A compelling review of the authors work, but I think there would be benefit from dropping the early references to UBI: LVT is an interesting approach and line of reasoning. UBI is a political hotbed with deeply acrimonious feelings on all sides.
When you align one idea with an external one, you are adopting all that external baggage - it's a cheap way to get a few additional people to agree, but at the cost of a bunch of other people seeing what they perceive as warning signs of a class of ideas they are suspicious of.
It's important to have confidence in your idea, on its own merits.
It's actually a really key part of the functioning of the LVT. It is fuel to grow the economy, just like the LVT is the stick that punishes those who hold back the economy by hoarding land.
At least, that's my opinion. Carrot based economic policies have a tendency of working in multiples of the money involved, and penalties a bit less than that.
More money in the hands of the entire population have a multiplicative effect in the economy, as it spurs more spending, and that spending is organic choices by tons of people, rather than it just sitting in the investment accounts of a few wealthy people.
The fuel of capitalism is a large population of consumers. To be extent that we have inequality and we have lots of people that are unable to make economic choices due to poverty, we limit the growth of the economy.
One of the lessons of macroeconomics is that subsidizing demand doesn’t really grow the economy, it’s mostly just results in inflation. Obviously not a hard law but if UBI causes people to work less then the economy will shrink, no matter how much stuff people want to buy.
My understanding is that UBI experiments show that is not the case. UBI is a safety net, and does not lead to a significant drop in labor. With the pending waves of AI and automation impacting labor we'd be well-served to continue to explore how to make it work.
PeterHolzwarth · · focus · HN ↗
When you align one idea with an external one, you are adopting all that external baggage - it's a cheap way to get a few additional people to agree, but at the cost of a bunch of other people seeing what they perceive as warning signs of a class of ideas they are suspicious of.
It's important to have confidence in your idea, on its own merits.
epistasis · · focus · HN ↗
At least, that's my opinion. Carrot based economic policies have a tendency of working in multiples of the money involved, and penalties a bit less than that.
rudolftheone · · focus · HN ↗
Care to explain how it would work in practice?
epistasis · · focus · HN ↗
The fuel of capitalism is a large population of consumers. To be extent that we have inequality and we have lots of people that are unable to make economic choices due to poverty, we limit the growth of the economy.
HDThoreaun · · focus · HN ↗
pstuart · · focus · HN ↗
My understanding is that UBI experiments show that is not the case. UBI is a safety net, and does not lead to a significant drop in labor. With the pending waves of AI and automation impacting labor we'd be well-served to continue to explore how to make it work.
<a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w32719/w32719.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w32719/w327...