Penalizing success to give everyone more motivation to do the bare minimum is ultimately unhealthy for most societies (beyond a certain point anyway). No one disputes that we should have a social safety net for the old and infirm certainly, but a universal income for even the young and healthy only encourages a type of social stagnation.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The current blockchain is not carbon friendly.
Sorry folks. You can't make everyone wealthy by printing money and giving it away. It doesn't matter how the money is shuffled around; the result is the same.
Just 'don't be silly'. We-all get back what we contribute to 'society', priced at what society needs. Get it wrong, and you'd better work harder, or at something more useful. If productive assets are confiscated, go get your pitchfork.
It's absurd to earmark money from one source for another. All money should go into general revenues and then be spent in whatever is the most valuable way. It's the usual rubbish where people say we should have a state lottery. People disapprove. SO they then say, "we'll have a state lottery and the profits will go to the schools". The people approve. and then the legislature just reduces direct school funding because the state lottery pays. So the end is, there is a state lottery and the net funds go into the general revenue and people are fooled and you now can't undo it because it would defund the schools.
The only exception to that rule is when politicians just can't be trusted to do the right thing and simultaneously stability of a funding source requires such an endowment or earmark.
SO if general basic income is a good idea you need to just fund it directly out of general revenues. Don't come up with some misdirection about an endowment or carbon tax. In the end those are feel good hoaxes. In the end if it's costs are a drag on the economy then it's exactly the same cost no matter which pipe the funds flow through. This is not to say it's a bad idea to have UBI. It might or might not be what we want as a society. It might or might not harm productivity. those are different questions. I'm just saying don't come up with this imaginary funding scheme. those don't exist. it's sort of like conservation of energy as a law.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
We need a block chain version of the appy apps guy. That is all I got from this summary.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
So what do they get? You forgot to say.
And I don't mean Groucho.
Have gnu, will travel.
What does "carbon dioxide in the atmosphere" have to do with "universal basic income"?
Changing tax rates up or down doesn't "generally" move revenue either direction, it totally depends.
Starting with a communist country, 100% tax rate, cutting the rate by 80% will massively increase economic production and increase government revenue. Starting at a 0% tax rate, moving up to 20% will greatly increase government revenue. There is a rate which maximises revenue. If the current rate is too high, reducing it will boost the economy, increasing paychecks, and increase revenue. If the current rate is too low, increasing it will boost revenue to the government, at the cost of reducing people's paychecks.
There is of course a LOT of debate about what the ideal rate is for a given country, the rate which maximises government revenue. Studies indicate the best rate is probably somewhere between 20%-30%, that's the general range you get if you leave politics out of it and just try to objectively optimize revenue.
While either increasing or decreasing tax rates may increase government revenue, increased rates almost always decrease people's pay checks. Therefore it's better to err on the side of a tax rate that's slightly lower than what optimizes government revenue. Better for you to get $2000 and the government get $950 than for you to get $1000 and the government gets $1000.
Also of course the different types of taxes have completely different optimum rates. One of the best indicators for how well an economy will do is savings rate, how much people save up and invest. People who save up in a 401K now are generating revenue for the government both now and layer, so you want tax policy to strongly encourage savings and investment.
If you take 10% of stock market every year there will be nothing left in 10 years - this is simple math.
The reality will be much worse - the stock market will evaporate once the passage of such law will become even remote reality.
Wealth comes from production. You can't arbitrarily declare a certain amount of money and then expect that to hold up; that's what central banks do and EVERY time it leads to an eventual market crash. F.A. Hayek won the Nobel Prize in Economics for this analysis of the business cycle.
Money is just a tool to facilitate trade; it's "stuff" that constitutes actual wealth: food, houses, cars, clothing, electronics, etc. And creating new stuff requires production.
Socialism cannot work over the long-term because it has no price system to deal with the scarcity of "stuff."
Here's some free economic education for you:
www.BernieIsWrong.com
The American people didn't want the tax cut, it was actually pretty unpopular. Major GOP donors wanted the tax cut.
That's also why the US doesn't have Universal Healthcare or DACA despite both being popular policies.
If you feel the government isn't requiring enough taxes from you under threat of violence, then by all means feel free to get out your checkbook and make a voluntary donation to the Government! As for Universal Healthcare, if most Americans really wanted it, the Democrats wouldn't have gotten massacred in the mid-term election after they passed it.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
A scam to pay for a lie? Sounds legit.
Welcome to soviet Pottersville. Mr. Potter buys up the assets for penny on the dollar.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
And it shows what this really is about: Some desperate losers trying to perpetuate the scam. Despicable.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Step 1: Postulate that a viable UBI program increases economic vitality. Any tenuous, single-dimensional projection of the global economic system onto the Graph of Progress is fine here, so long as it incorporates at least a single macroeconomic truism (these are a dime a dozen; if you're having trouble coming up with one, it's because you're failing to appreciate the true, deep, eternal genius of sweeping-paintbrush oversimplification).
Step 2: Feed a new sustained economic growth rate into your super-duper exponential-growth-ifier (add as many extra increments of 0.1% to the sustained economic growth rate as your ego, steely biceps, and self-importance warrant—don't be shy here, think of these as economic vitamin pills for the betterment of the whole society).
Step 3: Presto, bingo the program soon pays for itself. Crow loudly. Why, you could even borrow NOW from such an illustrious, wealth-dripping future.
Bonus marks: And if you're really good, have the program pay for itself while cutting taxes at the same time (but don't try this at home, for professional bullshit artists only).
SF writer Harry Harrison had a character in a novel that valued all human hours - janitorial and CEO - the same, justify that system. (I'm pretty sure it was one of the later Stainless Steel Rat books.)
The character points out that the huge majority of society's wealth is actually common property - the intellectual property that starts with the lever, the wheel, and fire, going on up through metallurgy and electronics - is long past patent dates, mostly has unknown inventors.
The existing way of using that is to let anybody use it for free, not just at the time they're messing about inventing the next improvement, but forever, for generations after (say) Ford leveraged 1000 years of progress in making things out of metal and developing heat-engines, to make the Ford family rich.
Viewed that way, suddenly the notion that the 5th generation Fords owe a lot more taxes than the rest of us, as society's closest-approach to fairly charging them for use of common intellectual property, seems a lot more moral than "theft by moochers". The existing system lets Mark Zuckerberg mooch all the intellectual property he wants from everything from the development of fabric, bronze and wheat to the development of HTML, add on another 0.1% new creativity, and keep the lot.
You can invent some scheme to charge society's most-successful leveragers of our common property - physical/environmental, human-infrastructural, and IP - for the shoulders-of-giants upon which they built, or you can just use the existing "progressive taxation" system, which has tradition going for it and seems to work.
The real problem with UBI Is that it takes a *lot* of said money, and it may just not be there. It's going to take a lot of experiments and scaling-up to develop something with the positives of UBI and doesn't go broke.
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Most people don't know how the systems that support them (and that they support through taxation or paying for stuff) actually work or are structured, nor do they know the constraints on those systems; the limits where if the systems are pushed/distorted too much one way they will collapse.
Therefore most people don't know what they SHOULD want, in terms of policy or outcomes. Most people don't know what effective, beneficial changes to feasible systems would look like.
Most people just can't figure out what's really going on, what's really wrong with it, or how it could be improved without breaking everything.
Most people are therefore highly susceptible to simplistic populist messages which are utter nonsense, but put the most manipulative charismatic blowhard in power where they can rage around like a bullshitting bull in a chinashop.
We need an emphasis in education on both critical thinking and systems thinking.
Then, democracy might actually work. Right now, it's a f**king disaster. A pet monkey spinning a bottle would make better policy decisions.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
If there is a credit that averages and a 30% tax rate what is the total net tax rate? 20%.
With the the deductions, credits, brackets, etc the nominal tax rate has little to do with the actual net rate, and those are different each year, and of course different in each country. So for comparison purposes we can use the total net tax defined as "how much does the government take". In pure communism, the government takes all of it. There are no private pay checks in complete communism, all the money goes to the government. Workers get only need-based government checks, what would be the rough equivalent of welfare in the United States. The government takes all the money and does what they choose with it is a 100% tax rate
Good point about it being technically inefficient for government to direct specific revenues to specific services.
But that being said, UBI is a good idea and carbon taxes are a good idea, and we have neither, so perhaps tying them together (their amounts) is politically smart in the short run to get acceptance of them.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
not everyone deserves to go to college.
"Deserve"? So you think higher education is a reward. A reward for what, exactly?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
You left out the reptoids.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Entrepreneur Peter Barnes has called for the creation of a Sky Trust that would both limit the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and provide revenue from carbon taxes. These "carbon dividends" solve two problems at once: income inequality and climate change. He would also tax corporations for using natural resources, on the thinking that the atmosphere, minerals and fresh water around us represent a "joint inheritance." He would also tax speculative financial transactions and use of the electromagnetic spectrum.
So the idea is to monetize the air, water, and minerals around us, right? And how exactly do you realize the declared value in these 'shared assets'? By consuming them, which means the only way people get the financial benefit is by polluting/consuming precious natural resources... why that's as stupid as funding children's health care by taxing their parents for smoking known carcinogens.
Ken
Ask Finland.
http://fortune.com/2018/04/19/...
Owning a piece of land, either urban or agricultural is possibly the best start a person or family could have.
The land title system is a cornerstone to inequality, but could be re-purposed to create equality.
Go well
http://fortune.com/2018/04/19/...
Saying the problem with UBI is how to pay for it is like saying the problem with my perpetual motion waterwheel is finding a way to get the water back uphill: it glosses over the most important point.
UBI would carry a cost to society. Maybe the people would be up for bearing that cost because the program's benefits outweigh the costs, and maybe they wouldn't. If they'd make that trade then Great! They'll be up for the taxes needed to pay for it, all transparently and reliably.
It seems to me this entire writeup is about ways of hiding the costs, though. It proposes all sorts of accounting schemes to make sure the costs stay off the books where the people won't have a say in it.
That's the wrong way to go about public policy. It's both opaque to the population and inefficient in its middlemen.
So focus on getting more people convinced that UBI is a worthwhile trade. Convince them to accept higher taxes to pay for it. And then let them write their checks honestly for the program they support.
Tell Zucky that the government now owns facebook and its advertising revenue is going to the people.... since its the people that the money rightfully belongs to.... easy peasy.
[($)]
Oh wait you wanted all those programs AND UBI?! Well aren't you a silly fucker.
The truly hard part is going to get all the people currently sucking off those welfare and social programs to give up what they get in exchange for a lower amount that they have to share with all of those (young singles w/out kids) not currently qualified to receive aid.
Also if you are going to become a ward of the state, then you should have the same voting rights as any other child or mentally incompetent (none). Also if you can't score at least an 85 on an IQ test you can't get a license to have children. Think that won't happen, wait until the government becomes your only source of income. It'll be pretty easy to get that law passed.
Who cares! No-one cares! Stick to technology!
It's just so frustrating that people are so easily distracted from the real problem. All I see is hand-wringing about solving the wrong problem:
Do we need a basic living income?
Maybe, but you're getting distracted. This is a complicated solution to a simple problem.
Minimum living wage?
Again, distracted by trying to give just a little bit more to a lot of people.
More education? Will that fix it?
Of course not. How ever much education we subsidize, the rich will always pay for their kids to be in more exclusive schools for longer. But we just lost focus dealing with the issue...
How about racial eqality? BLM?
Maybe, but again, you're getting distracted. It's not the color of your skin that's got you downtrodden. It's that you're poor. There's nothing worse than identity politics to get people barking up the wrong tree.
***This is the problem***, and it's easy to solve.
WE NEED TO START BY TAKING A VERY LARGE AMOUNT OF WEALTH FROM A VERY SMALL NUMBER OF INDIVIDUALS!!! With firebrands and pitchforks if necessary.
All this hogwash about tariffs and trade deals, subsidies, creating jobs, blah blah blah... It's all just to keep our attention occupied while very froth on top of the "cream" of society is bending us all over.
I think he is drawing a distinction between fixed wealth and wealth that is tied to family size. If I get a fixed value regardless of family size I imagine they would shrink, but wouldn't the ubi scale to familiar size? Shrinking family sizes in developed countries may be the cause not the result of wealth. But even if it is not, it makes sense with a fixed amount of wealth to divide it by the smallest number of offspring if you want to take the strategy of focusing on fewer better prepared offspring instead of spray'n'pray to its extreme.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Your numbers are too optimistic. The yield on the S%P 500 is at a multi decade average of 2.2% since the 1960s. That would be the highest sustainable return to expect from the market. If you go more than that, you will have to sell the companies and reduce future income. So in order to make this work, You would need assets of approximately 300 trillion. And this refuses to consider that you are probably hamstringing the capital allocation benefits of the stock market by making the government take over the companies since investors won't want to own them because all of the profits will be diverted to the UBI leaving nothing for individual investors.
This is as close to magicking money out of thin air as it is possible to get without having a lucrative gig in Last Vegas.
While I don't disagree with the general idea of the summary, the example use (Carbon Tax) seems to be a rather poor idea.
The reason I think this isn't because I am for or against a carbon tax in general, it is because long term it isn't really sustainable. The basic premise being that a carbon tax and it's intent is to push industry at it's own rate to produce less carbon. So should it actually be successful, your tax revenues will drop, and then your fund for UBI will fall short...
Basically unless you support UBI through normal revenues (i.e. income tax more less), you need to be able to have a sustainable funding source. This could be like Denmark (or was it Norway) that has a huge resource based fund that you can literally just draw upon the dividends without impacting the pot of funds, or you need a source of reoccurring funding through a tax or a service that isn't going to diminish over time by design.
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All this article is missing, is the some reference to magically superior AI, that is going to obsolete all jobs (which, ironically, would fit perfectly - as distributing AI/automation benefits as a UBA is exactly what the author is looking for...) - just to complete the hype-laden tropes that the article is riding upon.
You don't build a new economy, by doing what the tech oligarchs exploiting everyone in todays economy, say you should do. There's a fucking reason things are the way they are, today - and a reason why these people are in the position they are, today - and benevolence plus desiring equality for all, isn't one of those reasons...
Ask yourselves: Why the fuck are these people so desperate to make us believe, that there can't be enough jobs for us all? This goes back well over a century guys, it's not new...
The way you control the workforce, the population at large, is by creating an artificial scarcity of jobs. You create a scarcity in the very means that people require in order to survive, then you have complete fucking control over them.
The UBI doesn't solve this. It masks the problem.
The way this problem is solved is by ensuring that enough jobs are always provided. It's the principal no.1 goal of economics. It's also a problem that has been completely solved long ago, yet is subject to a constant political tug of war that spans decades and generations, where the required solutions go in and out of the realm of political acceptability, in and out of the Overton Window.
The best present-day formulation of the solution, is the Job Guarantee policy - like the New Deal on steroids - it prefers that the private sector provides all the jobs required (and actually pumps-up the private sector until it does provide enough jobs), but while the private sector fails to provide enough jobs, the Job Guarantee program itself will provide the jobs, putting people to work in temporary public employment and training, e.g. on infrastructure projects and such.
I went to Google a link to the Job Guarantee description just now - a policy I've advocated for half a decade, with little success online - and I just see now that Bernie Sanders has catapulted it into the mainstream:
http://uk.businessinsider.com/...
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and its all a scam and criminals but https://steemit.com/ubi/@rudya... at least i try ... i would be very grateful if someone tells me the numbers are wrong
not the practicalities, but the numbers in experiment because for all i know
they're right
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?