Alain,
I agree with much of what you wrote. Not so sure about a flat tax.
Something more will be required to redistribute the extreme wealth of
the top 1%.
As you say, many will take the opportunity to work, Many small startup
companies. There will be growth in the entertainment business and
interesting consequences from sexbots.
Possibly the most important aspect is restarting GDP growth. Beats me
why economists can't see that the problem is too many people struggling
under debt that they can't afford to buy new stuff.
On 11/24/2016 6:21 AM, Alain Sepeda wrote:
UBI can be implement in many way.
Libertarians/Liberalist/FreeMarketFan promote a vision that is
intended to replace charity, yet to keep unconditionally an incentive
to work.
the big recognized problem of todays social safety nets is that it is
a tax, a disincentive on people who get out of poverty. In country
like France this tax may sometime not be far from 90%, if not above
100% (at least facially at short term).
another problem I know well is that safety net follow a bourgeoisie
vision of how to behave, of what is good, how to earn your life, how
to be organized...
It may be counter productive.
Earning your life only by selling garden vegetable, driving for Uber,
babysittng, renting your tools, buying and selling on e-bay,
delivering salad, should not be punished compared to looking for a
full-time work in a factory.
Living in a trail and using all your money to skydive should not be
treated differently as owning a big house and playing in the garden.
UBI also is , contrary to the myth, promoting MORE work and MORE risk
taking, more investments, more school. It was measured in india with
poor people.
note that for the UBI to be neutral, it should be associated with a
flat tax that make any way to earn your life as attractive as any other.
Neutrality is essential, so flat tax and unconditionality are keys.
In fact most people are more intelligent to solve their own problems
than administration (this is the anti-communist moto). they better
know where to invest, BUT if they are in risk of ruin, starvation,
death, they refuse to take risk, and as any financial expert know this
mean getting less benefits.
UBI is a life insurance that promote risk taking, entrepreneur spirit,
investments in education and business... It is also a way to transform
a flat tax system into a globally progressive tax rate, keeping the
marginal tax rate neutral.
UBI can really boost the economy.
of course it can be implemented wrongly. It will probably be, and many
UBI announces propose something not unconditional, not basic, not neutral.
For example in France most observers imagine that it will not be
universal, it won't cancel all other charity system, so it will just
be a new fat charity system, not an autonomy enabling system to
"laisser-faire" the people.
Note that about the disappearance of work, I am opposing this vision.
Work will not disappear. Work will move BACK to a less "factory-style"
notion of job (exploiting submissive taylorized zombies and
bureaucratic managers), and we will go a little back to what is fund
in Africa, in Uber, but not totally as stable workforce is useful (NB:
a French company operating Amazon like online shops in many African
countries explained thay have to improve fidelity and training of a
usually Uberized workforce).
However full-time life-time work will probably not be possible nor
desirable, and people will have multiple activities, including usual
work, but also independent work, off-time businesses, e-bay shops,
UberPop phases, like you see in emerging countries.
This is why neutral UBI is a key to make full-time-work not a
condition to be protected by the community.
2016-11-23 22:19 GMT+01:00 Jed Rothwell <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>:
Brian Ahern <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
This is neo-communism.
Yes, it is. Except that instead of exploiting other people's
labor, it would exploit robots. Robots don't care. They will not
be upset.
All of us helped develop robots and computers with our tax money,
so we should all get the benefits from them.
- Jed
