Thomas Paine's Argument for Basic Income Explained
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Fundamentally, he's arguing that people should be compensated to allow them to reach the same standard of living as would have been possible in the absence of civilization and proposing a subsidy in the region of £1000 per annum in today's sterling to compensate. That's far closer to the Alaska Permanent Fund in both ideological underpinnings and magnitude than it is to being an adequate welfare state replacement[1]. Of course, we could speculate that he'd advocate a much higher subsidy in today's land of relative plenty, but his 1797 argument is quite explicit in suggesting that people are owed no more than the value of the life they could have enjoyed in a Native American "state of nature" and the landed classes owe no more than that.
Fortunately today we have new arguments for the economic benefits of universal education and necessity of unemployment insurance in an economy managed to ensure some level of involuntary unemployment persists.
[1]£1k per year for Paine's average 30 year adult remaining lifespan plus £1.5k at 21 is less than my government's investment in my education...
With Internet based education, society has the potential to make education virtually free since the cost of distribution is essentially zero. It's only when people need access to special equipment or more hands on lab style education where facilities and mentors will be needed.
There is still the problem of gentrification though as basic income will be the same everywhere but certain cities will be much more expensive than others. This will lead to skilled labor concentrating in geographic locations.
The more we use technology, the greater the role people become. You can see any video on the Internet, but most of them are trash and a waste of time, so you look to the producers and curators you prefer.
"Machines will make everything we want," people in your category tend to say. Yes, but who designs the clothing, and who markets it into your soul to make you feel incomplete without it? Who comes up with the recipes for your gourmet lunchtime subs? Whom do you trust to suggest one vacation locale over an other?
Also, cynically put, this kind of societal transformation will require the dominant financial and political classes to willingly bestow the world with their riches, while giving away their power. When in history has that ever happened?
You are totally right that for the most part, service oriented industries (design, marketing, etc) will remain long after those more labor and autonomous jobs have been transitioned into AI.
Let's take another example. Perhaps McDonald's goes 100% automated, and a sub shop next door adopts automations for things like cleaning, but still cooks the food by hand. Sure, it doesn't take too much to make a sandwich, but it's the personal aspect that makes it more appealing. And maybe you go there because you like chatting with the people who work there. Couldn't get the same from a machine.
I think before we get ahead of ourselves on AI we should re-read "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" and remember that the organic will always value the organic more than the inorganic.
And then you have the places where the servers think they're too good. That what they do is craftsmanship and artisan.
And at the lower end of the market, vending machine technology (including heated optimised-for-fast-food vending machine technology) has existed for many decades now, as has the production line technology to prepare most types of fast food. The McJobs are still there because fast food giants that invest heavily in researching process optimisation have continued to figure that relying mostly on minimum wage employees and using very little in the way of even basic robotics will actually generate more profit.
Quality establishments are seen as artisan because all it takes is a personal touch in a sea of robotics to feel that you're getting more than you are. I'm sure a pure price analysis of ingredients would show little differentiation (except, in MCDs case, that terrible "meat")
The "education system" isn't an education system, it is a selection system and its function is almost purely social, filtering most people out of attractive social locations. Additionally, even if the number of engineers doubled overnight, there would not be a proportional increase in firms or jobs because that is not what drives the economy - new initiatives do, and that doesn't come from education (see Schumpeter on the role of the entrepreneur.)
Further, as you admit, belief in AI is just that: belief. It is ideology and like religion has nothing to do with science, or reality.
To one man BI is to prevent starvation, to another it's not BI if it doesn't cover at least two car payments.
A 'basic' income should ideally fulfill the basic structural needs of someone living in an area.
* Adequate Shelter
* Food (possibly basic, but it should be healthy. Food does tend to work better in bulk though, so not-for-profit health kitchens are something I'd recommend)
* Health (including cleaning supplies/etc)
* Enough whatever (transit, clothing, education, etc) to get a better job.
* //basic// entertainment
In these last two points I see work uniforms, transit, probably paper/notes, and likely --basic-- computers (think Raspberry Pi 3) with Internet access (generic TV/work).
Edited: Added even more newlines
Only if it's enough to give people the freedom to walk away from their jobs is it actually meaningful, and realistically it's not going to be introduced at a level where it would.
Most people benefitting from BI wouldn't be using it to go start a business or produce fine art, they're going to sit around watching TV or procreating or finding some new imputed need to demand even more BI to cover. Harsh, yes, but fits my dismayed discoveries whenever I go out serving the poor (doesn't stop me, but does increase bitterness).
The second bit about people squandering resources has been nicely answered by Friedman in his discussion of negative income tax: it is better to have individual market participants make occasional mistakes than to suffer the greater inefficiencies of central planning [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM].
Other points made by Friedman are hilarious, especially the part about people not wanting to go to work when on basic income. It's basic. I don't know a person who wants to live in a near poverty situation.
That's not how supply and demand works. The supply elasticity of a price of bread in particular is very high because it's trivially easy to ramp up production. It's the same for most industrial goods - industrial slack (google it) means that increases in demand do not correspond to increases in price.
The price of goods and services which have a constrained supply (low elasticity goods) would go up in price to match the new level of spending. The only one I can think of that would qualify these days is land, but it would be trivially easy to throttle spending on that at the same time by raising taxes on it.
The thing is that a lot of BI advocates I read seem to be envisioning this as something that lets them do their startup or create great art thing without worrying about having to have a job. I suppose that's possible on that level of income with maybe a bit of work on the side. But it's probably a lot closer to eeking out a very spartan existence in a crappy, very low cost of living area with a lot of excess housing no one wants.
I think its not unreasonable to see UBI as something that could enable that, with sufficient growth in productivity driven by automation.
I think that its naïve to think that you can set UBI at a level now that achieves that, though. 10% of GDP can provide a lot different living standard as GDP/capita increases.
Really, most people who read HN would notice the difference of an extra 5 grand in their pocket each year, and they are on average much wealthier than the people I'm thinking of.
This figure doesn't matter much, unless a person in the US can decide to buy a loaf of bread from Kyrgystan for 25.86 Som, does it? You'd have to adjust to make a meaningful comparison with the rest of the world.
> Contrast that with really basic costs of food ($1/meal traditional diet, or $12/day Soylent ready-to-drink), housing (one 100 sq ft simple "tiny house" per person, $1-10/day), data service ($1/day), plus other comparably humble-yet-sufficient services add up to something like $5000/yr
$5,000? Come on now. This guy[1] apparently lives on $7,000, but it is quite an extreme lifestyle. And he has an RV, the cost of which he doesn't count in his expenses. And he has a garden in which he grows his own food, which we don't all have a place to put. etc. Combine that with the fact that this lifestyle won't be feasible for everyone -- some of us need more medical insurance than he pays for, for example -- and when the lifestyle fails for people they end up in the ER or prison or otherwise taxing everyone else.
I agree with your general premise, but let's not exaggerate, $5k/yr is not realistic.
[1]: http://earlyretirementextreme.com/how-i-live-on-7000-per-yea...
If you adjust for purchasing power parity, US poverty lines are all still above the median world income. Around half the world lives on less than $10000 in notional US purchasing power per annum.
Is that after adjusting for cost of living?
Sure, inflation and purchasing power parity calculations don't always work between very different societies, but if you replace that indicative £1000 sum with "sufficient to ensure you can rent enough land to put a teepee on and buy some of the basic foodstuffs you can't hunt/forage any more" which is what Paine argued civilization had cost the average person, it doesn't start to look like an adequate welfare replacement.
He does say, "That price does not include windows, door, insulation or interior furnishings. In place of a brick fireplace I have recommended a recycled steel barrel stove and stove kit from Vogelzang that would be more efficient."
Those things he is excluding will easily double the price. A wood stove costs thousands, maybe hundreds used. 8 sqft of insulation is $50. Windows are $200 each. A door the same or more. And also, 10'x15' isn't really viable for a home, even for one person, much less a family that wants a shower in the bathroom.
We also have building codes now that require a functional kitchen and bathroom which add significantly to the price of a livable structure the government won't tear down.
I think bare minimum costs to build a livable structure today, would be in the $50,000 range and the mortgage on that would be $300 per month, which would fit within my proposed living stipend of $2,000 per month per family of 4.
You'll easily pay $800 for one of these stoves, used -- in the summer. Which is why I was saying that you can just use an inflation calculator to figure out how much things cost today relative to yesterday. We have better technology, more building codes to follow, and more things to buy.
Life does cost more today than it did back then, more than inflation can account for.
All philosophizing about UBI is superfluous because it is impossible to set the level of this "income". Nobody would be satisfied with $2K per person and year; $20K would be too much for any state budget yet too little to live on.
I disagree that that the difficulty in reaching consensus on the ideal standard of living UBI should provide makes philosophizing about UBI superfluous (in fact, I think that observation is a key part of the philosophizing about UBI, and among the reasons that it should not target a particular living standard; rather, it should be tied to a particular revenue source or set of revenue sources (whether that's a resource extraction charge, a tax on capital income, a land value tax, or some combination thereof), and then simply redistributes the value of that revenue stream among the citizenry on an equal basis. It should be the kind of revenue stream such that the expectation is that with continued technological and economic development, the value (and thus the standard of living it supports) will usually increase over time.
Sometimes it is close to the ideal. The Alaskan Permanent Fund probably comes closest in the US. But that's probably not enough for a UBI and it's unclear what the equivalent at the US level would be. In addition, it's likely that anything directly associated with resource extraction would decrease over time.
Those pushing basic income and expecting it to fix many problems aren't paying attention to the fact that that's how every policy got started, as a cure-all massive policy proposal. Over the years, like object-oriented programming, we realize that in practice it isn't as ideal as we thought, and indeed we've now abstracted and complicated our systems even more.
We need a more scientific, incremental form of governance and policy-making, one that is evolutionary and takes natural organic approaches. Basic income is the exact opposite of that - a massive (the most massive) policy ever constructed which presupposes way too much.
If you want to and can test it at the state level great. States should be the "laboratories of democracy". But we need some realism about it, because far too many discussions about it are not.
I also don't see how this is "how every policy got started." There are plenty of policies that are incremental, evolutionary, and all that.
Obviously, big policy changes need to be approached very cautiously, since the potential for problems is huge. But that means you analyze and consider them carefully, not just say "nope, too big" and shut it down.
Freeing the slaves was necessary and proper, but far from immune to the original argument. We screwed it up, big time (I don't mean to start a debate over this one, I think it's fairly uncontroversial that Reconstruction failed in some regards) -- in other words, we can simultaneously argue that sometimes massive policy proposals are correct but they almost always come up short of intention. "Ending slavery" couldn't be accomplished otherwise, but that doesn't meant that it was executed well.
Ending Prohibition was the opposite of a "massive policy," as are some other popular deregulations (airlines, electromagnetic spectrum, encryption to name a few). This is the federal government deciding to stop doing something. It's not the case that anyone is arguing "the federal gov't never makes a good decision."
Popular government-led programs are usually local or laissez-faire in nature. Public school systems, for instance. Or food stamps, which are relatively simple to execute. Or Social Security. The latter two have the feature that it's the individual's choice of how to spend the money.
So national income is a good example of "welfare that isn't centrally planned," and in that regard I believe it has a chance at success. The reason I think it's possible is because you wouldn't need a panel of bureaucrats deciding how to distribute all of the welfare -- you'd simply need to distribute the debit cards or whatever.
Both establishing and ending prohibition were decisions made by the states collectively as overseers of the federal government, not decisions by the federal government; that's how the Constitutional Amendment process works.
> Popular government-led programs are usually local or laissez-faire in nature.
Social Security and Medicare seem notable counterexamples, neither is local, and neither is laissez-faire.
> Or food stamps, which are relatively simple to execute. Or Social Security. The latter two have the feature that it's the individual's choice of how to spend the money.
In both cases, I would say they aren't laissez-faire because of the fairly complex regulations determining who gets how much money; and, for food stamps, it also is not true that "it's the individual's choice of how to spend the money", as there are regulations as to what can and cannot be purchased with SNAP benefits.
Medicare and Medicaid are both a lot more laissez-faire than people realize.
40% of all Medicare patients are on Medicare Advantage plans - ie, plans that are privately managed by brand-name health insurers that sell private insurance. And this understates the number of Medicare patients who utilize private insurance in one way or another, because (a) Medicare Advantage patients represent a disproportionate amount of utilization of care by Medicare patients, and (b) some Medicare patients are eligible for dual-coverage (so they "have" Medicare, but they use a privately-purchased health plan for all of their actual medical needs).
Incidentally, to address the original argument, Medicare Advantage patients are the ones who report higher satisfaction with their health care.
You seem to be using "laissez-faire" to mean "private businesses are involved, regardless of the degree of government regulation". This is an unusual use of the term.
> 40% of all Medicare patients are on Medicare Advantage plans - ie, plans that are privately managed by brand-name health insurers that sell private insurance.
And very significantly regulated -- in who they are sold to, what they must cover, and various other things -- by the government, as well as the premiums being subsidized by the government. This is not "laissez-faire" by any normal definition.
> And this understates the number of Medicare patients who utilize private insurance in one way or another, because (a) Medicare Advantage patients represent a disproportionate amount of utilization of care by Medicare patients, and (b) some Medicare patients are eligible for dual-coverage (so they "have" Medicare, but they use a privately-purchased health plan for all of their actual medical needs).
And it overstates the degree to which any of this is "laissez-faire", because not only is Medicare Advantage in general not "laissez-faire" as discussed above, but some Medicare Advantage plans are even more regulated as Medicaid/Medicare managed care plans (Dual-Eligible Special Needs Plans) into which beneficiaries eligible for both Medicaid and Medicare are either made eligible or outright assigned into by state Medicaid rules.
Also, dual coverage does not mean they use a privately-purchased health plan for all their actual medical needs. Ignoring Medicaid/Medicare dual eligibility (where Medicare is primary and Medicaid potentially pays for costs not covered by Medicare), dual coverage with Medicare results in either Medicare being the primary payer and the other payer being secondary and potentially paying costs not covered by Medicare or Medicare being secondary to the other payer. [0] It doesn't mean either Medicare or the other plan is used exclusively.
[0] https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Coordination-of-Benefits-and-Re...
Yes, the abolition of slavery in the US is actually the perfect proof of OP's argument, that sweeping, panacea-like proposals are rarely effective in achieving the desired end-goal.
We should have executed a strategic plan for reintegrating freed slaves into society, providing them with the means to succeed and overcome the unbelievably disastrous impact that centuries of the slave trade had on their lives. This is in addition to the abolition of slavery, not instead of it.
Instead, we used a very blunt tool (the abolition of slavery) and followed it up with.... nothing[0]. Unsurprisingly, we are still feeling the effects of this massive failure today.
[0] Reconstruction, in many ways, did more harm than good, because it gave people the impression that the work had been done and 'was over', when in reality it was a band-aid sloppily placed over a gaping, septic chest wound.
Was it perfect? No. Could it have been done a lot better? Clearly. But your proposals for doing it better involve even more intervention! The original argument was that policy changes should be kept small, incremental, and evolutionary, or that they should be done at the state level.
Yes, it was 'extremely effective' if you stop the clock on Jan 2, 1863, and don't look at what actually happened in the long run afterwards. People gained some basic freedom overnight, but that's only a small piece of what needed to be done, and that remaining part... never actually happened. So while it was a success in 1863, it was not a success in 1870, or 1900, or 2000, at which point the targets for 'success' were considerably higher.
There was no plan for executing Reconstruction, no process for evaluating its success or failure, no strategy for providing the support needed to have it occur successfully. It was assumed that the initial step taken would solve all the problems, and that no additional incremental steps would need to be taken beyond that.
> But your proposals for doing it better involve even more intervention!
Yes, and in this case (abolition of slavery and the reintegration of freed slaves into society), more intervention is exactly what I'd advocate was necessary.
If so, I'm going to need something to back that up, because I don't buy it at all.
If not, and we were better off, then in what way was it "not a success"?
No, I'm saying that, 140 years after the end of slavery, "success" means more than "we no longer have 4 million people living as slaves". Success metrics aren't static; they're time-dependent, and it's not sufficient to say that what counted as "success" for a plan in 1863 is still "success" a century and a half later (or even a decade and a half later).
The comment I originally replied to was arguing against this sort of policy, not on the basis of what it proposes, but simply because it's too big and too centralized. They propose that policy-making should be incremental and evolutionary, or local.
I use the abolition of slavery as a counterexample, since it was a huge centralized policy change that was a great improvement, where incremental, evolutionary, or local changes had failed to do anything meaningful.
So unless you're saying that we'd have been better off without federal abolition of slavery, I don't see how your time-dependent "success" criteria has any bearing on this discussion. The argument I replied to wasn't that big sweeping policies need to be done right, it was that they need not to be done at all.
And I don't see why ending prohibition doesn't qualify. It's a massive new policy that was enacted nationwide. Just because that policy was eliminating an existing ban doesn't make it "not a policy."
Those are VERY different from "basic income", where a government must actively & continuously compel the productive to give up the fruits of their labors for re-distribution to whoever is legally defined as "needy" et al. Were it akin to the Biblical practice of "gleaning" (farmers don't go back to ensure absolutely everything was harvested, leaving that to the needy to scavenge), ok: (US-centric answer) basically open up BLM-managed government-owned property for temporary housing & harvesting, shooing people off yearly or so to ensure no permanent claims & abuse. But such "gleaning" solutions are immediately shot down by BI proponents, preferring solutions which demand nothing of recipients and thereby demand complete care provided by the productive.
Massive policy proposals which stop an activity are successful. Those demanding ongoing taxation etc aren't, as they're prone to growing complications & abuse.
Even something that states could conceivably implement using their powers might be made ineffectual by federal policies. For instance, a lot of what states can do are constrained by federal policy. In the case of a basic income, a lot of its value is undermined by how federal redistribution programs currently work, to the extent that even though it might be valuable as a greenfield project, doing it while federal programs exist as they do will end up being a costly boondoggle. (I'm not saying that's a point in favor of a basic income--having to throw out decrepit-but-functional legacy policies for it to work would be a big point against it--but it's a reason why people might try to push it on the federal level instead of the state level.)
It is also the same problem as to why corporations incorporate in Delaware.
When you have money your locational mobility in the USA is astronomical between the states. This means that the most business friendly states will in aggregate attract the most business, attract the growth, and attract the money no matter how unethical or immoral the laws of the state they congregate in are. It is reductionist capitalism because everything trends towards having the least, or in the case of many enterprises having a broken market where they get no regulation but new competition can be destroyed with regulatory barriers.
When you want to move business internationally, the barriers are much higher than moving within the US, especially between neighboring states. That strongly impedes individual states abilities to actually experiment with policy, because unless they conform to the established trend of business interest pandering they are liable to lose those companies that have adopted their population centers as major sources of employment.
Though that problem really never stops. The problem of inter-state policy in the US is a global problem. International companies could care less about borders, and we are seeing in realtime the gradual reduction of global policy towards appeasing corporate overlords demands (see the TPP) so they do not discard their home country like a worn pair of trousers.
I mean, consider the feasibility of going to the extreme and trying to startup actual communism in any of the largely socialist European nations. It would be immediate and catastrophic wealth flight to other nations because economics will transcend borders while politics will not. Even if the majority of people want something, the ruling class will be intimately aware that they actually hold no real power in society, because they are beholden to the drivers of economics rather than their own people to keep their economies growing.
What of the large percentage of citizens who, as a block, overwhelmingly reject it as "value" and seek to rid themselves of it? Many of our foreign friends here may not understand how absolutely essential individual liberty is to the classic American character & philosophy, the fierce opposition to being compelled (under threat of fines, incarceration, or worse) to act as strangers (being no more than equals) may decide they should beyond basic morality. That opposition to compulsion does not automatically equate to social evil, as many are charitable philanthropists - they just choose to give to others as they see fit, without the knowledge or approval of third parties whom they neither know nor approve of; those who do indeed see to it their poor neighbors have basic needs met. I don't want your "universal healthcare", and think it a waste of resources (and don't you go imputing evil just because I don't agree with you; I'd see to it others are cared for, if only the gov't would stop confiscating the value I've created).
Land, natural resources, airwaves, mineral rights, drilling rights, etc are considered common property under the proposed system. People bid for rights to them. The proceeds are then used for basic income.
There is no redistribution of wealth with what Paine is recommending. You keep 100% of the fruits of your labor.
It's not a hard project to implement you cut an identical check to every tax payer. The tax collection agency already has everyone's name and address, and has the infrastructure to cut checks, as does the welfare agency. It's really really simple. Anything beyond arguing what the check size should be, is a distraction.
[0] http://yle.fi/uutiset/kela_to_prepare_basic_income_proposal/...
It does matter that Finland has the population of Colorado because that has historically led to very different societies. You can't just ingore that. Finland's entire population is smaller than some demographics in the US.
You are correct, it is US-centric and I apologize for that. Backtracking now, a smaller nation-state such as Finland is a good place to test this.
We're on Hacker News, a website maintained by an investment firm focused on startups, created by a man (Paul Graham) who has written at length about why startups are better-positioned to tackle certain problems, address certain markets, or try radical management tactics internally, specifically due to their size[0], and the lack of overhead that larger companies use to manage their size.
I think it's a little silly to dismiss the claim that size matters as having "no merit" and "arguing for the status quo [just] for the sake of the status quo".
[0] e.g, http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html
The reason why small companies take risks is because they are not invested in the status quo and ossified. They innovate not only because the have to, but because they have a culture where it's possible to do that. The lack of innovation at large companies isn't that they've looked at the innovation and said, "No. Not for us. We'll let someone else do that." It's that they can't even see the opportunity for innovation. It's arguing for the status quo why you see the opportunity, and say "No. Not for us," which is exactly what what the grandparent was arguing.
Who pays for this? The bottom 46% of income earners already pay zero tax, and the top 10% pay almost 50%. Yes you can argue, I guess, that they should pay more but careful...at what point do you kill the golden geese?
We keep borrowing, you say? Well we are almost $20tril in debt right now and current unfunded federal liabilities are somewhat north of $200tril.
And yet inflation (the real measure of "borrowing too much") is basically below zero.
The only reason we haven't seen real inflation yet is because the dollar is the reserve currency of the world and that other countries are in even worse shape, thus we have natural inflation-resistant situation where we get to finance our debt on the backs of the world.
A) weren't the reserve currency of the world.
B) didn't have 20 or so years of no inflation.
C) didn't have legions of economists saying that massive inflation was just around the corner since ~1993 - exactly like you are now.
D) didn't use a different, equally unconvincing excuse for why they too are special.
No, that's not true.
Not even if you are just referring to federal taxes.
And not even if you are just referring to federal taxes on income (which include both the "income tax" on the "payroll tax".)
Yes of course we all pay state and local transaction taxes, but we were talking about transfer payments from the federal government to individuals.
Not only do the bottom 45% pay NO federal income tax, most already are net beneficiaries of federal outlays.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/45-of-americans-pay-no-fede...
Yes, it really just comes down to arguing about what the check size should be ... leaving a whole lotta people with a whole lotta motive to argue it should be a whole lot bigger than austerity-sized and covering little more than staple foods etc.
Wrong. (Even though, actually, in a redistributive scheme, this wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, as you don't actually need the net recipients paying in anything at all, since that just means more shuffling for the same effect.)
Yes, that's why rural electrification failed, completely and utterly /s.
However, since exclusive access rights to locations are a practical necessity, all those who are excluded must be given restitution.
This is exactly what happens in current form of capitalism due to high cost of entry into most markets. Including property markets.
Always find it amusing/perplexing that so many people's solution to this rigged system is to give even more power to the coercive half of the equation...
Our current form of capitalism (crony) is in direct opposition to free-market capitalism. The prior can not be used as a functional con of the latter. Suggesting so is entirely illogical.
I think you're perfectly allowed to define liberty that way, but there are plenty of people who wouldn't call that liberty.
Your sense of the word 'exploitation' is much too broad to be useful, imo.
The scenario being described requires people who want to use the land to purchase rights to the land. They can use the land but they don't own the land -- it's more like renting.
Any improvements upon the land are theirs 100% though.
Not sure if you read Paine's arguments but here are the important points.
1) Mankind inherited the earth and in the beginning wandered the earth as hunter and gathers. Nobody owned the land -- everyone had equal claim to it and could use it for their sustenance.
2) Governments formed and claimed monopolies on the land. They took "ownership" of the land without compensation to the original owners (everyone). This constitutes the use of force and violates the principle of non-aggression.
3) In order to make it fair, compensation must be given to the original owner. This makes it a fair transaction and is what Thomas Paine is proposing.
1) nobody owned the land 2) governments formed and took the land 3) now we need to rent our purchased land from the government?
The people are the real owners. The government is just the administrative agent acting on their behalf.
I'm not yet seeing much addressing determination of the relative value of the land: a square foot in Manhattan is extremely valuable, while a square foot most anywhere in Arizona or Wyoming (my favorite state) is practically useless. Roughly half of all land counts as "rank wilderness" which almost nobody could make use of; other land is extremely productive, some not really requiring any effort beyond simply harvesting what naturally thrives there.
That said, I tend to alternate between despising property taxes vs thinking they're about the only legitimate taxation. As said, there's a finite supply of land servicing a growing population.
Also, under the current system property tax includes the improvements on the land as well. Paine was proposing that if you build a house on the land you don't have to pay more taxes.
It's only on the land portion that you pay the "tax".
It's a similar system where people bid on the rights to spectrums of radio waves.
The foundation of liberty is the freedom to make your own decisions and exercise your own will.
If the ability to own private property was the base what happens when you are a person that does not own any property? What if, in the extreme case, a single person or entity owns all of the property and you must either serve them or starve? Is that liberty?
> The foundation of liberty is the freedom to make your own decisions and exercise your own will.
I think that is a common misconception. Liberty =/= Freedom. Absolute freedom, in fact, can be an obstruction to liberty (which I think is what your extreme example eludes to).
However, let's work through your example; how did they acquire all the property? If they did it without violating other people's property rights (i.e. voluntary exchange) than I think that would answer your question. It's kind of a non question (and I don't mean that rudely) - It just wouldn't happen. Every other person would have to give him/her all the "property" for free.
So let's say that person acquires all of the property through voluntary exchange. Ok. Now, what about the next generation who now live under that person's (or their descendant's) control of that property? They can demand anything they like (in this case their time and service) in exchange for the non-property owner's survival. Are those voluntary transactions?
While more than one person owns different parts of everything, this is essentially the situation a lot of people find themselves in...they must trade their time and service in exchange for their survival. That seems less than voluntary to me and a violation of liberty.
Granted, as you pointed out, absolute freedom cannot exist...there is a trade-off when freedoms of different entities collide. This is as true in the realm of private property as anywhere else, perhaps more so since certain people start off with so much more control, therefore choices and freedom, when it comes to property, from birth. All men are certainly not created equal when it comes to those rights.
So, the question is what has to give in the realm of private property rights in order to achieve maximum liberty (or at least approach that ideal)? Treating private property rights as sacrosanct leads to an obstruction of liberty as surely as treating any other exercise of control (IOW, freedom) would.
My point is that the free exchange of goods (property, services, etc...) in conjunction with a strong adherence to private property rights is the least problematic method of allocating "property". It's the least problematic in terms of making sure "property" or resources are used for their most "effective" use as well as the least problematic in terms of maximum liberty for the individual (and therefore the collective).
Yet, that is what is how things are currently trending if you change one person to one group.
When you own the means to produce what others need for their survival you can exchange those consumables for more production capacity -- the one side gets things that are valuable for a short time and fade to zero value and the other side gets things that increase in value or produce more value over time. It is a virtuous/vicious spiral (depending on what side of the equation you are on).
So, not all property is created equal either.
This essay advocates a pension system, not basic income. The one-time payout at 21 is negligible in comparison with the annual payments after 50.
Living Stipend
tax/share 0.01
Population 320,000,000
NYSE 802,026,511,675 8,020,265,116.75
Forex 5,300,000,000,000 53,000,000,000.00
CBOE 1,274,776,218 12,747,762.18
Nasdaq 671,175,892,500 6,711,758,925.00
$67,744,771,803.93 TOTAL REVENUE
OIL 6,970,000,000 10 69,700,000,000
FIN SERVICES 1,260,000,000,000 15% 189,000,000,000
TECH 606,000,000,000 15% 90,900,000,000
Entertainment 546,000,000,000 15% 81,900,000,000
PROFESSIONAL Services 1,500,000,000,000 15% 225,000,000,000
2,263.26 STIPEND PER PERSON PER YEAR
To explain the numbers above, $10/barrel for oil, a penny per share traded on the major stock exchanges. 15% tax on services, which aren't taxed. Why aren't we taxing lawyer fees for example or computer consulting services or massages? Of course we can take those numbers up a bit or down a bit in the appropriate areas, but we need about 10x that I think to really give people food and shelter security.
I'm really shooting for $2,000 per month per household. I think there is a place somewhere in the country that any family could live on that amount of money and feed their families. Of course this would be adjusted based on family size and the numbers above are per person. An individual could survive on $1,000 per month I think and a family of 3 or 4 could survive on $2,000 per month if they do it right. If they don't they can get a job to supplement income. If they want to work more, they can do that too.
Sorry for the formatting. I'm pasting from Excel.
The income tax on those professionals is the closest thing we have now, but blue collar workers pay that too and the products they make have a sales tax at the other end on top of their income tax.
Fed government currently gets about 3 trillion in revenue. So we'd have to increase by 50% to cover shortfall (or cut spending).
Some ideas here: https://medium.com/working-life/why-should-we-support-the-id...
http://www.cbpp.org/research/policy-basics-where-do-our-fede...