You're quite clear on the oppressive government point in that quote
Yes. The point is that you caricatured my position by saying "you yourself claimed that it's presence in the Federation alone justifies your characterization of said Federation as a dystopian hellscape" when, in fact, I said "You brought up the Law of Jante, and that simply provides additional support for my thesis about the government".
There's actually some pretty significant footage of numerous non-Federation worlds, and none of them are nearly as rich as the Federation proper.
Yes, kind of like East Germany was the richest and freest country behind the iron curtain, and communist propagandists simply ignored the rest. The fact that in Star Trek, humanity is surrounded by military dictatorships, failed communist states, crony capitalist empires, Borg, and a smattering of omnipotent beings only means that it is slightly less bad than the rest of that crappy galaxy. Nor is that a particularly unusual state: oppressive, statist, poverty-stricken regimes are the default for societies.
The Ferengi have a free market system,
No, they don't. The Ferengi are a Marxist caricature of capitalism, with a bit of anti-Semitism thrown in for good measure. In fact, many of the Ferengi storylines show that the Ferengi government has massive power to intervene in markets, and that government officials use it regularly for their own personal benefit.
And you keep calling it unrealistic, without actually supporting that argument. Assuming replicators, transporters, and some sort of national health system the only thing that hasn't been paid for is housing. And in a universe where 40% of the human race has moved to the stars, and the rest isn't obsessed with a suburban McMansion it's not exactly impossible to figure that out.
And as I keep pointing out: your problem is not that that description is wrong, your problem is that you think that that amounts to an advanced and wealthy civilization. That's because you look at 24th century society like a medieval peasant would have looked at East Germany. Actually, it's even worse, because you rarely even see ordinary life in the 24th century, mostly you see is the lives of a privileged and powerful human elite.
In any case, if you want to understand why economic freedom is necessary (though not sufficient) for political and individual freedom, a good place to start is von Mises' "Human Action".
Like Mr. Clinton and Carter before him, the democrats have confirmed that the party is not nearly so "liberal" as the weenies like to think.
I used to be one of those voters: socially liberal and fiscally conservative, and I did vote for Democrats. However, Hillary is unreliable on social liberalism and most of the social liberalism I care about is law anyway. On the other hand, god only knows what Hillary would do on the economy; the only thing that is certain about her is that she is going to use her job to enrich herself. I don't know what I'm going to do in November; the one thing I'm certain about is that I do not want Hillary to become president.
Not at all. There are always people depending for their survival on charity or welfare or "entitlements", sometimes through no fault of their own. That's a given. What AC and I are pointing out is that calling that situation "freedom" is ludicrous. AC called it a "gilded cage", although it's usually not even gilded.
And if someone cannot provide this, he's supposed to starve to death, I assume?
Not at all. But if you cannot provide value to your fellow human beings and failed to prepare for that situation (by saving and insurance), you necessarily rely on charity and you logically always lose your freedom to choose.
You are aware that the fraction of people accepting this fate without instead trying to kill you and take what's yours is rather low, yes?
The fraction of people who end up in that situation is exceedingly small in societies in which people understand that the only way to actually have freedom is to contribute value to society and save for a rainy day. Societies where large numbers of people don't understand that end violently no matter what.
And what you want is the freedom to choose whether you want to have a home or whether you want to eat.
You get housing and food if and only if you do something productive, something that your fellow Americans value enough that they are willing to pay your for it.
You give 40+ hours of your week away to corporate bosses, just so you can feed yourself.
More than half of American workers are either self-employed or work for a small, privately-held business. The Fortune 500 and government employ about the same percentage of the US labor force, about 17%.
If you work as a corporate "wage slave", that's your own choice, and perhaps your own lack of skills. The majority of Americans don't even work for "corporate bosses", and most of those who do probably do so by choice.
Dude, the Law of Jante is in effect in multiple European countries, and you yourself claimed that it's presence in the Federation alone justifies your characterization of said Federation as a dystopian hellscape.
Don't put words in my mouth. What I said was You brought up the Law of Jante, and that simply provides additional support for my thesis about the government: an oppressive social structure and culture like that would naturally produce an oppressive government.
As for secret police, you compared the Federation to East Germany. Compalining I brought up secret police when you brought up a country that is known primarily for having the Stasi is a bit rich.
What I did was compare you to a medieval peasant visiting East Germany. That is, I'm pointing out that what may seem like liberty and wealth to you may in fact be oppression and poverty in a contemporary context.
BTW, have you watched it? At all? Because everyone agrees that the Federation is the richest society in the galaxy.
Yes, and what I'm trying to get across to you is that taking Star Trek as any kind of realistic post-capitalist, post-scarcity, egalitarian scenario is complete folly; real economies and political systems don't work like that. It's like looking at "Cheers" or "Sex and the City" and assuming that that is a depiction of life in the US. What Star Trek is showing you is the lives and adventures of a privileged elite.
So, out of 19,700,000 search hits on Campaign spending effectiveness, you selected... three. Great. You have 19,699,997 left to read. When you've read those, get back to me.
I don't have any "left to read": the science and data on this is clear and settled.
You, however, have three papers to read and understand. If you have problems understanding those papers, feel free to ask questions.
Yes, you can have capital gains resulting purely from inflation, but if you're only keeping up with inflation, you're doing very badly.
Also, the point is that you are again computing taxes incorrectly. The fact that capital gains taxes include taxes on inflation also means that they are significantly higher than their nominal percentage. So, if the nominal capital gains rate and the nominal income tax rate were the same, then capital gains would in fact be taxed much higher than income due to its taxation of inflation. That is only one of many ways in which your arguments don't make any sense.
I'm not making any assumption. You're making the erroneous assumption that the sum of those numbers is somehow relevant.
Not at all. As I was saying: "the two taxes have simply nothing to do with one another".
I was simply additionally explaining to you that even if you erroneously believe that unearned and earned income ought to be taxed the same, you are calculating it wrong.
Yes, you can have capital gains resulting purely from inflation, but if you're only keeping up with inflation, you're doing very badly.
No, you still don't understand: capital gains taxes can result in more than 100% taxation even if your investments are doing better than inflation.
Not everything the Nazis did was wrong or bad. For example, the Nazis created a road system that was the inspiration for our interstate highway system.
The Nazis also provided free education, free health care, government retirement plans, created jobs, nationalized many industries, prohibited unearned income and speculation, and created massive public works projects, including the Autobahn. I have no doubt that you like most of their economic and social programs, as they were quite similar to modern progressives. You simply and erroneously believe that these policies you like can be separated from the totalitarian and genocidal policies the Nazis also had, when they are in fact closely linked.
That entire paragraph is basically nothing more than an ad hominem.
An ad hominem would be "you're wrong because you're a Nazi"; what I said (roughly) is "you're a Nazi because you're wrong'.
No, such an interpretation is just not plausible.
Well, that's your opinion, not a fact.
Every purchase you make produces a significant and far-reaching economic impact. All of those workers have jobs because you (and others) bought that product. Any belief that consumption doesn't create jobs would require an almost complete disconnect from reality.
Sure, consumer spending has an "economic impact" and it makes GDP and employment numbers look good. But it doesn't actually produce anything of value. If I pay you $1000 to do some useless task, I'm $1000 poorer and you're $1000 richer, the GDP has gone up, but nothing of value has been produced.
It has worked every time anyone has tried it, from Roosevelt to Obama. If that's not enough proof that my economic theories are correct, then you'll never be convinced, which is shame, because you'll still be wrong.
If you consider Obama's piss-poor economic performance (decreased labor participation rates, stagnating middle class, massive increase in government debt) "working", then I certainly want no part of that. Oh, and Hitler also tried it and you can see how that turned out economically.
The US is a place who thinks getting 270KW out of a 6.2L V8 is good. Europe (and Japan) can get that out of a 2L turbo these days.... Also remember that European cars are very popular in the US. How often do you see a BMW X5, Audi Q7 or the latest Rangie?
That is indeed true. And you can figure out these choices when you recognize that BMW, Audi, and similar cars are status symbols: they are supposed to look expensive, feel expensive, and have high end specs, while minimizing displacement (=taxable), maximizing fuel economy, and minimizing size and weight to fit into dainty European garages. That BMW X-5 can tow 5952 pounds and starts at $54000, a pretty poor showing.
Something like an F350 with the low end 6.2l V8 starts at about $33000 and can tow 19000 pounds; the engine that delivers that power is fairly simple and sturdy. Displacement isn't taxed in the US and fuel economy simply doesn't matter to many Americans. But the ability to haul boats, trailers, ATVs, horses, and other stuff does. Note that Ford sells a 6.8l V10 with even lower hp than the 6.2l V8; I leave it as an exercise for you to figure out why.
The US can't break the back of Germany's industrial base especially when it comes to cars because throughout the EU [car companies and their associated unions are in bed with European governments]
FTFY
because throughout the EU American cars are basically thought of as a bit shit [because Europeans are gullible nationalists]
FTFY
(For what it's worth, I think the best cars in the world are made in Japan at this point.)
The people who are pissed off by Google in Europe are these astroturfers. They are trying to protect their stranglehold on European media and public opinion, plus the politicians they have in their pockets.
Capital gains in the U.S. are taxed at a lower percentage rate than earned income. The government is effectively giving a partial exemption for taxes earned via capital gains. I guess "discount" would be a better word. Either way, you get the point.
You're making the erroneous assumption that the capital gains tax is the tax on the return on an investment, but that's wrong. The tax on the return on an investment is the sum of the capital gains tax and the taxes on corporate profits, which are already higher than income tax rates in the US. But it gets worse, since capital gains taxes also tax inflation. Therefore, taxes on returns on investment ("unearned income") are already higher than taxes on labor ("earned income") in the US. Even if your premise were right, there is no reason why returns on investments should be taxed the same as regular income; the two taxes have simply nothing to do with one another. It's like saying that there is some great imperative that gasoline and cigarettes should be taxed at the same rate.
(What I also find disturbing about the whole discussion about "unearned income" is that this was a key part of Nazi ideology and the Nazi party program; it was the association of Jews with banking and investments that was a key part of the genocidal antisemitism of the Nazis. And people like Piketty, Clinton, and Sanders are right in that tradition.)
That's simply not correct. Every study that has ever evaluated the economic impact of changes to capital gains tax rates has found that raising or lowering the capital gains tax rate has had essentially zero impact on the actual rate of investment. Now I know that's going to sound shocking to a lot of people, but that's pure, hard, fact based on real-world numbers evaluated on both sides of various capital gains tax rate changes.
That argument doesn't work because we are not dealing with independent variables. For example, you could interpret the same data to mean that government simply keeps adjusting the capital gains rates in order to maintain a constant level of investment. There are many other interpretations. Your "facts" are naive fictions.
You'd pretty much have to be an idiot to say, "I'm only getting 8% ROI instead of 10%, so I'm not going to invest."
That argument doesn't work for multiple reasons, and I'm not going to list all of them. The simplest, though, is that return and risk are related, so going from a 10% to an 8% ROI may make an investment completely infeasible. Another one is that investors (as well as workers) don't just maximize profits, they make tradeoffs between profits and many other factors. To make that concrete, when you raise my taxes from 30% to 40%, I may well choose to work less because at the new tax rate, I have better things to do with my time than work.
Now perhaps if you got to the point where taxes approached 100%,
That point is easily approached even at current capital gains taxes, since the combination of capital gains, corporate taxes, and inflation already often means that a positive return before taxes may result in a negative return after taxes.
you might get to the point where the rich would choose to spend the money rather than investing it. However, that would not actually be bad for the economy, because putting money into the economy by buying stuff is roughly functionally equivalent to investing it.
Wrong again. When I buy something for consumption, it produces no value to society, it merely produces enjoyment; when I invest something, I forego that enjoyment in order to achieve a later return. The raw profit the investment returns is exactly the value the investment produced for society.
Keynes and others have made arguments about government intervention and consumer spending being good for the economy, but those arguments apply only under unusual economic circ
How would you feel about making 6 figures and having to move from a nice 2 bedroom into a crappy studio to keep living where you do?
I know exactly what it feels like, which is why I oppose these policies.
The problem with too many armchair politicians is they don't consider the real world impact of policies like this
Quite right: that is exactly what armchair politicians do when they impose rent control, rental restrictions, and other rules that discourage the construction of more rental housing.
That's just not true. The ability to accumulate wealth is only possible because of a strong government. Without a functioning police force, a military to defend the country, etc., it is basically impossible to accumulate wealth in any long-term-sustainable fashion
Yes, some specific government activities are justified and beneficial, among them military spending (about $2000/person) and police force (paid from local property taxes). That observation doesn't amount to an endorsement of "strong government", taking away people's property for arbitrary purposes, or socialism.
Taking away the capital gains tax exemption for high-income earners doesn't prevent people from accumulating wealth.
WTF are you talking about? What "capital gains tax exemption" are "high-income earners" supposed to have?
Furthermore, the higher you crank up capital gains taxes, the less inclined people are to invest in the economy. Where are companies going to get the capital from to grow, expand, and hire new workers?
The unlimited ability to accumulate personal property and wealth is fundamentally contrary to everyone else's opportunities to advance. The greater the divide between the wealthy and the poor, the more the poor invariably become subjugated to the point where their advancement is impossible.
That's utter bullshit. And even your premise were true, it wouldn't mean that taxing the rich and redistributing the money would improve anything.
Your toilet cleaners, your bus drivers, your grocery-store clerks, your drivers. A high-end district still needs those people -- are they supposed to earn not only pennies, but then have to pay for public transport for three hours a day to get from their low-rent neighborhood to the one they work at?
They live wherever it makes sense for them to live, and they get paid whatever it makes sense for them to get paid in order to live where they need to live.
Yes, why not? You want to police people to see if they're spending it "right"? That's why we have so many problems with welfare programs now, and why welfare has high administration costs.
We already have that in effect, with the EITC. What improvements does UBI or NIT bring compared to EITC?
If we really had the political will to reform our social safety net, we could do it like Germany did, which is to consolidate our entire welfare system into a simple means-tested cash program, together with case worker supervision and a requirement to take jobs that the government finds for you. That system was introduced by the moderate left in Germany, and it has worked well.
Of course, why would we even bother? When you count government assistance, there is very little poverty in the US. While welfare is a big chunk of money and an ugly-as-sin behemoth, social security, Medicare/Medicaid, and ACA are far bigger problems.
Of course, there, too, we could learn a lesson from Europe, where governments have figured out long ago that the only way to finance a social safety net is to impose high taxes on the middle class. It's only snake oil salesmen like Clinton and Sanders that pretend we can finance this stuff by only taxing the rich.
They didn't escape to the West to accumulate wealth... They escaped so they could live free lives without the fear of their neighbors or government. Money is probably one of the last reasons they'd leave
They, unlike you, recognized that the ability to accumulate wealth and living free lives without the fear of government are one and the same thing.
Without the ability to accumulate personal property, you and your children are completely dependent for your housing, transportation, food, healthcare, retirement, education, and protection on the government; that means that if some government functionary doesn't like you, they don't have to send the secret police to beat you up, they simply kick you out of your home, don't allow your kids to attend university, take away your car, don't let you travel on public transportation, etc.
You can't punish the politicians, because contributions to PACS are legal.
You and others are proposing to make PACs illegal and restrict corporate speech; that is, you are proposing to "punish" a large number of people by taking away their free speech rights, even though most corporations behave responsibly, and even though it is politicians that let themselves be corrupted.
I'm saying that is the wrong approach. What we should do is change the laws so that politicians are restricted in what they can do: politicians shouldn't be allowed to earn millions of dollars on the side, or get cushy jobs in private industry, or sit on boards, or create billion dollar foundations. There is no need to restrict the free speech rights of others, when it is politicians that are at fault.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes. The point is that you caricatured my position by saying "you yourself claimed that it's presence in the Federation alone justifies your characterization of said Federation as a dystopian hellscape" when, in fact, I said "You brought up the Law of Jante, and that simply provides additional support for my thesis about the government".
Yes, kind of like East Germany was the richest and freest country behind the iron curtain, and communist propagandists simply ignored the rest. The fact that in Star Trek, humanity is surrounded by military dictatorships, failed communist states, crony capitalist empires, Borg, and a smattering of omnipotent beings only means that it is slightly less bad than the rest of that crappy galaxy. Nor is that a particularly unusual state: oppressive, statist, poverty-stricken regimes are the default for societies.
No, they don't. The Ferengi are a Marxist caricature of capitalism, with a bit of anti-Semitism thrown in for good measure. In fact, many of the Ferengi storylines show that the Ferengi government has massive power to intervene in markets, and that government officials use it regularly for their own personal benefit.
And as I keep pointing out: your problem is not that that description is wrong, your problem is that you think that that amounts to an advanced and wealthy civilization. That's because you look at 24th century society like a medieval peasant would have looked at East Germany. Actually, it's even worse, because you rarely even see ordinary life in the 24th century, mostly you see is the lives of a privileged and powerful human elite.
In any case, if you want to understand why economic freedom is necessary (though not sufficient) for political and individual freedom, a good place to start is von Mises' "Human Action".
I used to be one of those voters: socially liberal and fiscally conservative, and I did vote for Democrats. However, Hillary is unreliable on social liberalism and most of the social liberalism I care about is law anyway. On the other hand, god only knows what Hillary would do on the economy; the only thing that is certain about her is that she is going to use her job to enrich herself. I don't know what I'm going to do in November; the one thing I'm certain about is that I do not want Hillary to become president.
Not at all. There are always people depending for their survival on charity or welfare or "entitlements", sometimes through no fault of their own. That's a given. What AC and I are pointing out is that calling that situation "freedom" is ludicrous. AC called it a "gilded cage", although it's usually not even gilded.
Not at all. But if you cannot provide value to your fellow human beings and failed to prepare for that situation (by saving and insurance), you necessarily rely on charity and you logically always lose your freedom to choose.
The fraction of people who end up in that situation is exceedingly small in societies in which people understand that the only way to actually have freedom is to contribute value to society and save for a rainy day. Societies where large numbers of people don't understand that end violently no matter what.
You get housing and food if and only if you do something productive, something that your fellow Americans value enough that they are willing to pay your for it.
More than half of American workers are either self-employed or work for a small, privately-held business. The Fortune 500 and government employ about the same percentage of the US labor force, about 17%.
If you work as a corporate "wage slave", that's your own choice, and perhaps your own lack of skills. The majority of Americans don't even work for "corporate bosses", and most of those who do probably do so by choice.
You don't need to 3D print a finger to fabricate a fingerprint, a simple laser printer is enough:
http://www.instructables.com/i...
Don't put words in my mouth. What I said was You brought up the Law of Jante, and that simply provides additional support for my thesis about the government: an oppressive social structure and culture like that would naturally produce an oppressive government.
What I did was compare you to a medieval peasant visiting East Germany. That is, I'm pointing out that what may seem like liberty and wealth to you may in fact be oppression and poverty in a contemporary context.
Yes, and what I'm trying to get across to you is that taking Star Trek as any kind of realistic post-capitalist, post-scarcity, egalitarian scenario is complete folly; real economies and political systems don't work like that. It's like looking at "Cheers" or "Sex and the City" and assuming that that is a depiction of life in the US. What Star Trek is showing you is the lives and adventures of a privileged elite.
There is a 95% chance that safety specialists just made up those numbers out of thin air.
Not if the laser is strong enough :-)
I don't have any "left to read": the science and data on this is clear and settled.
You, however, have three papers to read and understand. If you have problems understanding those papers, feel free to ask questions.
Also, the point is that you are again computing taxes incorrectly. The fact that capital gains taxes include taxes on inflation also means that they are significantly higher than their nominal percentage. So, if the nominal capital gains rate and the nominal income tax rate were the same, then capital gains would in fact be taxed much higher than income due to its taxation of inflation. That is only one of many ways in which your arguments don't make any sense.
Not at all. As I was saying: "the two taxes have simply nothing to do with one another".
I was simply additionally explaining to you that even if you erroneously believe that unearned and earned income ought to be taxed the same, you are calculating it wrong.
No, you still don't understand: capital gains taxes can result in more than 100% taxation even if your investments are doing better than inflation.
The Nazis also provided free education, free health care, government retirement plans, created jobs, nationalized many industries, prohibited unearned income and speculation, and created massive public works projects, including the Autobahn. I have no doubt that you like most of their economic and social programs, as they were quite similar to modern progressives. You simply and erroneously believe that these policies you like can be separated from the totalitarian and genocidal policies the Nazis also had, when they are in fact closely linked.
An ad hominem would be "you're wrong because you're a Nazi"; what I said (roughly) is "you're a Nazi because you're wrong'.
Well, that's your opinion, not a fact.
Sure, consumer spending has an "economic impact" and it makes GDP and employment numbers look good. But it doesn't actually produce anything of value. If I pay you $1000 to do some useless task, I'm $1000 poorer and you're $1000 richer, the GDP has gone up, but nothing of value has been produced.
If you consider Obama's piss-poor economic performance (decreased labor participation rates, stagnating middle class, massive increase in government debt) "working", then I certainly want no part of that. Oh, and Hitler also tried it and you can see how that turned out economically.
That is indeed true. And you can figure out these choices when you recognize that BMW, Audi, and similar cars are status symbols: they are supposed to look expensive, feel expensive, and have high end specs, while minimizing displacement (=taxable), maximizing fuel economy, and minimizing size and weight to fit into dainty European garages. That BMW X-5 can tow 5952 pounds and starts at $54000, a pretty poor showing.
Something like an F350 with the low end 6.2l V8 starts at about $33000 and can tow 19000 pounds; the engine that delivers that power is fairly simple and sturdy. Displacement isn't taxed in the US and fuel economy simply doesn't matter to many Americans. But the ability to haul boats, trailers, ATVs, horses, and other stuff does. Note that Ford sells a 6.8l V10 with even lower hp than the 6.2l V8; I leave it as an exercise for you to figure out why.
FTFY
FTFY
(For what it's worth, I think the best cars in the world are made in Japan at this point.)
The people who are pissed off by Google in Europe are these astroturfers. They are trying to protect their stranglehold on European media and public opinion, plus the politicians they have in their pockets.
You're making the erroneous assumption that the capital gains tax is the tax on the return on an investment, but that's wrong. The tax on the return on an investment is the sum of the capital gains tax and the taxes on corporate profits, which are already higher than income tax rates in the US. But it gets worse, since capital gains taxes also tax inflation. Therefore, taxes on returns on investment ("unearned income") are already higher than taxes on labor ("earned income") in the US. Even if your premise were right, there is no reason why returns on investments should be taxed the same as regular income; the two taxes have simply nothing to do with one another. It's like saying that there is some great imperative that gasoline and cigarettes should be taxed at the same rate.
(What I also find disturbing about the whole discussion about "unearned income" is that this was a key part of Nazi ideology and the Nazi party program; it was the association of Jews with banking and investments that was a key part of the genocidal antisemitism of the Nazis. And people like Piketty, Clinton, and Sanders are right in that tradition.)
That argument doesn't work because we are not dealing with independent variables. For example, you could interpret the same data to mean that government simply keeps adjusting the capital gains rates in order to maintain a constant level of investment. There are many other interpretations. Your "facts" are naive fictions.
That argument doesn't work for multiple reasons, and I'm not going to list all of them. The simplest, though, is that return and risk are related, so going from a 10% to an 8% ROI may make an investment completely infeasible. Another one is that investors (as well as workers) don't just maximize profits, they make tradeoffs between profits and many other factors. To make that concrete, when you raise my taxes from 30% to 40%, I may well choose to work less because at the new tax rate, I have better things to do with my time than work.
That point is easily approached even at current capital gains taxes, since the combination of capital gains, corporate taxes, and inflation already often means that a positive return before taxes may result in a negative return after taxes.
Wrong again. When I buy something for consumption, it produces no value to society, it merely produces enjoyment; when I invest something, I forego that enjoyment in order to achieve a later return. The raw profit the investment returns is exactly the value the investment produced for society.
Keynes and others have made arguments about government intervention and consumer spending being good for the economy, but those arguments apply only under unusual economic circ
I know exactly what it feels like, which is why I oppose these policies.
Quite right: that is exactly what armchair politicians do when they impose rent control, rental restrictions, and other rules that discourage the construction of more rental housing.
Yes, some specific government activities are justified and beneficial, among them military spending (about $2000/person) and police force (paid from local property taxes). That observation doesn't amount to an endorsement of "strong government", taking away people's property for arbitrary purposes, or socialism.
WTF are you talking about? What "capital gains tax exemption" are "high-income earners" supposed to have?
Furthermore, the higher you crank up capital gains taxes, the less inclined people are to invest in the economy. Where are companies going to get the capital from to grow, expand, and hire new workers?
That's utter bullshit. And even your premise were true, it wouldn't mean that taxing the rich and redistributing the money would improve anything.
That is kind of implied by calling corporate donations to campaigns a "loophole".
Well, what can I say, you're a fool, and one that gives corrupt politicians a pass.
Are you incapable of using Google?
http://freakonomics.com/2012/0...
http://journals.cambridge.org/...
http://www.jstor.org/stable/21...
They live wherever it makes sense for them to live, and they get paid whatever it makes sense for them to get paid in order to live where they need to live.
We already have that in effect, with the EITC. What improvements does UBI or NIT bring compared to EITC?
If we really had the political will to reform our social safety net, we could do it like Germany did, which is to consolidate our entire welfare system into a simple means-tested cash program, together with case worker supervision and a requirement to take jobs that the government finds for you. That system was introduced by the moderate left in Germany, and it has worked well.
Of course, why would we even bother? When you count government assistance, there is very little poverty in the US. While welfare is a big chunk of money and an ugly-as-sin behemoth, social security, Medicare/Medicaid, and ACA are far bigger problems.
Of course, there, too, we could learn a lesson from Europe, where governments have figured out long ago that the only way to finance a social safety net is to impose high taxes on the middle class. It's only snake oil salesmen like Clinton and Sanders that pretend we can finance this stuff by only taxing the rich.
They, unlike you, recognized that the ability to accumulate wealth and living free lives without the fear of government are one and the same thing.
Without the ability to accumulate personal property, you and your children are completely dependent for your housing, transportation, food, healthcare, retirement, education, and protection on the government; that means that if some government functionary doesn't like you, they don't have to send the secret police to beat you up, they simply kick you out of your home, don't allow your kids to attend university, take away your car, don't let you travel on public transportation, etc.
You and others are proposing to make PACs illegal and restrict corporate speech; that is, you are proposing to "punish" a large number of people by taking away their free speech rights, even though most corporations behave responsibly, and even though it is politicians that let themselves be corrupted.
I'm saying that is the wrong approach. What we should do is change the laws so that politicians are restricted in what they can do: politicians shouldn't be allowed to earn millions of dollars on the side, or get cushy jobs in private industry, or sit on boards, or create billion dollar foundations. There is no need to restrict the free speech rights of others, when it is politicians that are at fault.