1. UBI
2. LVT
3. Environmental externality taxes
That's all we need to fix the 21st century. Simple as hell so basically immune to regulatory capture, and will usher in a rate of progress we haven't seen in 100 years, if ever.
2. LVT
3. Environmental externality taxes
That's all we need to fix the 21st century. Simple as hell so basically immune to regulatory capture, and will usher in a rate of progress we haven't seen in 100 years, if ever.
I'm skeptical of UBI. The idea doesn't include any kind of automatic stabilization system to set the UBI at a sustainable level. Because UBI is not market-based, there's little information that flows into the process that sets of level of UBI and other redistribution systems. In a market system, a distributed consensus algorithm governs both wages and prices and adjusts both continuously to account for changes in scarcity and utility.
Who decides how much UBI is enough? What procedure will that person or body use? What is the algorithm that prevents UBI increasing without bound? After all, the public voting itself unsustainable transfers from the state is one of the classic failure modes of democracy.
No matter the initial level of UBI, there will be someone who's able to gain political advantage by claiming that the UBI is insufficient for a dignified existence and that human rights demand an increase. Proposing a decrease in UBI will be political suicide. What prevents UBI increasing to the point that it captures all excess value production from all of society and redistributes it evenly? Wouldn't that system be tantamount to the planned economies of the 20th century?
Except it does: land value.
This right here is the basis of geolibertarianism, which calls for a minimal government that exists solely to collect LVT and redistribute it directly as UBI. The UBI distributed should be equal to the opportunity cost externalized by private/exclusive land use. The cap would be a 100% LVT, where all land is leased from society as a whole (or more precisely, this minimal government representing said society).
So:
> Who decides how much UBI is enough?
The land market.
> What procedure will that person or body use?
The appraisal of the market value of land (sans the improvements upon it, like buildings).
> What is the algorithm that prevents UBI increasing without bound?
Supply and demand of land.
In America, in 2017, there was a group who decided that they could “vote themselves largesse from the public treasury” and it was not “voters”. The end result is referred to as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
e.g. SpaceX shouldn't be taxed on CO2 release from their Raptor engines if they are getting all their methane via the Sabatier process.
I'm not saying any of this is easy to do, but that's because politics and reform is hard. Not enough people can agree what to do != no one can know what to do.
With fields like "mechanism design" we've blurred the distinction between central planned and distributed economics too; never have we had a better menu of options.
If you want a steady-state economy, you're going to need far more reforms than this, and if you want capitalism without interest you're shit out of luck.
It's worth pointing out that the SEC banned short selling during the 2008 economic crisis, I wonder why. Not to mention that without interest bearing loans and selling debt for debt, there wouldn't have been a 2008 crisis to begin with.
The solution is less taxation, while removing the parasitic practices that underly the economy today.
Wouldn't a less punitive system of welfare properly distribute the wealth with none of the requirement to be universal?
It wouldn't by being calibrated (preferably by being indexed to a revenue source and not to inflation) to be at a level where that wouldn't occur, which is a factor of productivity and other factors.
> Wouldn't a less punitive system of welfare properly distribute the wealth with none of the requirement to be universal?
UBI is a less punitive welfare system; any retreat from universality is restoring the essence of the punitive factor which also is the driver of wasteful administrative overhead by duplicating functions already performed in the progressive income tax system.
(the others, sure, much simpler)
The downtown parking lot, for example, probably doesn't have recurring carbon costs. The gasoline people use to drive there will be more expensive from the carbon tax on oil and gasoline production, and the cement or asphalt that takes electricity to produce will be covered by the source-charge on power plants.
Doing so also likely violates any free trade agreements you've signed.
It's a hard problem, but the gains are massive, so it's worth it.
It'll be a lot easier if a set of countries do this together.
Carbon tax can be made revenue neutral and will net benefit innovative companies and/or customers buying their products.
LVT is literally taxing non-productive, limited, legally hereditary but actually “common heritage” capital. No damage there.
I’m quite opposed to UBI myself but I think there’s plenty of other ways to improve the social safety net with less opportunity of abuse, the net benefit being that people are less concerned with staying alive (low Maslow need) and free to be creative (high Maslow need).
Trying to keep society progressing without improving land use and suburbia is like trying to improve CPUs while not improving upon 1980s processes/chip density.
See https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/01/why-taxation-is-neith...
So annoying that the vast majority of Americans seem to fundamentally do not understand this. The curse of too much land.
LVT is good for state governments that don't have their own currency.
The jobs guarantee that goes with it I really don't like. It's stupid in 2020 to not be trying to reduce the total labor per person.
Sure, some infrastructure projects are really important, not profitable, and might even require the training of new labor to get it done. They should definitely still happen. But I see no good reason to hitch that to jobs guarantee.
It started out as a job guarantee, where women were given jobs as caregivers and got shifted to UBI where the women were told they didn't have to do the jobs but they'd still get the money.
They still did the jobs when they didn't have to. They said it provided them with a social network and social interactions and most importantly, with purpose.
One of the things that bugs me the most about UBI is the idea that people would rather just laze at home and do their own thing given the chance and the money to make that possible. I don't believe that's true. I think humans have a deep seated need to be part of a community, to have purpose and to leave a mark.
The new deal was a spectacular illustration of that. The people who took part in public works projects were justifiably proud of what they'd done - building bridges, art works, schools, sewers, streets and more.
The rest of your text seems to be an argument for UBI and against job guarantee. Is that first sentence what you meant?
1. a group of people were assured jobs
2. the job assurance was changed to a basic income, no need to work anymore
3. people still showed up to work
errr... seems OK to me? It proves that even if there is an UBI most people will still work. The UBI is just a safety net that assures you do not die of exposure if you get to spend some time without working (for whatever reason). Your example proves that the UBI does not really distort the job market (except for the most shitty jobs, which is alright if they disappear). Also, your example proves that the existence of an UBI does not turn people lazy.
All in all, your example is a great argument for the UBI!
This story very much demonstrates that giving people jobs helping the community rather than just money is a better option. They were both productive and happier. So much so that they didn't want to stop.
I'm sure the nature of the job probably had something to do with it. If these jobs were in call centers for debt collectors they probably would have quit en masse and been happy about it.
Fact: Productivity growth stars exceeding whole economy growth sometime in the 1970s.
Rather than a shrinking workday or mass unemployment, we get mass underemployment. What this means is no one can survive without a job so inefficient or pointless work grows rapidly, fed by the margins of the labor market. This ultimately discourages further investment, technological progress, and will lead to falling median productivity and then mean productivity.
This is extremely dangerous for society. We'll end up paupers in the ruins of our past greatness. Maybe we already have, if one looks at our infrastructure.
Basically, you can think of the lack of a UBI as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy) on the labor market.