Technological Unemployment: The Real Reason This Elephant Ch

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Some disagreements with UBI from Stefan Molyneux:

you're never too uneducated to work for the government,
and surveillance don't want a brain at the workplace neither, some extra weight's ok though

It seems like a crucial layer of complexity, considering how many massive economic changes have resulted from plummeting costs of international trade.

Gains from trade are sufficient to raise all boats. The math is simple and clear. To me, the key question here is: why don't they?

Lol, is that what Stefan is? That's a bizarre outlook for him to have and admittedly I haven't listened to him a whole lot so if he's said anything in favor of AnCap I haven't peeled back that layer.

I guess I just posted that in the interest of trying to be at least somewhat balanced and not spending the whole thread one-sidedly promoting UBI. He did give an important critique about sustainability, ie. when you multiply $12K by a couple hundred million or more you end up in a fair amount of trouble. To that end I don't know what we can do aside from just trying to drive down the prices of basic living costs such as housing, food, water, utilities, etc. for the lowest earners to see if we can get to a place where even part-time minimum wage jobs wouldn't have people out on the street or needing most of what keeps them off of the street to come out of the government's pocket.

I think that last point is one of the biggest critiques I'd give our current economy - ie. the cost of basic entry, the ability to pay all of your bills, is something a lot of people just can't do and there aren't any scale-down options available to offer that possibility.

I don't think its reasonable to treat a government budget like a household budget. If a sovereign nation can print its own money, then the purpose of taxation is to control inflation. The problem is coming up with a flexible taxation system that can be enforced and can be kept more safe from blatant abuse by special interests. I think in the future it might be possible to replace income tax with a progressive form of sales tax. The rate goes up the more you spend in a given time period. To do the calculations, all transactions will have to take place electronically rather than using physical currency.

That clearly has its limits though and you can only go over-budget here and there, not as a permanent matter of course. Otherwise permanent deficit spending isn't even Keynesianism, it's it's own sort of economic religion.