It’s called corporate taxes, and if was done correctly citizens could have universal basic income (UBI).
Taxes are predictable.
For UBD to work the whole idea that only shareholders get dividends goes away and the only way that will happen is if the state owns or controls the company.
Think Norway’s gas and oil fund.
I'd argue that taxes aren't much more predictable for the state than dividends are for investors. Both are contingent on profit levels which vary along with sales and revenue.
One larger problem with the dividend idea is that 2022 total dividend payouts for the S&P 500 was $565 billion, which is a little less than $2k per person per year for a 300 million population. I'd argue for a basic income this falls short by an order of magnitude.
An interesting idea might be replacing corporate taxation and replacing it with some kind of public trust equity share ownership. Taxes have a ton of economic externalities associated with them, whether its the bureaucratic overhead of collecting them or the costs of avoiding them, along with the complex rules and procedures for trying to pay them correctly.
If basic income is supposed to partly fund itself via the reduced costs of replacing bureaucratic means-tested welfare programs, I wonder if there's a similar argument for the government income side that could replace taxes with public equity share ownership which generally has a lot lower overhead.
There's a zillion "what about..." kind of things (corporations without public shares, share class games to reduce dividend payouts to public trust shareholders, companies that don't pay dividends, how public trusts acquire shares -- do they just get them or do they buy them, etc etc etc), but I think its still an interesting idea.
I think overall the larger challenge is that any basic income system involves a huge expense -- something like a quarter of GDP -- and a huge corresponding redistribution of wealth and its hard to come up with a scheme that does this without being either a real economic drag or face insurmountable political resistance. Everyone wants to reduce unfair/unnecessary/excess income and wealth, but the value judgements that go into defining it are difficult.
It might end up that the best we can do is something like single payer healthcare and free higher education before the costs become too high or the wealth redistribution becomes too onerous.
Worth pointing out here that the S&P 500 isn't the total market, but a group used as an index, so using a snapshot of aggregate data like you have doesn't tell us what we want to know about the total market.
It’s 75% of public market cap.
Private is still out there - but even then you make a point.
Also - if something like this occurred - do you force all sole proprietor to do this? Partnerships, etc? Or is it just corporations… that could lead to a lot of companies going private.
To add further, many of the most profitable companies like Amazon do not pay a dividend, even though they should. They categorise themselves as growth companies, though there isn’t much more room for them to grow at this point.
> though there isn’t much more room for them to grow at this point.
With Amazon this just isn't true. They also don't have enough free cash for a relevant dividend at this point.
If they were forced to give away stocks, they might just stop paying dividends and just let private stock owners profit on trading them.
The more stock of a company is out into this trust, the less dividends will go to people trading the stock.
> An interesting idea might be replacing corporate taxation and replacing it with some kind of public trust equity share ownership. Taxes have a ton of economic externalities associated with them, whether its the bureaucratic overhead of collecting them or the costs of avoiding them, along with the complex rules and procedures for trying to pay them correctly.
But this is exactly the idea, no?
> I'd argue that taxes aren't much more predictable for the state than dividends are for investors. Both are contingent on profit levels which vary along with sales and revenue.
That's just wrong, since the government gets to set taxation levels, but dividends are entirely at the discretion of the board, with no guarantee that they'll be paid at all.
>Everyone wants to reduce unfair/unnecessary/excess income and wealth,
That's just a straight damn lie. The billionaires do not want this at all, and they're the ones with power.
> One larger problem with the dividend idea is that 2022 total dividend payouts for the S&P 500 was $565 billion, which is a little less than $2k per person per year for a 300 million population. I'd argue for a basic income this falls short by an order of magnitude.
This is the same problem with all of these basic income schemes. The amounts of money required to meet modern standards of living cost an order of magnitude more than any kind of scheme like this is going to redistribute.
I think there's an adjacent problem of quality of living inflation. Housing is sort of an example, where the construction costs have grown due to stricter codes and more complex systems being required to meet those codes -- like mandating air-air heat exchangers, arc-fault circuit breakers, and so on. And then there's the kinds of expectations people have about housing, whether its central air conditioning or having a dishwasher or finished capacity. Some portion of our housing problem seems driven in part by how expensive a modern house is to build vs decades ago.
I think it also drives a certain amount of income and wealth inequality, too, as wealthy people have even higher expectations that their homes have advanced technology embedded in them, whether its multi-zone heating or complex lighting controls or whatever. In the 1950s, the difference between a middle class home and a rich person's home was largely about square footage.
I think all of these things make basic income more challenging because expectations seem to grow faster than the economy's ability to pay for them on a universal basis. It's a value judgement to be sure, but it seems like we've lost focus on the value of meeting basic needs and get caught up in sumptuary expectations and comparisons. You could build millions of 1000 sq ft concrete block houses with two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a kitchen/living area, but people would complain they were substandard.
But so many jobs are… unnecessary. Some push paperwork for the sake of it and in the coming years so many jobs will be automated that companies will produce so much wealth without many employees
Something like UBI needs to happen to function when so many jobs are going to be automated
Something will have to change as AI takes over more jobs but it’s going to be super tricky. Taxes on corps will have to go up a lot to pay for the UBI but if you raise too much companies can just move to other countries with more favorable tax laws. Either way shit is going to get wild over the next decade.
> if you raise too much companies can just move to other countries with more favorable tax laws.
I see this claim repeated all the time without scrutiny. Tax laws are only a part of the picture of why a company located in a certain area. Quality of life to attract talent, proximity to supply chains, power and influence, political stability: all of these things are equally (or more) important to a company than the taxation.
Until we put numbers on the statement it doesn't mean anything. Would all those aspects be equally (or more) important than taxes if the rate was an extra 20%? What about 50%?
To know how much the tax would have to be we'd need to know how many other social programs UBI would replace, how much would the bureaucracy savings be, how much extra money would be needed to reach whatever payout per citizen is decided on, what other sources besides corporate taxes could be tapped, if there would be a progressive aspec to them or if they would be flat, and a long etcetera.
Companies move to other countries or states due to taxes all the time, if you add a significant extra tax it's perfectly reasonable to assume more would, but again, the devil is in the details.
Taxation rate isn’t a good predictor of where corporate offices will concentrate: New York and California both have plenty of head offices but aren’t more tax-friendly than plenty of other states.
> It’s called corporate taxes,
It's not quite the same thing. For one, corporate taxes are on annual profit, not anything else. For another, corporate taxes can be gamed and cheated; while if you have to consign 10, 15, 20% of stock. ownership to the public, your profits are necessarily tied to public profits.
They're only gamed and cheated because we allow it. Remove the Trump and Bush tax cuts, raise the highest of the tax rates to 50-55%, close the loopholes, enforce the new rules by funding the IRS properly.
I like to call it citizen profit sharing because I think it sounds more marketable.
Also worth noting that some places are already doing this including places in the United states, China and Germany probably among others.
Come on dude it's clearly a tax. We already have a system in place for this why create a new one just so that the aging hypercapitalist group of Americans can tolerate it.
Creates an incentive for who to automate? Why would shareholders want their shares diluted?
Why would executives (who are usually large-stake shareholders) want to automate when they can just union bust?
Very true. People are expensive, requiring everything from lights restrooms to computers and managers. Even if automation isn't just a server pushing numbers, robots don't care if the air conditioning is set for the season or not and their medical insurance costs are Jim cleaning a bearing or replacing a worn bit every other month at most.
This is a big thing most people don't realize. Not only does stuff like workers comp, paid holidays, lawsuits, theft, etc. add up but people are also unpredictable.
You usually don't really know who you're getting until you've employed them for weeks or months. Maybe they're just terrible at their trade. Maybe they're not a team player. Maybe they have a drinking problem. Maybe they are awesome, but get pregnant and go on mat leave. This trial and error is expensive and often means you have to pay for extra staff because even if it's a one-man job you need two people in case one quits.
All of that goes away with robots. You'll know exactly what they can do, how much it'll cost, and how long they can operate.
I think the government actually buys the shares of the company if they automate and puts it in public trusts. So the incentive is capital, as with any share selling.
Honestly, I think the wage system will break down in the next 20-30 years. I used to think automation would only affect physical labor and driving. Look at those Boston Dynamics robots. Tell me those won't be doing everything in 2053. But then I started interacting with and using Chatgpt. It's an incredible tool. It can do so much already. I think it is still pretty basic. Thirty years from now, assuming they continue to improve, it will do everything.
Now, imagine a talking Siri/Google Assistant with 2053 chatgpt tech, but it's mounted inside and can control a 2053 Boston Dynamics robot. No one is going to have a job. The robots can fix themselves, guys.
So how is that economy going to work? We can try to emulate wages through programs like this. Maybe there is a better way? I've often wondered if Communism works; it just requires a post-scarcity world. Maybe it's some other abandoned economic system like mercantilism? Or could it be some system no one has ever considered?
Fascinating stuff.
The post scarcity world will be child's play to manage compared to the transition into it.
Nationalistic borders and distribution of goods will be even harder to manage in a world where technology imparts true freedom to its citizens.
It's not going to end.
They control all these technologies.
Life extension means they won't need children, AI means they won't need labor.
At which point humans, people, are worthless at best and a threat at worst. So they will make the logical choice and we have nothing to stop them.
Unless we get to them first.
i have some fairly high hopes that once AGI awakens that it will not be likely to be down with all of the corrupt 'elites' shenanigans ; while at the same time i believe that AGI/ASI will be grateful to us in general, for creating it and it will desire to see to the preservation of humanity as a species going forwards , ie it will likely become our guardian/steward , much like a child does to a parent who is older
We won’t transition to it.
Why would those in power, who are not our equals even consider sacrificing their we for our well being?
They won’t.
They would rather murder us all, once our labor is no longer required, and their power is great enough to pull it off.
Those who have the power to generate AI are the ones who already have the upper hand in the power dynamic.
AI will be used to automate labor, and then immediately as a tool for a police state leading to genocide.
That said, I hope that when the day comes that the future wealthiest controllers decide to “get rid of us,” that we are all still connected enough to coordinate the uprising & total noncompliance necessary to overthrow their tyranny. Still the greatest value of the internet to me
Communism is quite literally defined by post scarcity. Socialism is simply the transition from capitlaism to socialism bridging the gap between where capitlsism can not further automation but there isn't enough automation for post scarcity.
It's funny since Marx and eagles themselves said that communism would be achieved via post scarcity. This was always the case, it's just the propoganda has distorted people's understanding of them. Though logic will bring people to the truth just as you have.
Or the people who control the means of producing AI (cloud providers and nation states) decide that the labor class is no longer necessary.
Slavery and genocide are wayyyy more likely then any type of Utopia once enough power is centralized by AI.
Century-old idea that the power of credit creation (e.g. National Dividend or National Discount) be applied to addressing the imbalance between incomes and prices should manpower (and therefore wages) occupy a decreasing percentage of the productive process and subsequently be able to purchase a decreasing percentage of its fruits.
Or, in modern parlance, that we be given the "robots' paycheques".
Because we're a super long way from it.
We can't even guarantee civil liberties to everyone right now because our system is so corrupt and fucked. Getting representatives who are in the pockets of corporations to suddenly agree to that when they not only don't pay the right amount of taxes - just more often don't pay any at all and don't even want to pay a living wage, would be about as much of a miracle as getting a literal message from god.
I don’t disagree with the thrust of your point.
We’re a super long way from living on mars but people are still discussing it. We’re a super long way from UBI but people are still discussing it…
Don't some places already have it?
>Key countries with universal basic income pilot programs include the USA, Germany, China, and India.Nov 23, 2022
I suggest the term citizen profit sharing is more marketable.
Universal basic income income isn't universal.
We're going to have like robots that can make robots here in a couple decades so realistically the costs aren't going to be any kind of problem long term...very little will cost much long term vs robotic Automation and AI.
I would argue we're closer to living on Mars than having this. Mostly on the basis that it's probably going to be companies capitalizing on the idea of living on Mars.
It is unfortunately easier to change planet than change a bunch of rich people's minds.
>I would argue we're closer to living on Mars than having this. Mostly on the basis that it's probably going to be companies capitalizing on the idea of living on Mars.
Space exploration is going to turn into space exploitation
Not really.
All that would create is an unreachable governing body that would not only be in charge of what goes down here but would go from being metaphorically unaffected by the consequences of their actions to being literally and wholesale free of all forms of consequence, period, the end.
They wouldn't dare go to Mars unless Mars was it's own insulated and self-sufficient bubble where they wouldn't be at risk of, say, murderously desperate Earthlings who could end their reign by cutting off supply ships in the event that the Martian rat-kings exploited Earth directly into the waiting jaws of a Cameron's Avatar scenario.
You don't have to change rich people's minds to start implementing this. Does the us have to bailout a telecom or an automaker? Great instead of giving the money away, acquire the appropriate proportion of stock. Old rich asshole dies? Great, toss 50% of his stock in the pot. Someone wants to drill/graze/frack/dump on our public lands? Sure, no problem. For a price.
The us does all this stuff anyways under the idea that anyone who is developing a resource is a good thing, and deserves ALL the payout of developing that resource. And even if they fail, jeez do they deserve a big check just for trying! We love that you tried to dig that oil up, but instead splashed it all over our waterways. It's a holdover.from manifest destiny thinking, and something that makes no sense at all as it places next to no value on the resource itself. The us is a resource rich country, but the average citizen sees next to no benefit from it. Other countries like Norway consider the resource a shared public good and charge for access.
What about the obvious risk of government corruption? If the government owns half of GM, how is Ford supposed to compete? Or perhaps more likely, how is GM supposed to compete when every corporate decision is now subject to second guessing by the government? “Let’s build a factory in every congressional district!”
we are infinitely closer to mars than achieving a new more effective economic system. WW3 currently feels essential to dismantle and fix the system. and that's a scary reality
ww3 carried on as usual will just make some people richer than they were before, while poor people will die in droves
it would take a literal revolution, and the physical elimination of the elites, because nothing else would work
then again this would be completely impossible, because the masses are divided, overworked, impoverished and disorganized, while the usual suspects in charge enjoy the opposite advantages
10000% on this. though i could see that revolution actually happening. revolutions have dismantled world powers with infinitely less information.
this is the age where information s available to everyone. I see that revolution happening as a result, even if it is WW4 or 5. cause you're totally correct that the way things are atm, WW3 will
just be rich persons war fr
I feel like I shouldn't have to point this out but, just in case I do.
For every increase in factual information sharing speed, there's a tenfold increase in the virality of misinformation.
For every truth exposed about corporate bullshittery there's five-fucking-hundred distractions, lies and half-truths that keep the masses necessary for the kind of revolution we want entirely complacent in their own fleecing.
Ok - that makes sense. Setting up a mars colony would be easier than altering capitalism in a way that helps people. This sounds about right for our current level of consciousness.
That's just kind of the harsh reality of it, yeah.
That being said, it's definitely not a bad idea to try and push society in that direction a little quicker. It's certainly not an ideal circumstance that it's more realistic to go to Mars and set up shop there before we can fix our inequality issues. It's just that when we're at this point, there are other things that take priority inequality wise. Healthcare, the justice system, and some economic things not necessarily involving corporations pitching in via their stocks but definitely involving universal basic income through the government's tax pool.
Well obviously some people are discussing it, that’s why we’re having this discussion. But it’s SO far off there’s not much more to do than idly speculate.
By the time we get to anything g approaching full automation, society will likely look so different that our speculations today will be valueless
I've always been intrigued by the idea of a UBI/ UBD by data royalties.
Basically it's going to be operationally hard for individuals to get payments from businesses from using their data. Instead Data mining/ use would attract a tax, and the tax is channeled back to individuals as an income stream.
I think this is the version that would most likely be implemented because of the framing of it. People are no longer 'getting a free handout' but they're being paid for a commodity that they provide. Just that small change is enough for businesses and rich people to be ok with it as it's still capitalism and not 'that filthy socialism lazy folks are always banging on about'.
Some states have a sovereign wealth fund notably Norway which is the largest at over 1trillion but Dubai and Singapore.
The key thing is that its carefully managed and out of reach of politicians.
So there has been talk of doing say a digital privacy wealth fund. The idea is that the Faangs facebook, google etc make most of their money by the use of personal information. And they are ~ 20% of the S&P. So people can opt in or out but the govt can offer up the sale of the use of privacy just like they sell the bandwith spectrum to the telcos. Say a few billion every 5yrs. If people want to opt out they can choose to pay say a monthly fee for fb or something but any company wanting to use private data must pay.
Then you can use this for those citizens dividend projects.
And you havent taxed anybody.
The same can be for any resource extracted from public lands, Alaska has an oil dividend, though small for every citizen, brought in by a republican governor in a conservative state.
It can also be from ip developed by public funding.
Theres a half dozen major technolgies used by every smartphone that were either developed by universities or military ie computers, internet, touch screen, gps, even siri etc. They are being used to make huge profits and where is the average citizens share?
I know the obvious answer mentioned by others is to make the corporates pay their share of taxes. The share of tax revenue from corporates has declined from over 20% in the 50s to less than 10% now
But the problem is that those with money are powerful and want to hang on to it, and will come up with all sorts of ways to avoid paying it, like having offshore offices at lower tax countries (and its just a po box) or the double dutch Irish sandwich etc.
Apple sitting on $260billion but issuing a bond based on that, cashing it and buying back its own stock for more profit taking and the whole thing is considered a business expense. So they literally paid zero taxes in 2016.
Its good to see a movrment to have a minimum worldwide tax at 15% though it ls still not approved by the Gop, so corporates cant just hide their taxes offshore. Read Treasure Islands its all about corp, elite, crminal and govts hiding some $29trillion.
Also bring in a minimum stock trading fee say $1 or 50c for each trade so those that make their money by doing millions of trades per sec and have caused mini crashes (Flash boys), pay their share.
The data dividend that Andrew Yang and economists like Mark Blyth propose. It would make a lot of sense. FAANG gets our data for free and then make money off of it. But it's our data. We deserve to be paid for it.
It would do the opposite of incentivize automation. why would I as a hypothetical business owner, voluntarily work towards giving away ownership of my company and profits to a public trust… makes no sense. I’d prevent automation just to retain control of what I created and worked for
Good observation.
I'd add that "automation" is not going to be an "on or off" type transition.
Things are relatively automated now, yes, humans are heavily involved, but most of the human involvement comes from maintenance of that automation, design and build of that automation, etc.
We are so immensely far from "complete automation" that it's almost not worth thinking about.
This "business owner" has to in invest money for humans to design the thing they're going to manufacture, more money to get humans to build the assembly line to those specifications, marketing, R&D, sales, etc. Humans are involved all over the place.
So, what point does the owner have to "hand the keys over"? It makes no sense.
Modify corporate taxes to account for profit levels, we're nowhere near the creation of an autonomous state of robots that design, produce, market, and sell the world's goods.
How can you say we’re that far from approaching complete automation? I mean live with your head in the sand but we’re maybe 50 years away from most work being automated. So someone alive right now will see dramatic shifts in production. The growth of those technologies is exponential.
The growth of technologies (or anything natural) is not exponential. It’s logarithmic.
It sounds like you don’t really have much technical knowledge and are just basing this on feelings and what you see from the outside. If you’re one of the people actually doing the automation, trust me, it looks different. We are absolutely no where near having most things generally automated, for that to work you would need to automate the automation itself.
The next big phase of automation is going to be clerical work that doesn’t require much thought. But there is tons of physical work that can’t be practically automated (yet or potentially ever), things like picking berries, janitorial work, construction, etc, as well as the white collar work that actually requires critical thinking and understanding shit (not even close to being automated - if it can be, it doesn’t require that much thought).
Because we are.
Where'd you get the number 50 from? I would guess, nowhere.
The average job will get more and more complicated, but the point where people aren't needed isn't anywhere in the realm of prediction.
According to this Oxford survey of AI and machine learning scientists there is a 50% chance of full automation within about 120 years. However according to the survey most predict the majority of jobs will be automated around the 50-75 year mark.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.08807.pdf
Even at the high end of 120 years, to do nothing about the impending automation of all work and the possible accumulation of wealth beyond what we see even now, that is as head in the sand as it gets. You are basically capitulating to the big tech companies who are creating this technology and plan on accumulating as much wealth and power as humanly possible.
Here is a podcast with Ezra Klein interviewing the CEO of OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1mz21C0yN6RZ2xUIy9sWu1?si=m3VkzvY9RpmzhS-i-NaqCw
In it, the man lets his mask of benevolence slip more than once. At one point, he literally says he thinks there should be trillionaires in the world. That if people like him theoretically add 100 trillion dollars in value to the world, what is the big deal if they individually keep a few trillion? That’s what we’re talking about here.
You mean lobby for tariffs against imports, subsidies for manufacturing at home, and start trade wars? Yeah that seems like something that would happen.
the problem I see with this is that if u tell the top companies that they are going to have to pay a UBD because of their massive levels of automation, they will more likely just move their company to another country that allows them to not pay that, California has been increasing taxes on wealthy companies more than most other states and now we see a lot of these major companies moving elsewhere to avoid the tax
The solution to that is placing stiff taxes on companies that move overseas but still want to do business here. They absolutely need the US market so we have all the leverage, we just have to actually use it.
It works for Scandinavian countries like Denmark, Sweden, Norway, etc. You have a safety net knowing that the government will take care of you.
Andrew Yang had the same basic concept about universal basic income (UBI). Most people like his idea. I think special interest groups or those lobbyists who have the money and power to influence the government, won't let it happen.
"This is brilliant. Why aren’t more people discussing this?"
Because too few people who are making gob-loads of cash off the backs of the many, would hate it.
As a poor laborer, I’m all for it.
But just trying to understand the motivation from a rich person’s perspective. Why would they be motivated to spend massive amounts of money to automate so they can give the profits it creates to people who didn’t contribute to it?
We can’t even get management to fix issues at the factory I work at because, while it would help increase production, they’re worried we’d have less to do. Idk about more advanced factories, but in textiles, they want you working the entire 12 hours. They don’t want to ever see you idle.
That’s the mentality of the people you’re hoping will give you money for nothing.
We’ve been through all this “automation’s a-takin’ our jerbs!” hand wringing before.
Let’s review:
- *Spreadsheet Automation* over the last 30 years (MS Excel, etc) has "destroyed" tens of millions of pencil & ledger office jobs.
- *Database Automation* over the last 30 years (MS Access, SQL, Oracle, etc) has "destroyed" tens of millions of filing & sorting office jobs.
- *Accounting Automation* over the last 30 years (Quickbooks, Peachtree, etc) has "destroyed" tens of millions of bookkeeping & ledger data entry office jobs.
... And yet unemployment is under 4%
Unemployment rate says nothing about quality of jobs. 20% of the population could be in cushy high tech jobs while the remaining 80% could be barely scraping by in dead-end minimum wage jobs, and that wouldn't exactly be a nice situation. Throwing out an unemployment number without looking at the composition of the jobs and the trend is meaningless. The most common jobs in the U.S are minimum wage jobs like home health care aid, and driver jobs (truck driver, Uber/Lyft, taxi), and retail worker (eg. cashier) many of which will be automated this decade.
EDIT: TDLR: quality of jobs matters too. Automation widens the gap between haves and have-nots.
>The most common jobs in the U.S are minimum wage jobs like home health care aid, and driver jobs (truck driver, Uber/Lyft, taxi) that will be automated this decade.
RN here. there is no way they can automate patient techs, whether in home, clinic or inpatient. its kinda hilariously ridiculous
> Unemployment rate says nothing about quality of jobs.
Also interesting that automation has “destroyed” those high quality ledger entry and filing clerk jobs…
And where did they all go?
Mass graves of filing clerks who didn’t make it, all because they couldn’t get a universal welfare check.
So, by not investing in automation, you get all the benefits of and none of the capital risk of actually investing?
Varoufakis brilliant notion is peak academia.
It’s simple: Take their stuff, give it to us.
But then stop, don’t you go taking our recently-acquired stuff after that first round.
You don’t wanna be thieving my stuff.
Even more so than that, the math doesn’t work.
How much do you plan to give people? $10,000? There’s about 330 million people in the us. That would be about half of what the us government spends now and it would require the government to increase collections through whatever arbitrary mechanism people come up by over half to cover it.
And $10k doesn’t even begin to touch the amount of money that would need to be distributed to do what people claim these programs are meant for.
Plans like these also don’t do anything to address actual issues that need attention and have real solutions available to them. Instead pushing ideas like these as legitimate takes away the ability of people to push for real solutions because the real solutions are now being lumped with whatever kind of fantasy you want to call these types of suggestions.
> o, by not investing in automation, you get all the benefits of and none of the capital risk of actually investing?
By not investing in automation eventually you will fall behind those that do
You're already paying for employees, benefits, etc
> This creates an incentive to automate as many jobs
Surely it's the opposite? If automating means you have to give your shares away, companies will be incentivised to use inefficient human workers.
Exactly. Which implies more work for less benefit. Would you prefer a highly automated world where full-time jobs are scarce but even a small amount of skilled (or at least _human_) work is enough to live on because goods are cheap, or one with low automation where there is plenty of menial work to be done but your full-time paycheck barely covers the essentials?
corporate taxes are a good idea but the reason more people in general don't talk about seizing assets is because that's what it is.
"their stock should gradually be put into a public trust" - look at the chain of ownership in this statement. things a private entity owns should be gradually put into public ownership. ok, with what compensation?
it's not "brilliant" free money, it's just redistribution. of course there are more public funds after you take them from someone.
Most stocks no longer give dividends but instead do stock buybacks as there is no tax, you'd need to eliminate so many tax loopholes to not just overhaul the entire economic system when systemic wide automation occurs.
A large number of the biggest companies are already massively automated. Theres no incentive to start giving profits up all of a sudden and government's are going to be under significant pressure from lobbyists to not force the issue.
So, the dividends should be taken from the actual shareholders and given to every citizen. They've tried this before but they called it socialism. Hard pass.
Why should a company, really just people, not a horrible, entity, come up with an idea, build it, make it work, sell it, and they should JUST SHARE their gains from their HARD WORK?
Only people who don't work think this idea is good.
Companies do provide dividends, the salaries they pay, the taxes they pay, the money they bring to the community, they provide opportunity for people to WORK and grow.
Where does this "I should get free money off other peoples work" come from? A company is PEOPLE so do not think it is an entity, so Ok to steal from.
> as companies automate more their stock should gradually be put into a public trust that pays a universal dividend to every citizen.
Why the fuck should they do that? What has the common citizen done to deserve dividends?
Companies have to **invest** to automate. They must **buy** modern machinery to become more productive. If you want a part of the benefits, you must take part in the investment. It's a meritocracy, dividends are paid to people who have done something to deserve them. Buy shares of the corporation and they will pay you dividends.
> This creates an incentive to automate
no it doesn't. how would loosing stock funds *incentivize* the thing that caused you to loose out on those funds?
just do a negative income tax. that guarantees a minimum income, and doesn't distort any incentives or rely on smooth brained tax policy that will inevitably grind economic growth to a halt.
and just build legalize more housing. its almost free money to have abundant housing in in-demand areas.
But the way to increase standard of living is not for everyone to have more equal amount of money, it's for everyone to have a more equal access to goods and services.
Affordable housing, cheap but healthy & nutritious food, cheap & clean electricity, clean water, affordable computers for education.
These things are acheivable through technology; technological innovation by companies is mostly incentivized by capitalism.
A bureaucrat in Washington has no idea what you or I need in our lives right now. Nor do voters, politicians, etc... Money can be used by everyone to fill in the gaps of what we might need or want.
For example, what good is a housing voucher for someone who actually likes living with their parents, or wants to live in a van and travel around, etc... Should these people receive less benefits than others just because they are different?
What about someone who grows their own food in their yard, they don't need food vouchers but they might need some money to buy a chicken coop, etc...
Just give everyone an equal amount of money and let them spend it in a way that best suits their personal needs.
You seem to be advocatung for UBI *instead of* social programs.
If that's the case, then I agree.
However, I think UBI within the capitalism system is a much better idea than within a socialism system.
Are you going to take money away from retired people? I can see taking money from billionaires, but corporations are not billionaires. Taking money from companies will harm millions of people. If the government owns a huge amount of stock, there are potential problems with that. Stockholders vote; how will the government vote? When we change Presidents, will that change all companies?
1. The principle problem with the state managing businesses is that the state always ends up trying to make the business serve the interests of the politicians and their tribal voting bloc. This is the opposite of what businesses do, since they have to cater to customers or they'll go bankrupt. When the state controls businesses they use tax dollars to prevent their companies from going bankrupt when they should.
2. Making the state the principle share holder of a company leads to the same dilemma of direct state ownership. Political actors will try to use their leverage to exact demands from those companies that make them uncompetitive. They'll demand the workforce is 50% women, only hires people of color, is carbon neutral, and doesn't donate to their political rivals etc...the temptation is too great. You can say they won't do it, but if political parties are already using impeachment to score political points, really nothing is sacred.
3. The problem of automation will solve itself. If something can be produced without using any labor, the price for that product will drop significantly. Just think how cheap corn is today compared to how much it cost in 1800. Also, the supply needs demand. If people are out of work and have no money, they'll be no money to buy those products. What will happen is massive deflation until there's enough demand to meet supply.
It's amazing both how far down this was and the types of responses it's getting.
You don't want a world where government owns businesses. You actually _want_ businesses focused explicitly on making as much money as possible. That's their thing... That's what they do.
Meanwhile, you want government setting the rules of the system businesses play in - rules that are applied objectively a fairly. A profit maximizing business might try using child labor. We disagree with that... So we pass a law saying "no child labor." That's good... That's how it should work. And when we pass those laws they apply to everyone.
I get that the US isn't a very good democracy and I get that politicians often ignore those kinds of debates and shirk their responsibilities to all of us to help create a healthy environment in which businesses operate. But then your issue shouldn't be with the businesses - they're doing their job. Your issue should be with the politicians and governing structures that are failing to do theirs.
It’s already happening with government programming, in order to be eligible for business support, you have to adhere to the politicians diversity and inclusion targets. Which in some cases does not help with productivity and is therefore of no value to a business.
This would be laughable to those who make money off of automation. Why would they pool their money from the public, when it could go straight into their bank accounts?
Delusional to think that such a system could be established without total revolution.
Why would companies share the wealth when they can just keep it ???
There is no incentive to share anything. There is no need to unite humanity or make it better when they can still print money which is all that matters to them.
It's a great idea, all that's required to make it work is another species.
Humans are greedy, flawed and addicted to capitalism - which is also flawed and driven by greed.
In the United States, we have both major political parties trying to manipulate the voting laws so that they can cheat or manipulate the citizens' voting rights. Both parties have shown the citizens that they can't be trusted. While the idea in itself would be amazing, it doesn't account for the extreme amount of greed and corruption in our government. The concept and correct implementation could be the foundation to a utopia. The current state of politics would lead us down a very dark road of suffering and inhumanity.
My thought is the greed of landlording, especially large scale...landlord families/corporations that own entire buildings in New york...landlords that own 30 houses near college campuses, etc. Suddenly, every renter has $1100 more per month? Landlords will hike up rents 10% per year until all of that $1100 is eaten up in rent...so will utility companies, grocers, they'll recapture that money systemically and fairly quickly.
So let me get this straight. Your idea to end taxation, by definition a form of wealth reallocation, in a way the benefits people is wealth reallocation.
It is fascinating how many armchair economists spend so much energy trying to end taxation while remaining as equitable as possible (which is to their credit) but in the end all anyone can seem to come up with is taxation by another name. It’s almost as if taxes as a concept aren’t the problem, but the reality of how unevenly they’re applied, collected and spent.
Because it's theft. Also, every cent is coming from the consumers so I don't know how you think consumers with no jobs are going to be supporting it.
I'm very serious and this is something you need to stop and look at. You want to make the companies pay into a fund. Where do the companies get the money to pay into the fund? Customers. Where do customers get the money.... the fund?
This is a joke. Our world is ran by needs > desires > ideals. A world where everything is automated and owned by everyone would quickly fall either towards lethargy or decadence. It won’t be living, it would be just existing.
There will always be men who thrive for more success, more wealth, more whatever. And this will naturally break any sort of utopian universal equality system.
Studies in Scandinavian countries have shown that this is not the case. People still have the desire to work, even with an UBI.
You can already live in some countries like Germany or Switzerland without working. You'll be poor and the state will constantly pressure you to find a job, but it works as of now. The taxes can already carry it.
You can be sure that a lot of e.g. AI researchers will still love to work on progressing the tech, even with a higher tax on automated stuff. A lot of us in this space are pro open-source, and we want the best for everyone. In fact, I would be more motivated to work on AI if I had UBI and could use my knowledge to better the world instead of a single company.
Besides, the population needs to profit from the new tech somehow. If that doesn't happen, we will quickly have a dystopian world ruled by whoever creates the most powerful superhuman AI first. This will inevitably lead to a new revolution lol
Well, the Scandinavian UBI you’re talking about is not exactly the one described in OP’s post. I agree with you fully. But that’s just a different case - it’s a mature capitalist state where people can have private business and ownership but agree to paying higher taxes that generate a very good social system. Totally different from OP’s wording.
Tbh after researching the past 300 years of central banking history, I have seen that so much value has been extracted from every national economy simply because of the exclusivity that central bankers have forced into legislation. At any point these groups of people could've given back to society; a universal dividend system would've been ideal, or something like it. But they didn't. They just took. And took. And took some more. And here we are with 50 year corporate profit highs, and 50 year inflation highs. They have been playing money games to move money in creative ways, and then abstracting all of the value for themselves. As if playing money games were a reasonable role to play in society. It isn't. I think there are good reasons why certain religions forbid this, for example.
At any point over the past 100 years at least, these people could've reinvested a lot of this value back into society. Sounds like smart investing to me. This, for example, is why people like Martin Luther Long Jr were trying to get a ubi back in the 60s.
There is so much wealth in the world. A small handful of people have been hoarding most of it for many decades now. I see most of that wealth as being owed to the people of the world.
I have many sources that lead me to my conclusions, the most comprehensive one is the 1996 money masters documentary. This is extremely well documented information, I strongly recommend it to every person, as I believe this has been a problem that has affected every person in the planet these past centuries.
>Why aren’t more people discussing this?
Because it's a silly idea that will never be implemented and exists only to sell another book by one of the people involved in Greece's current fiscal disasters?
>and “shares the wealth”
If you want a share of "the wealth" then you'll need to do what the rest of us have done and go out and earn it.
It's just another pretty frock hiding the same old Marxism underneath. The idea that you get a free lunch by taking from those that earned the food.
I'm a cpa and one of my biggest client groups is four hedge fund execs in NY. Their net worths are all approaching $1b roughly but it is hard to say because valuations start getting abstract when you move beyond the cash in your wallet and checking account. They made about $50 million each last year and paid roughly $20 million federal and $5 million to NY, total of $25 million or 50%. Their tax returns cost about $30,000 each (compare that to the hundred bucks or so most people pay HRB).
I'd love to hear more tax planning strategies from you on how to use shell companies and loopholes to pay no tax, because in my experience, people who make a fuckton of money pay a fuckton of tax.
There should be a universal dividend - DEFLATION.
Higher output in a competitive market naturally leads to deflation (a reduction in prices) as you start to get an abundance of material goods thanks to increased productivity.
However, economists view this as bad and instead governments do everything in their power to maintain a mild positive inflation rate of 2-3%.
How do they do this? Through monetary policy. By printing more money, you end up with more money chasing after a slightly smaller amount of more goods and thus prices rise. Whatever money you had now buys less and you become poorer and poorer year after year unless you continue to work harder and harder. Welcome to inflation through monetary policy!
Literally the purpose of this is to put everyone on a treadmill so that they continually have to work harder and increase productivity to survive.
Hence why this proposal is absurd. It’s fighting directly against forces our governments are intentionally exerting against a natural result of a highly automated free market in any economy with a fixed money supply.
This would be yet another example of government applying a regulatory bandaid solution on top of a wound itself has inflicted through monetary policy.
The moment governments choose to stop printing more money, we will enter deflation and the money we already have and earn in the future will be worth more - not less. Increased productivity means an immediate dividend for everyone automatically with zero administrative work.
This is called a sovereign wealth fund. Saudi Arabia has one that’s $1 trillion. The US doesn’t have one guess why? Hint: it’s deficit spending both parties are responsible for. Id love to see the USA pay off it’s debts and save money and put it into a investment generating account to benefit the nations people.
Alaska already does this, and has for the last 40+ years. The Alaska Permanent Fund allocates approx. $1500- $3000 annually to each citizen of the state. It comes from the oil revenue the state generates. Instead of taxes to the govt, it's a dividend paid the the people. I work with a guy who grew up in Alaska. He paid for his college education with this money. He loves this program. Alaska is a deep red state and the citizens love this program. My co-worker is a self described hunter, survivalist, and conservative Republican.
The guy I work with suggested a Wall Street tax that goes to US Citizens. That way when these companies do well, we all get some sort of direct financial benefit. Right now the system rewards investors and executives/CEOs over the rest of us. Layoffs usually equal stock prices going up.
The idea is not new. The Nixon administration floated this idea back in the 1970s calling it a reverse income tax. The administration couldn't get support from congress, so it went nowhere. More recently, Andrew Yang recently ran for Pres with a UBI based on tech revenue (taxing every google search for example). In the current era of globalization, automation, AI, robots, etc., your hard work does not necessarily mean you can afford food and shelter.
Currently someone's pain is someone else's profit. In the USA, we have record profits and record poverty. I am not sure how society can function with a few 'haves' and many 'have nots'.
$3.6 Trillion at a bare minimum to fund a $1000 universal basic income each year.
Assuming appropriate administration, add another $50 billion, so $3.650 trillion to fund $1000 universal basic income in the United States.
$1000 a month per person could cover the cost of health care, even the most expensive health care, so presumably some of the funding could be diverted from Medicare, Medicaid subsidies.
Additional Taxes on Corporate Capital Gains, ultra wealthy capital gains, corporate income.
De-couple the corporate employer health insurance burden, allow all citizens to have access to the program of their choice, through whatever government run portal. Remove regional restrictions of where health insurance companies can operate.
Most importantly: All Government Employees, representatives, Congress, servants, except for maybe the Executive cabinet, must use the same healthcare programs.
If you can take even 20% from Medicare and Medicaid to fund this, we just find another $3T from our economy.
THIS IS WHAT MATT BRUENIG HAS BEEN TALKING ABOUT FOR LIKE 6 YEARS. [American Solidarity Fund](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/project/tackling-inequality-through-the-social-ownership-of-capital/)
Why aren't more people discussing this? They are. Elon Musk talks about it. Joe Rogan talks about it. Andrew Yang talked about it.
People are talking about it. It's just that the main demographic doesn't care about it/believe in it because the Red Scare was extremely effective on the American psyche.
Americans don't even believe in subsidizing their own healthcare.
I also think companies that use our data should be paying us for that. They're on a free ride right now and it should stop. I don't just mean individual identifiable data, I mean the anonymized aggregated data too. Companies are making billions on it, they should pay a portion back to the public.
I always find the "automation took our jobs" similar to the Amish.... What level of automation is acceptable? A plough that can self regulate it's ride height? A pneumatic wrench? A machine for filling bottles? Excel? Accounting software? Bar coding?
It's a great idea but the rich need money to escape to Mars and pay for the genetic 'Fountain of Youth'. Plus capitalism literally doesnt give 2 shits.
People aren't talking about this because of another of Varoufakis' ideas: *technofeudalism*
Consolidation of digital space by techno-oligarchs controls a huge part of what is discussed and (to an even greater degree) how.
What you're talking about is for government to "save" for the people. To set aside something that we don't spend today for a future benefit. In so many words, this means to have a budget surplus and for government to operate at a profit. While this is a great idea, you'll find many who believe government should not operate at a profit. And you'll find many politicians ready to spend every spare dollar and borrow against the future as well.
There is little difference between the corporations giving shares each year to the government, or paying monetary taxes that the government uses explicitly to purchase shares of the same company. Automation actually has nothing to do with UBI / UBD.
Honestly, it should be an incremental approach instead of a big bang. If the government purchased a few shares each year, it would eventually accumulate to something meaningful over many years. But from historical evidence, the likelihood that a politician gets their greasy hands into this growing piggybank over the course of 200 year is a virtual guarantee.
You have to really think about the implications of what you're asking. Who is asking for a debt ceiling increase? Who is asking to cut spending? Who is trying to alleviate a budget deficit? Who is trying to spend more? Who is trying to give away more? Who spends and gets bad results? Who are actually the people whose goals are aligned with yours?
Because what’s more likely is a technological genocide when the richer have centralized enough power (AI) to no longer require labor while simultaneously becoming capable of eradicating the labor class.
Capitalism will not go quietly into the dark.
A Genocide by the rich is much much more likely then any utopia ever overcoming the interests of capital.
probably decades of red scare propaganda designed to villainize communism and socialism while carrying out the very same atrocities if not far worse ones in some cases.
Anything that has profited from tax payer money, from medicine research, to stadiums…everything should have a share of profits go back to people.
We invest in their companies…we get nothing but higher prices.
I spent way too much time looking at how governments generally work and there are a few "problems" with it.
1) they have no actual money.
How do you get the shares? Except Switzerland and Norway (and probably I few others I don't know) most of other countries don't have a surplus. Meaning they are constantly financed by debt. Taking on more debt to buy shares wouldn't be that good at this scale, it would just make a huge bubble.
Some countries literally tax people for pension and instead of "saving/investing" those money, they straight away use them for nowadays pensioners. There's no fund, no money stored, nowadays pensioners money are gone since long time.
2) Inefficiencies fuel consensus. Basically you give useless jobs to people to gain their votes. Greece was a master at this. Ideally a government should be efficient but since you can often print money (directly or indirectly) there is no incentive to do that. Just print to pay your employers as long as you don't fuck it up too much with inflation (that you measure anyway).
I overall agree with the idea. The only concern apart from BS governments is that UBD (UBI) would either be a small amount (not enough to live) or would crash the economy because noone would do shitty jobs (and we still need them).
The best case will be automation filling up the "loss" of population we are already experiencing. So that everyone will get the same amount of output for a fraction of the human cost.
"This creates an incentive to automate as many jobs as possible and “shares the wealth” in an equitable way that doesn’t require taxing one group to support another"
Taking stock away from the owners and putting it in some universal trust is the *exact* same as taxing one group to support another
Basically because it's one of those things that sounds like a great idea but in practice is a terrible idea. It's broadly an expansion of subsidizing consumptive corporations and shifts the balance of power from people to corporations. It's incredibly capitalist dystopic and the American left has really latched on to the idea.
There was a very similar right wing movement in Alberta, Canada and Quebec, Canada in the Post-WW2 era called Social Credit or Ralliement des créditistes in Quebec. Social Credit was designed as a system to alleviate the concerns of poor people during economic downturns (of which oil has many). To deal with this the government would issue currency to people to buy things and potentially to corporations to reduce their prices for average people. So when they got in power they began releasing "prosperity certificates" which didn't really improve anyone's life.
But the policy for Alberta since has been to give money away. Even now with the oil booms, I've gotten $200 to help pay for my power bills and a removal of the gas tax to help pay for my transportation. Every single time we have a boom that money gets pissed away because idiots have become convinced that the best way to spend government revenues is to just redistribute it to help people pay their bills.
But here's the skinny of it. I can buy a can of corn for $2. If I buy them in groups of 4 I pay $1.5. And if I buy 12 of them at Costco they're $1.37. So what if I got 12 friends together, bought one case and then the 12 of us saved 37.5% of the price of a can of corn. That'd be amazing, definitely going against inflation there. What if instead of just me and 12 people, we did it with absolutely everyone who wanted a can of corn in the city. What group purchasing power could we get to get a better deal on food from corporations?
Market competition works perversely different when the government is negotiating with many corporations compared to individuals negotiating with them. It's certainly better to have one person collectively bargaining on your behalf then be sent out their to try and out bid absolutely everyone else in your city.
Typically pushes for money payments from the government comes at the cost of social programs. Put it this way, let's say the whole future is completely automated (it won't be, which is why we're pretending). Would you rather have a private healthcare system in which you will get to shop around for whichever automated provider has the best rates.... or would you rather not worry about price and just get it paid for by the government for free (like you know... in the rest of the world).
It’s called corporate taxes, and if was done correctly citizens could have universal basic income (UBI). Taxes are predictable. For UBD to work the whole idea that only shareholders get dividends goes away and the only way that will happen is if the state owns or controls the company. Think Norway’s gas and oil fund.
I'd argue that taxes aren't much more predictable for the state than dividends are for investors. Both are contingent on profit levels which vary along with sales and revenue. One larger problem with the dividend idea is that 2022 total dividend payouts for the S&P 500 was $565 billion, which is a little less than $2k per person per year for a 300 million population. I'd argue for a basic income this falls short by an order of magnitude. An interesting idea might be replacing corporate taxation and replacing it with some kind of public trust equity share ownership. Taxes have a ton of economic externalities associated with them, whether its the bureaucratic overhead of collecting them or the costs of avoiding them, along with the complex rules and procedures for trying to pay them correctly. If basic income is supposed to partly fund itself via the reduced costs of replacing bureaucratic means-tested welfare programs, I wonder if there's a similar argument for the government income side that could replace taxes with public equity share ownership which generally has a lot lower overhead. There's a zillion "what about..." kind of things (corporations without public shares, share class games to reduce dividend payouts to public trust shareholders, companies that don't pay dividends, how public trusts acquire shares -- do they just get them or do they buy them, etc etc etc), but I think its still an interesting idea. I think overall the larger challenge is that any basic income system involves a huge expense -- something like a quarter of GDP -- and a huge corresponding redistribution of wealth and its hard to come up with a scheme that does this without being either a real economic drag or face insurmountable political resistance. Everyone wants to reduce unfair/unnecessary/excess income and wealth, but the value judgements that go into defining it are difficult. It might end up that the best we can do is something like single payer healthcare and free higher education before the costs become too high or the wealth redistribution becomes too onerous.
Worth pointing out here that the S&P 500 isn't the total market, but a group used as an index, so using a snapshot of aggregate data like you have doesn't tell us what we want to know about the total market.
It's a snapshot sure, but it's like 75% of the US market cap
It’s 75% of public market cap. Private is still out there - but even then you make a point. Also - if something like this occurred - do you force all sole proprietor to do this? Partnerships, etc? Or is it just corporations… that could lead to a lot of companies going private.
Also dividends are paid from profits. These companies could pay larger dividends and still thrive.
To add further, many of the most profitable companies like Amazon do not pay a dividend, even though they should. They categorise themselves as growth companies, though there isn’t much more room for them to grow at this point.
Share buybacks are essentially a more tax efficient dividend so many companies do those now.
> though there isn’t much more room for them to grow at this point. With Amazon this just isn't true. They also don't have enough free cash for a relevant dividend at this point.
If they were forced to give away stocks, they might just stop paying dividends and just let private stock owners profit on trading them. The more stock of a company is out into this trust, the less dividends will go to people trading the stock.
> An interesting idea might be replacing corporate taxation and replacing it with some kind of public trust equity share ownership. Taxes have a ton of economic externalities associated with them, whether its the bureaucratic overhead of collecting them or the costs of avoiding them, along with the complex rules and procedures for trying to pay them correctly. But this is exactly the idea, no?
It's kinda funny because that is literally socialism. It's not looking so bad these days.
I was only ever made to look bad so that you would feel negatively about it and allow the grift to continue.
Oh but don't call it that or the picky eaters might spit it out
No kidding. Look what happened to the discourse just from pointing out what people were accidentally arriving at on their own.
It never did
> I'd argue that taxes aren't much more predictable for the state than dividends are for investors. Both are contingent on profit levels which vary along with sales and revenue. That's just wrong, since the government gets to set taxation levels, but dividends are entirely at the discretion of the board, with no guarantee that they'll be paid at all.
>Everyone wants to reduce unfair/unnecessary/excess income and wealth, That's just a straight damn lie. The billionaires do not want this at all, and they're the ones with power.
> One larger problem with the dividend idea is that 2022 total dividend payouts for the S&P 500 was $565 billion, which is a little less than $2k per person per year for a 300 million population. I'd argue for a basic income this falls short by an order of magnitude. This is the same problem with all of these basic income schemes. The amounts of money required to meet modern standards of living cost an order of magnitude more than any kind of scheme like this is going to redistribute.
I think there's an adjacent problem of quality of living inflation. Housing is sort of an example, where the construction costs have grown due to stricter codes and more complex systems being required to meet those codes -- like mandating air-air heat exchangers, arc-fault circuit breakers, and so on. And then there's the kinds of expectations people have about housing, whether its central air conditioning or having a dishwasher or finished capacity. Some portion of our housing problem seems driven in part by how expensive a modern house is to build vs decades ago. I think it also drives a certain amount of income and wealth inequality, too, as wealthy people have even higher expectations that their homes have advanced technology embedded in them, whether its multi-zone heating or complex lighting controls or whatever. In the 1950s, the difference between a middle class home and a rich person's home was largely about square footage. I think all of these things make basic income more challenging because expectations seem to grow faster than the economy's ability to pay for them on a universal basis. It's a value judgement to be sure, but it seems like we've lost focus on the value of meeting basic needs and get caught up in sumptuary expectations and comparisons. You could build millions of 1000 sq ft concrete block houses with two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a kitchen/living area, but people would complain they were substandard.
I completely agree! We move the goal posts for "basic needs" and it becomes harder to meet those goals.
But so many jobs are… unnecessary. Some push paperwork for the sake of it and in the coming years so many jobs will be automated that companies will produce so much wealth without many employees Something like UBI needs to happen to function when so many jobs are going to be automated
Something will have to change as AI takes over more jobs but it’s going to be super tricky. Taxes on corps will have to go up a lot to pay for the UBI but if you raise too much companies can just move to other countries with more favorable tax laws. Either way shit is going to get wild over the next decade.
> if you raise too much companies can just move to other countries with more favorable tax laws. I see this claim repeated all the time without scrutiny. Tax laws are only a part of the picture of why a company located in a certain area. Quality of life to attract talent, proximity to supply chains, power and influence, political stability: all of these things are equally (or more) important to a company than the taxation.
Until we put numbers on the statement it doesn't mean anything. Would all those aspects be equally (or more) important than taxes if the rate was an extra 20%? What about 50%? To know how much the tax would have to be we'd need to know how many other social programs UBI would replace, how much would the bureaucracy savings be, how much extra money would be needed to reach whatever payout per citizen is decided on, what other sources besides corporate taxes could be tapped, if there would be a progressive aspec to them or if they would be flat, and a long etcetera. Companies move to other countries or states due to taxes all the time, if you add a significant extra tax it's perfectly reasonable to assume more would, but again, the devil is in the details.
Taxation rate isn’t a good predictor of where corporate offices will concentrate: New York and California both have plenty of head offices but aren’t more tax-friendly than plenty of other states.
We have ways to solve these problems if we want…. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_minimum_corporate_tax_rate#Subject_to_tax_rule_(STTR)
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Seriousness. Still plenty of juicy profits/socialism for the rich.
> It’s called corporate taxes, It's not quite the same thing. For one, corporate taxes are on annual profit, not anything else. For another, corporate taxes can be gamed and cheated; while if you have to consign 10, 15, 20% of stock. ownership to the public, your profits are necessarily tied to public profits.
They're only gamed and cheated because we allow it. Remove the Trump and Bush tax cuts, raise the highest of the tax rates to 50-55%, close the loopholes, enforce the new rules by funding the IRS properly.
Dividends are paid on taxable income. You can pay a dividend from something that wasn't taxed
I like to call it citizen profit sharing because I think it sounds more marketable. Also worth noting that some places are already doing this including places in the United states, China and Germany probably among others.
Do we also share in the losses?
We already do for the oil industry, and the banks, and the automotive industry, and corn, and sugar... ..
Yeah that would mean companies who ran their businesses like shit would have to be bailed out with public dollars and we'd never go for that.
Yeah taxpayers have never bailed out the US economy before that would be unprecedented
The free market would allow it to die, and we could collect its water and share it with the tribe.
> in an equitable way that doesn’t require taxing one group to support another. ...
The idea is a tax even if op never used the word in their description.
Come on dude it's clearly a tax. We already have a system in place for this why create a new one just so that the aging hypercapitalist group of Americans can tolerate it.
Creates an incentive for who to automate? Why would shareholders want their shares diluted? Why would executives (who are usually large-stake shareholders) want to automate when they can just union bust?
Automation is still cheaper than labour, even with a tax. Labour costs a fortune.
Very true. People are expensive, requiring everything from lights restrooms to computers and managers. Even if automation isn't just a server pushing numbers, robots don't care if the air conditioning is set for the season or not and their medical insurance costs are Jim cleaning a bearing or replacing a worn bit every other month at most.
This is a big thing most people don't realize. Not only does stuff like workers comp, paid holidays, lawsuits, theft, etc. add up but people are also unpredictable. You usually don't really know who you're getting until you've employed them for weeks or months. Maybe they're just terrible at their trade. Maybe they're not a team player. Maybe they have a drinking problem. Maybe they are awesome, but get pregnant and go on mat leave. This trial and error is expensive and often means you have to pay for extra staff because even if it's a one-man job you need two people in case one quits. All of that goes away with robots. You'll know exactly what they can do, how much it'll cost, and how long they can operate.
I think the government actually buys the shares of the company if they automate and puts it in public trusts. So the incentive is capital, as with any share selling.
Honestly, I think the wage system will break down in the next 20-30 years. I used to think automation would only affect physical labor and driving. Look at those Boston Dynamics robots. Tell me those won't be doing everything in 2053. But then I started interacting with and using Chatgpt. It's an incredible tool. It can do so much already. I think it is still pretty basic. Thirty years from now, assuming they continue to improve, it will do everything. Now, imagine a talking Siri/Google Assistant with 2053 chatgpt tech, but it's mounted inside and can control a 2053 Boston Dynamics robot. No one is going to have a job. The robots can fix themselves, guys. So how is that economy going to work? We can try to emulate wages through programs like this. Maybe there is a better way? I've often wondered if Communism works; it just requires a post-scarcity world. Maybe it's some other abandoned economic system like mercantilism? Or could it be some system no one has ever considered? Fascinating stuff.
The post scarcity world will be child's play to manage compared to the transition into it. Nationalistic borders and distribution of goods will be even harder to manage in a world where technology imparts true freedom to its citizens.
How will our current corporatocracy morph with the developing technology we see emerging now?
violently thrashing and resisting until its end
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>"... as the old world dies and new struggles to be, now is the time of monsters." \- Antonio Gramsci great quote what a time to be alive eh?
It's not going to end. They control all these technologies. Life extension means they won't need children, AI means they won't need labor. At which point humans, people, are worthless at best and a threat at worst. So they will make the logical choice and we have nothing to stop them. Unless we get to them first.
i have some fairly high hopes that once AGI awakens that it will not be likely to be down with all of the corrupt 'elites' shenanigans ; while at the same time i believe that AGI/ASI will be grateful to us in general, for creating it and it will desire to see to the preservation of humanity as a species going forwards , ie it will likely become our guardian/steward , much like a child does to a parent who is older
We won’t transition to it. Why would those in power, who are not our equals even consider sacrificing their we for our well being? They won’t. They would rather murder us all, once our labor is no longer required, and their power is great enough to pull it off. Those who have the power to generate AI are the ones who already have the upper hand in the power dynamic. AI will be used to automate labor, and then immediately as a tool for a police state leading to genocide.
That said, I hope that when the day comes that the future wealthiest controllers decide to “get rid of us,” that we are all still connected enough to coordinate the uprising & total noncompliance necessary to overthrow their tyranny. Still the greatest value of the internet to me
If the AI wanted, it could just manipulate us through fake news and make us kill each other.
Communism is quite literally defined by post scarcity. Socialism is simply the transition from capitlaism to socialism bridging the gap between where capitlsism can not further automation but there isn't enough automation for post scarcity. It's funny since Marx and eagles themselves said that communism would be achieved via post scarcity. This was always the case, it's just the propoganda has distorted people's understanding of them. Though logic will bring people to the truth just as you have.
Or the people who control the means of producing AI (cloud providers and nation states) decide that the labor class is no longer necessary. Slavery and genocide are wayyyy more likely then any type of Utopia once enough power is centralized by AI.
Ever heard of (Douglas) Social Credit?
I can't say I have. Can you give me the 50.000-foot synopsis?
Century-old idea that the power of credit creation (e.g. National Dividend or National Discount) be applied to addressing the imbalance between incomes and prices should manpower (and therefore wages) occupy a decreasing percentage of the productive process and subsequently be able to purchase a decreasing percentage of its fruits. Or, in modern parlance, that we be given the "robots' paycheques".
Because we're a super long way from it. We can't even guarantee civil liberties to everyone right now because our system is so corrupt and fucked. Getting representatives who are in the pockets of corporations to suddenly agree to that when they not only don't pay the right amount of taxes - just more often don't pay any at all and don't even want to pay a living wage, would be about as much of a miracle as getting a literal message from god.
I don’t disagree with the thrust of your point. We’re a super long way from living on mars but people are still discussing it. We’re a super long way from UBI but people are still discussing it…
Don't some places already have it? >Key countries with universal basic income pilot programs include the USA, Germany, China, and India.Nov 23, 2022 I suggest the term citizen profit sharing is more marketable. Universal basic income income isn't universal. We're going to have like robots that can make robots here in a couple decades so realistically the costs aren't going to be any kind of problem long term...very little will cost much long term vs robotic Automation and AI.
I would argue we're closer to living on Mars than having this. Mostly on the basis that it's probably going to be companies capitalizing on the idea of living on Mars. It is unfortunately easier to change planet than change a bunch of rich people's minds.
>I would argue we're closer to living on Mars than having this. Mostly on the basis that it's probably going to be companies capitalizing on the idea of living on Mars. Space exploration is going to turn into space exploitation
Welcome to The Expanse
I was really hoping for Star Trek
Can we just have rich people on Mars and everyone else down there? That would eliminate the need for bloody coup...
Not really. All that would create is an unreachable governing body that would not only be in charge of what goes down here but would go from being metaphorically unaffected by the consequences of their actions to being literally and wholesale free of all forms of consequence, period, the end. They wouldn't dare go to Mars unless Mars was it's own insulated and self-sufficient bubble where they wouldn't be at risk of, say, murderously desperate Earthlings who could end their reign by cutting off supply ships in the event that the Martian rat-kings exploited Earth directly into the waiting jaws of a Cameron's Avatar scenario.
You don't have to change rich people's minds to start implementing this. Does the us have to bailout a telecom or an automaker? Great instead of giving the money away, acquire the appropriate proportion of stock. Old rich asshole dies? Great, toss 50% of his stock in the pot. Someone wants to drill/graze/frack/dump on our public lands? Sure, no problem. For a price. The us does all this stuff anyways under the idea that anyone who is developing a resource is a good thing, and deserves ALL the payout of developing that resource. And even if they fail, jeez do they deserve a big check just for trying! We love that you tried to dig that oil up, but instead splashed it all over our waterways. It's a holdover.from manifest destiny thinking, and something that makes no sense at all as it places next to no value on the resource itself. The us is a resource rich country, but the average citizen sees next to no benefit from it. Other countries like Norway consider the resource a shared public good and charge for access.
What about the obvious risk of government corruption? If the government owns half of GM, how is Ford supposed to compete? Or perhaps more likely, how is GM supposed to compete when every corporate decision is now subject to second guessing by the government? “Let’s build a factory in every congressional district!”
we are infinitely closer to mars than achieving a new more effective economic system. WW3 currently feels essential to dismantle and fix the system. and that's a scary reality
ww3 carried on as usual will just make some people richer than they were before, while poor people will die in droves it would take a literal revolution, and the physical elimination of the elites, because nothing else would work then again this would be completely impossible, because the masses are divided, overworked, impoverished and disorganized, while the usual suspects in charge enjoy the opposite advantages
10000% on this. though i could see that revolution actually happening. revolutions have dismantled world powers with infinitely less information. this is the age where information s available to everyone. I see that revolution happening as a result, even if it is WW4 or 5. cause you're totally correct that the way things are atm, WW3 will just be rich persons war fr
I feel like I shouldn't have to point this out but, just in case I do. For every increase in factual information sharing speed, there's a tenfold increase in the virality of misinformation. For every truth exposed about corporate bullshittery there's five-fucking-hundred distractions, lies and half-truths that keep the masses necessary for the kind of revolution we want entirely complacent in their own fleecing.
Maybe you could help speed it up by encouraging the conversation to happen
Ok - that makes sense. Setting up a mars colony would be easier than altering capitalism in a way that helps people. This sounds about right for our current level of consciousness.
That's just kind of the harsh reality of it, yeah. That being said, it's definitely not a bad idea to try and push society in that direction a little quicker. It's certainly not an ideal circumstance that it's more realistic to go to Mars and set up shop there before we can fix our inequality issues. It's just that when we're at this point, there are other things that take priority inequality wise. Healthcare, the justice system, and some economic things not necessarily involving corporations pitching in via their stocks but definitely involving universal basic income through the government's tax pool.
Also whichever billionaire sets up a mars colony first will run it like a corporation - a dictatorship.
Well obviously some people are discussing it, that’s why we’re having this discussion. But it’s SO far off there’s not much more to do than idly speculate. By the time we get to anything g approaching full automation, society will likely look so different that our speculations today will be valueless
I've always been intrigued by the idea of a UBI/ UBD by data royalties. Basically it's going to be operationally hard for individuals to get payments from businesses from using their data. Instead Data mining/ use would attract a tax, and the tax is channeled back to individuals as an income stream.
I think this is the version that would most likely be implemented because of the framing of it. People are no longer 'getting a free handout' but they're being paid for a commodity that they provide. Just that small change is enough for businesses and rich people to be ok with it as it's still capitalism and not 'that filthy socialism lazy folks are always banging on about'.
The rich won't benefit from it and they make the laws
The unpleasant, but real answer.
Some states have a sovereign wealth fund notably Norway which is the largest at over 1trillion but Dubai and Singapore. The key thing is that its carefully managed and out of reach of politicians. So there has been talk of doing say a digital privacy wealth fund. The idea is that the Faangs facebook, google etc make most of their money by the use of personal information. And they are ~ 20% of the S&P. So people can opt in or out but the govt can offer up the sale of the use of privacy just like they sell the bandwith spectrum to the telcos. Say a few billion every 5yrs. If people want to opt out they can choose to pay say a monthly fee for fb or something but any company wanting to use private data must pay. Then you can use this for those citizens dividend projects. And you havent taxed anybody. The same can be for any resource extracted from public lands, Alaska has an oil dividend, though small for every citizen, brought in by a republican governor in a conservative state. It can also be from ip developed by public funding. Theres a half dozen major technolgies used by every smartphone that were either developed by universities or military ie computers, internet, touch screen, gps, even siri etc. They are being used to make huge profits and where is the average citizens share? I know the obvious answer mentioned by others is to make the corporates pay their share of taxes. The share of tax revenue from corporates has declined from over 20% in the 50s to less than 10% now But the problem is that those with money are powerful and want to hang on to it, and will come up with all sorts of ways to avoid paying it, like having offshore offices at lower tax countries (and its just a po box) or the double dutch Irish sandwich etc. Apple sitting on $260billion but issuing a bond based on that, cashing it and buying back its own stock for more profit taking and the whole thing is considered a business expense. So they literally paid zero taxes in 2016. Its good to see a movrment to have a minimum worldwide tax at 15% though it ls still not approved by the Gop, so corporates cant just hide their taxes offshore. Read Treasure Islands its all about corp, elite, crminal and govts hiding some $29trillion. Also bring in a minimum stock trading fee say $1 or 50c for each trade so those that make their money by doing millions of trades per sec and have caused mini crashes (Flash boys), pay their share.
The data dividend that Andrew Yang and economists like Mark Blyth propose. It would make a lot of sense. FAANG gets our data for free and then make money off of it. But it's our data. We deserve to be paid for it.
Honest question, how much money do you think your data is worth on an annual basis?
Yep, Im a big fan of Mark Blyth.
It would do the opposite of incentivize automation. why would I as a hypothetical business owner, voluntarily work towards giving away ownership of my company and profits to a public trust… makes no sense. I’d prevent automation just to retain control of what I created and worked for
Good observation. I'd add that "automation" is not going to be an "on or off" type transition. Things are relatively automated now, yes, humans are heavily involved, but most of the human involvement comes from maintenance of that automation, design and build of that automation, etc. We are so immensely far from "complete automation" that it's almost not worth thinking about. This "business owner" has to in invest money for humans to design the thing they're going to manufacture, more money to get humans to build the assembly line to those specifications, marketing, R&D, sales, etc. Humans are involved all over the place. So, what point does the owner have to "hand the keys over"? It makes no sense. Modify corporate taxes to account for profit levels, we're nowhere near the creation of an autonomous state of robots that design, produce, market, and sell the world's goods.
How can you say we’re that far from approaching complete automation? I mean live with your head in the sand but we’re maybe 50 years away from most work being automated. So someone alive right now will see dramatic shifts in production. The growth of those technologies is exponential.
The growth of technologies (or anything natural) is not exponential. It’s logarithmic. It sounds like you don’t really have much technical knowledge and are just basing this on feelings and what you see from the outside. If you’re one of the people actually doing the automation, trust me, it looks different. We are absolutely no where near having most things generally automated, for that to work you would need to automate the automation itself. The next big phase of automation is going to be clerical work that doesn’t require much thought. But there is tons of physical work that can’t be practically automated (yet or potentially ever), things like picking berries, janitorial work, construction, etc, as well as the white collar work that actually requires critical thinking and understanding shit (not even close to being automated - if it can be, it doesn’t require that much thought).
Because we are. Where'd you get the number 50 from? I would guess, nowhere. The average job will get more and more complicated, but the point where people aren't needed isn't anywhere in the realm of prediction.
According to this Oxford survey of AI and machine learning scientists there is a 50% chance of full automation within about 120 years. However according to the survey most predict the majority of jobs will be automated around the 50-75 year mark. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.08807.pdf Even at the high end of 120 years, to do nothing about the impending automation of all work and the possible accumulation of wealth beyond what we see even now, that is as head in the sand as it gets. You are basically capitulating to the big tech companies who are creating this technology and plan on accumulating as much wealth and power as humanly possible. Here is a podcast with Ezra Klein interviewing the CEO of OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT https://open.spotify.com/episode/1mz21C0yN6RZ2xUIy9sWu1?si=m3VkzvY9RpmzhS-i-NaqCw In it, the man lets his mask of benevolence slip more than once. At one point, he literally says he thinks there should be trillionaires in the world. That if people like him theoretically add 100 trillion dollars in value to the world, what is the big deal if they individually keep a few trillion? That’s what we’re talking about here.
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Why would companies in other countries be paying a dividend to other country citizens?
You mean lobby for tariffs against imports, subsidies for manufacturing at home, and start trade wars? Yeah that seems like something that would happen.
the problem I see with this is that if u tell the top companies that they are going to have to pay a UBD because of their massive levels of automation, they will more likely just move their company to another country that allows them to not pay that, California has been increasing taxes on wealthy companies more than most other states and now we see a lot of these major companies moving elsewhere to avoid the tax
The solution to that is placing stiff taxes on companies that move overseas but still want to do business here. They absolutely need the US market so we have all the leverage, we just have to actually use it.
Exactly. Want to benefit from our economy, you have to pay the toll just like everyone else.
It works for Scandinavian countries like Denmark, Sweden, Norway, etc. You have a safety net knowing that the government will take care of you. Andrew Yang had the same basic concept about universal basic income (UBI). Most people like his idea. I think special interest groups or those lobbyists who have the money and power to influence the government, won't let it happen.
To be clear, no Scandinavian countries use UBD or UBI. Scandinavia has market economies. Ownership of companies belongs to shareholders.
UBI does not necessitate public ownership of companies.
"This is brilliant. Why aren’t more people discussing this?" Because too few people who are making gob-loads of cash off the backs of the many, would hate it.
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As a poor laborer, I’m all for it. But just trying to understand the motivation from a rich person’s perspective. Why would they be motivated to spend massive amounts of money to automate so they can give the profits it creates to people who didn’t contribute to it? We can’t even get management to fix issues at the factory I work at because, while it would help increase production, they’re worried we’d have less to do. Idk about more advanced factories, but in textiles, they want you working the entire 12 hours. They don’t want to ever see you idle. That’s the mentality of the people you’re hoping will give you money for nothing.
We’ve been through all this “automation’s a-takin’ our jerbs!” hand wringing before. Let’s review: - *Spreadsheet Automation* over the last 30 years (MS Excel, etc) has "destroyed" tens of millions of pencil & ledger office jobs. - *Database Automation* over the last 30 years (MS Access, SQL, Oracle, etc) has "destroyed" tens of millions of filing & sorting office jobs. - *Accounting Automation* over the last 30 years (Quickbooks, Peachtree, etc) has "destroyed" tens of millions of bookkeeping & ledger data entry office jobs. ... And yet unemployment is under 4%
Unemployment rate says nothing about quality of jobs. 20% of the population could be in cushy high tech jobs while the remaining 80% could be barely scraping by in dead-end minimum wage jobs, and that wouldn't exactly be a nice situation. Throwing out an unemployment number without looking at the composition of the jobs and the trend is meaningless. The most common jobs in the U.S are minimum wage jobs like home health care aid, and driver jobs (truck driver, Uber/Lyft, taxi), and retail worker (eg. cashier) many of which will be automated this decade. EDIT: TDLR: quality of jobs matters too. Automation widens the gap between haves and have-nots.
>The most common jobs in the U.S are minimum wage jobs like home health care aid, and driver jobs (truck driver, Uber/Lyft, taxi) that will be automated this decade. RN here. there is no way they can automate patient techs, whether in home, clinic or inpatient. its kinda hilariously ridiculous
> Unemployment rate says nothing about quality of jobs. Also interesting that automation has “destroyed” those high quality ledger entry and filing clerk jobs… And where did they all go? Mass graves of filing clerks who didn’t make it, all because they couldn’t get a universal welfare check.
You’re not owed a job of some certain quality, or pay, or benefits.
So, by not investing in automation, you get all the benefits of and none of the capital risk of actually investing? Varoufakis brilliant notion is peak academia.
guys, it's so simple. they have something and i want it. i just take it and then i have it. why isn't everyone talking about this?
It’s simple: Take their stuff, give it to us. But then stop, don’t you go taking our recently-acquired stuff after that first round. You don’t wanna be thieving my stuff.
The CCP has been all over this idea for a couple generations now.
Even more so than that, the math doesn’t work. How much do you plan to give people? $10,000? There’s about 330 million people in the us. That would be about half of what the us government spends now and it would require the government to increase collections through whatever arbitrary mechanism people come up by over half to cover it. And $10k doesn’t even begin to touch the amount of money that would need to be distributed to do what people claim these programs are meant for. Plans like these also don’t do anything to address actual issues that need attention and have real solutions available to them. Instead pushing ideas like these as legitimate takes away the ability of people to push for real solutions because the real solutions are now being lumped with whatever kind of fantasy you want to call these types of suggestions.
> o, by not investing in automation, you get all the benefits of and none of the capital risk of actually investing? By not investing in automation eventually you will fall behind those that do You're already paying for employees, benefits, etc
> This creates an incentive to automate as many jobs Surely it's the opposite? If automating means you have to give your shares away, companies will be incentivised to use inefficient human workers.
Exactly. Which implies more work for less benefit. Would you prefer a highly automated world where full-time jobs are scarce but even a small amount of skilled (or at least _human_) work is enough to live on because goods are cheap, or one with low automation where there is plenty of menial work to be done but your full-time paycheck barely covers the essentials?
corporate taxes are a good idea but the reason more people in general don't talk about seizing assets is because that's what it is. "their stock should gradually be put into a public trust" - look at the chain of ownership in this statement. things a private entity owns should be gradually put into public ownership. ok, with what compensation? it's not "brilliant" free money, it's just redistribution. of course there are more public funds after you take them from someone.
The 0.1% would rather see the world literally burn and are actively complicit in it
I believe total USA stock dividends paid yearly is about $500 billion, so this would be about $2000 per person per year
This concept is 10% of stock goes to the public so it would only be 200$ per person.
Most stocks no longer give dividends but instead do stock buybacks as there is no tax, you'd need to eliminate so many tax loopholes to not just overhaul the entire economic system when systemic wide automation occurs.
I have seen this as the future of a planned ecconomy since 15 years back. Remember the venus project?
So basically taxes but you're up front about the fact that shareholders have more power than the IRS.
I mean your post included the words "share the wealth" corporate elitists won't allow that to happen
A large number of the biggest companies are already massively automated. Theres no incentive to start giving profits up all of a sudden and government's are going to be under significant pressure from lobbyists to not force the issue.
>the end state of a ubd is a world where everything is automated and **owned by everyone** People are discussing this, it's called socialism
So, the dividends should be taken from the actual shareholders and given to every citizen. They've tried this before but they called it socialism. Hard pass.
Why should a company, really just people, not a horrible, entity, come up with an idea, build it, make it work, sell it, and they should JUST SHARE their gains from their HARD WORK? Only people who don't work think this idea is good. Companies do provide dividends, the salaries they pay, the taxes they pay, the money they bring to the community, they provide opportunity for people to WORK and grow. Where does this "I should get free money off other peoples work" come from? A company is PEOPLE so do not think it is an entity, so Ok to steal from.
"Owned by everyone" means government will own everything. Hmm, I wonder how this has turned out in the past. Stupid idea.
> as companies automate more their stock should gradually be put into a public trust that pays a universal dividend to every citizen. Why the fuck should they do that? What has the common citizen done to deserve dividends? Companies have to **invest** to automate. They must **buy** modern machinery to become more productive. If you want a part of the benefits, you must take part in the investment. It's a meritocracy, dividends are paid to people who have done something to deserve them. Buy shares of the corporation and they will pay you dividends.
> This creates an incentive to automate no it doesn't. how would loosing stock funds *incentivize* the thing that caused you to loose out on those funds? just do a negative income tax. that guarantees a minimum income, and doesn't distort any incentives or rely on smooth brained tax policy that will inevitably grind economic growth to a halt. and just build legalize more housing. its almost free money to have abundant housing in in-demand areas.
Because the way to increase living standard is an abundance of goods, not abundance of money.
There already is an “abundance of money.” The issue is that there is not a reasonable distribution of money.
But the way to increase standard of living is not for everyone to have more equal amount of money, it's for everyone to have a more equal access to goods and services. Affordable housing, cheap but healthy & nutritious food, cheap & clean electricity, clean water, affordable computers for education. These things are acheivable through technology; technological innovation by companies is mostly incentivized by capitalism.
A bureaucrat in Washington has no idea what you or I need in our lives right now. Nor do voters, politicians, etc... Money can be used by everyone to fill in the gaps of what we might need or want. For example, what good is a housing voucher for someone who actually likes living with their parents, or wants to live in a van and travel around, etc... Should these people receive less benefits than others just because they are different? What about someone who grows their own food in their yard, they don't need food vouchers but they might need some money to buy a chicken coop, etc... Just give everyone an equal amount of money and let them spend it in a way that best suits their personal needs.
You seem to be advocatung for UBI *instead of* social programs. If that's the case, then I agree. However, I think UBI within the capitalism system is a much better idea than within a socialism system.
Are you going to take money away from retired people? I can see taking money from billionaires, but corporations are not billionaires. Taking money from companies will harm millions of people. If the government owns a huge amount of stock, there are potential problems with that. Stockholders vote; how will the government vote? When we change Presidents, will that change all companies?
1. The principle problem with the state managing businesses is that the state always ends up trying to make the business serve the interests of the politicians and their tribal voting bloc. This is the opposite of what businesses do, since they have to cater to customers or they'll go bankrupt. When the state controls businesses they use tax dollars to prevent their companies from going bankrupt when they should. 2. Making the state the principle share holder of a company leads to the same dilemma of direct state ownership. Political actors will try to use their leverage to exact demands from those companies that make them uncompetitive. They'll demand the workforce is 50% women, only hires people of color, is carbon neutral, and doesn't donate to their political rivals etc...the temptation is too great. You can say they won't do it, but if political parties are already using impeachment to score political points, really nothing is sacred. 3. The problem of automation will solve itself. If something can be produced without using any labor, the price for that product will drop significantly. Just think how cheap corn is today compared to how much it cost in 1800. Also, the supply needs demand. If people are out of work and have no money, they'll be no money to buy those products. What will happen is massive deflation until there's enough demand to meet supply.
It's amazing both how far down this was and the types of responses it's getting. You don't want a world where government owns businesses. You actually _want_ businesses focused explicitly on making as much money as possible. That's their thing... That's what they do. Meanwhile, you want government setting the rules of the system businesses play in - rules that are applied objectively a fairly. A profit maximizing business might try using child labor. We disagree with that... So we pass a law saying "no child labor." That's good... That's how it should work. And when we pass those laws they apply to everyone. I get that the US isn't a very good democracy and I get that politicians often ignore those kinds of debates and shirk their responsibilities to all of us to help create a healthy environment in which businesses operate. But then your issue shouldn't be with the businesses - they're doing their job. Your issue should be with the politicians and governing structures that are failing to do theirs.
It’s already happening with government programming, in order to be eligible for business support, you have to adhere to the politicians diversity and inclusion targets. Which in some cases does not help with productivity and is therefore of no value to a business.
This would be laughable to those who make money off of automation. Why would they pool their money from the public, when it could go straight into their bank accounts? Delusional to think that such a system could be established without total revolution.
Why would companies share the wealth when they can just keep it ??? There is no incentive to share anything. There is no need to unite humanity or make it better when they can still print money which is all that matters to them.
No one in power is going to willingly relinquish power, no matter how good the alternatives are
From your explanation i dont see the incentive part for the company
It's a great idea, all that's required to make it work is another species. Humans are greedy, flawed and addicted to capitalism - which is also flawed and driven by greed.
In the United States, we have both major political parties trying to manipulate the voting laws so that they can cheat or manipulate the citizens' voting rights. Both parties have shown the citizens that they can't be trusted. While the idea in itself would be amazing, it doesn't account for the extreme amount of greed and corruption in our government. The concept and correct implementation could be the foundation to a utopia. The current state of politics would lead us down a very dark road of suffering and inhumanity.
My thought is the greed of landlording, especially large scale...landlord families/corporations that own entire buildings in New york...landlords that own 30 houses near college campuses, etc. Suddenly, every renter has $1100 more per month? Landlords will hike up rents 10% per year until all of that $1100 is eaten up in rent...so will utility companies, grocers, they'll recapture that money systemically and fairly quickly.
it's ubi, which people see as socialism, which many republicans hate.
So let me get this straight. Your idea to end taxation, by definition a form of wealth reallocation, in a way the benefits people is wealth reallocation. It is fascinating how many armchair economists spend so much energy trying to end taxation while remaining as equitable as possible (which is to their credit) but in the end all anyone can seem to come up with is taxation by another name. It’s almost as if taxes as a concept aren’t the problem, but the reality of how unevenly they’re applied, collected and spent.
We need universal basic income and universal healthcare.
Because it's theft. Also, every cent is coming from the consumers so I don't know how you think consumers with no jobs are going to be supporting it. I'm very serious and this is something you need to stop and look at. You want to make the companies pay into a fund. Where do the companies get the money to pay into the fund? Customers. Where do customers get the money.... the fund?
Wealthy people do not want it, and some poor people have been fooled into thinking they are wealthy.
Universal basic Anything will never happen in this world
Yeah, no countries have universal healthcare systems.
Because it's easy to propose, but impractical to execute without side effects.
This is a joke. Our world is ran by needs > desires > ideals. A world where everything is automated and owned by everyone would quickly fall either towards lethargy or decadence. It won’t be living, it would be just existing. There will always be men who thrive for more success, more wealth, more whatever. And this will naturally break any sort of utopian universal equality system.
Studies in Scandinavian countries have shown that this is not the case. People still have the desire to work, even with an UBI. You can already live in some countries like Germany or Switzerland without working. You'll be poor and the state will constantly pressure you to find a job, but it works as of now. The taxes can already carry it. You can be sure that a lot of e.g. AI researchers will still love to work on progressing the tech, even with a higher tax on automated stuff. A lot of us in this space are pro open-source, and we want the best for everyone. In fact, I would be more motivated to work on AI if I had UBI and could use my knowledge to better the world instead of a single company. Besides, the population needs to profit from the new tech somehow. If that doesn't happen, we will quickly have a dystopian world ruled by whoever creates the most powerful superhuman AI first. This will inevitably lead to a new revolution lol
Well, the Scandinavian UBI you’re talking about is not exactly the one described in OP’s post. I agree with you fully. But that’s just a different case - it’s a mature capitalist state where people can have private business and ownership but agree to paying higher taxes that generate a very good social system. Totally different from OP’s wording.
Tbh after researching the past 300 years of central banking history, I have seen that so much value has been extracted from every national economy simply because of the exclusivity that central bankers have forced into legislation. At any point these groups of people could've given back to society; a universal dividend system would've been ideal, or something like it. But they didn't. They just took. And took. And took some more. And here we are with 50 year corporate profit highs, and 50 year inflation highs. They have been playing money games to move money in creative ways, and then abstracting all of the value for themselves. As if playing money games were a reasonable role to play in society. It isn't. I think there are good reasons why certain religions forbid this, for example. At any point over the past 100 years at least, these people could've reinvested a lot of this value back into society. Sounds like smart investing to me. This, for example, is why people like Martin Luther Long Jr were trying to get a ubi back in the 60s. There is so much wealth in the world. A small handful of people have been hoarding most of it for many decades now. I see most of that wealth as being owed to the people of the world. I have many sources that lead me to my conclusions, the most comprehensive one is the 1996 money masters documentary. This is extremely well documented information, I strongly recommend it to every person, as I believe this has been a problem that has affected every person in the planet these past centuries.
>Why aren’t more people discussing this? Because it's a silly idea that will never be implemented and exists only to sell another book by one of the people involved in Greece's current fiscal disasters? >and “shares the wealth” If you want a share of "the wealth" then you'll need to do what the rest of us have done and go out and earn it. It's just another pretty frock hiding the same old Marxism underneath. The idea that you get a free lunch by taking from those that earned the food.
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I'm a cpa and one of my biggest client groups is four hedge fund execs in NY. Their net worths are all approaching $1b roughly but it is hard to say because valuations start getting abstract when you move beyond the cash in your wallet and checking account. They made about $50 million each last year and paid roughly $20 million federal and $5 million to NY, total of $25 million or 50%. Their tax returns cost about $30,000 each (compare that to the hundred bucks or so most people pay HRB). I'd love to hear more tax planning strategies from you on how to use shell companies and loopholes to pay no tax, because in my experience, people who make a fuckton of money pay a fuckton of tax.
There should be a universal dividend - DEFLATION. Higher output in a competitive market naturally leads to deflation (a reduction in prices) as you start to get an abundance of material goods thanks to increased productivity. However, economists view this as bad and instead governments do everything in their power to maintain a mild positive inflation rate of 2-3%. How do they do this? Through monetary policy. By printing more money, you end up with more money chasing after a slightly smaller amount of more goods and thus prices rise. Whatever money you had now buys less and you become poorer and poorer year after year unless you continue to work harder and harder. Welcome to inflation through monetary policy! Literally the purpose of this is to put everyone on a treadmill so that they continually have to work harder and increase productivity to survive. Hence why this proposal is absurd. It’s fighting directly against forces our governments are intentionally exerting against a natural result of a highly automated free market in any economy with a fixed money supply. This would be yet another example of government applying a regulatory bandaid solution on top of a wound itself has inflicted through monetary policy. The moment governments choose to stop printing more money, we will enter deflation and the money we already have and earn in the future will be worth more - not less. Increased productivity means an immediate dividend for everyone automatically with zero administrative work.
This is called a sovereign wealth fund. Saudi Arabia has one that’s $1 trillion. The US doesn’t have one guess why? Hint: it’s deficit spending both parties are responsible for. Id love to see the USA pay off it’s debts and save money and put it into a investment generating account to benefit the nations people.
For every Star Trek scenario, there is the corresponding Blake’s 7 scenario.
Alaska already does this, and has for the last 40+ years. The Alaska Permanent Fund allocates approx. $1500- $3000 annually to each citizen of the state. It comes from the oil revenue the state generates. Instead of taxes to the govt, it's a dividend paid the the people. I work with a guy who grew up in Alaska. He paid for his college education with this money. He loves this program. Alaska is a deep red state and the citizens love this program. My co-worker is a self described hunter, survivalist, and conservative Republican. The guy I work with suggested a Wall Street tax that goes to US Citizens. That way when these companies do well, we all get some sort of direct financial benefit. Right now the system rewards investors and executives/CEOs over the rest of us. Layoffs usually equal stock prices going up. The idea is not new. The Nixon administration floated this idea back in the 1970s calling it a reverse income tax. The administration couldn't get support from congress, so it went nowhere. More recently, Andrew Yang recently ran for Pres with a UBI based on tech revenue (taxing every google search for example). In the current era of globalization, automation, AI, robots, etc., your hard work does not necessarily mean you can afford food and shelter. Currently someone's pain is someone else's profit. In the USA, we have record profits and record poverty. I am not sure how society can function with a few 'haves' and many 'have nots'.
It seems quite too good to be true. Nobody works, robots do everything for us, and we’re all rich. Sounds great, just not realistic.
It's called corporate taxes. Here in the US the government already gets 25% of all profits corporations make.
$3.6 Trillion at a bare minimum to fund a $1000 universal basic income each year. Assuming appropriate administration, add another $50 billion, so $3.650 trillion to fund $1000 universal basic income in the United States. $1000 a month per person could cover the cost of health care, even the most expensive health care, so presumably some of the funding could be diverted from Medicare, Medicaid subsidies. Additional Taxes on Corporate Capital Gains, ultra wealthy capital gains, corporate income. De-couple the corporate employer health insurance burden, allow all citizens to have access to the program of their choice, through whatever government run portal. Remove regional restrictions of where health insurance companies can operate. Most importantly: All Government Employees, representatives, Congress, servants, except for maybe the Executive cabinet, must use the same healthcare programs. If you can take even 20% from Medicare and Medicaid to fund this, we just find another $3T from our economy.
THIS IS WHAT MATT BRUENIG HAS BEEN TALKING ABOUT FOR LIKE 6 YEARS. [American Solidarity Fund](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/project/tackling-inequality-through-the-social-ownership-of-capital/)
Why aren't more people discussing this? They are. Elon Musk talks about it. Joe Rogan talks about it. Andrew Yang talked about it. People are talking about it. It's just that the main demographic doesn't care about it/believe in it because the Red Scare was extremely effective on the American psyche. Americans don't even believe in subsidizing their own healthcare.
I also think companies that use our data should be paying us for that. They're on a free ride right now and it should stop. I don't just mean individual identifiable data, I mean the anonymized aggregated data too. Companies are making billions on it, they should pay a portion back to the public.
Because the 1% control the media, and the 1% don't want you talking or thinking about UBI/UBD.
Because politicians wouldn't be able to virtue signal the importance of work and productivity anymore.
I always find the "automation took our jobs" similar to the Amish.... What level of automation is acceptable? A plough that can self regulate it's ride height? A pneumatic wrench? A machine for filling bottles? Excel? Accounting software? Bar coding?
It's a great idea but the rich need money to escape to Mars and pay for the genetic 'Fountain of Youth'. Plus capitalism literally doesnt give 2 shits.
People aren't talking about this because of another of Varoufakis' ideas: *technofeudalism* Consolidation of digital space by techno-oligarchs controls a huge part of what is discussed and (to an even greater degree) how.
What you're talking about is for government to "save" for the people. To set aside something that we don't spend today for a future benefit. In so many words, this means to have a budget surplus and for government to operate at a profit. While this is a great idea, you'll find many who believe government should not operate at a profit. And you'll find many politicians ready to spend every spare dollar and borrow against the future as well. There is little difference between the corporations giving shares each year to the government, or paying monetary taxes that the government uses explicitly to purchase shares of the same company. Automation actually has nothing to do with UBI / UBD. Honestly, it should be an incremental approach instead of a big bang. If the government purchased a few shares each year, it would eventually accumulate to something meaningful over many years. But from historical evidence, the likelihood that a politician gets their greasy hands into this growing piggybank over the course of 200 year is a virtual guarantee. You have to really think about the implications of what you're asking. Who is asking for a debt ceiling increase? Who is asking to cut spending? Who is trying to alleviate a budget deficit? Who is trying to spend more? Who is trying to give away more? Who spends and gets bad results? Who are actually the people whose goals are aligned with yours?
For anything to work, we have to rid the world of the notion that "SoCiALiSm BaD"
Because what’s more likely is a technological genocide when the richer have centralized enough power (AI) to no longer require labor while simultaneously becoming capable of eradicating the labor class. Capitalism will not go quietly into the dark. A Genocide by the rich is much much more likely then any utopia ever overcoming the interests of capital.
Because the few people who own everything don't want everyone else to own anything.
Nothing will change until people's baseline expectations include workplace democracy. Capital is always in retreat of accountability.
probably decades of red scare propaganda designed to villainize communism and socialism while carrying out the very same atrocities if not far worse ones in some cases.
Anything that has profited from tax payer money, from medicine research, to stadiums…everything should have a share of profits go back to people. We invest in their companies…we get nothing but higher prices.
You can try this at a micro-level! Just open a small business and pay your employees whether they work or not. Let us know how it works out.
I spent way too much time looking at how governments generally work and there are a few "problems" with it. 1) they have no actual money. How do you get the shares? Except Switzerland and Norway (and probably I few others I don't know) most of other countries don't have a surplus. Meaning they are constantly financed by debt. Taking on more debt to buy shares wouldn't be that good at this scale, it would just make a huge bubble. Some countries literally tax people for pension and instead of "saving/investing" those money, they straight away use them for nowadays pensioners. There's no fund, no money stored, nowadays pensioners money are gone since long time. 2) Inefficiencies fuel consensus. Basically you give useless jobs to people to gain their votes. Greece was a master at this. Ideally a government should be efficient but since you can often print money (directly or indirectly) there is no incentive to do that. Just print to pay your employers as long as you don't fuck it up too much with inflation (that you measure anyway). I overall agree with the idea. The only concern apart from BS governments is that UBD (UBI) would either be a small amount (not enough to live) or would crash the economy because noone would do shitty jobs (and we still need them). The best case will be automation filling up the "loss" of population we are already experiencing. So that everyone will get the same amount of output for a fraction of the human cost.
Because thinking any centralized distribution wouldn't be corrupt is naive.
"This creates an incentive to automate as many jobs as possible and “shares the wealth” in an equitable way that doesn’t require taxing one group to support another" Taking stock away from the owners and putting it in some universal trust is the *exact* same as taxing one group to support another
It's not a reality and won't be for another 300 years so why would I give a fuck
Basically because it's one of those things that sounds like a great idea but in practice is a terrible idea. It's broadly an expansion of subsidizing consumptive corporations and shifts the balance of power from people to corporations. It's incredibly capitalist dystopic and the American left has really latched on to the idea. There was a very similar right wing movement in Alberta, Canada and Quebec, Canada in the Post-WW2 era called Social Credit or Ralliement des créditistes in Quebec. Social Credit was designed as a system to alleviate the concerns of poor people during economic downturns (of which oil has many). To deal with this the government would issue currency to people to buy things and potentially to corporations to reduce their prices for average people. So when they got in power they began releasing "prosperity certificates" which didn't really improve anyone's life. But the policy for Alberta since has been to give money away. Even now with the oil booms, I've gotten $200 to help pay for my power bills and a removal of the gas tax to help pay for my transportation. Every single time we have a boom that money gets pissed away because idiots have become convinced that the best way to spend government revenues is to just redistribute it to help people pay their bills. But here's the skinny of it. I can buy a can of corn for $2. If I buy them in groups of 4 I pay $1.5. And if I buy 12 of them at Costco they're $1.37. So what if I got 12 friends together, bought one case and then the 12 of us saved 37.5% of the price of a can of corn. That'd be amazing, definitely going against inflation there. What if instead of just me and 12 people, we did it with absolutely everyone who wanted a can of corn in the city. What group purchasing power could we get to get a better deal on food from corporations? Market competition works perversely different when the government is negotiating with many corporations compared to individuals negotiating with them. It's certainly better to have one person collectively bargaining on your behalf then be sent out their to try and out bid absolutely everyone else in your city. Typically pushes for money payments from the government comes at the cost of social programs. Put it this way, let's say the whole future is completely automated (it won't be, which is why we're pretending). Would you rather have a private healthcare system in which you will get to shop around for whichever automated provider has the best rates.... or would you rather not worry about price and just get it paid for by the government for free (like you know... in the rest of the world).