mwalsh said: “Near unlimited amount of anything? Then why are fuel cells and catalytic converters limited by the amount of platinum we have, a LIMITED resource.”
That is why it says “near” unlimited. But free enterprise, markets and human ingenuity certainly has the capability of overcoming the limits of platinum availability!! Platinum does not in any way limit our ability to make clean transportation! We can develop alternatives to anything.
mwalsh said: “If everyone is paid a lot, doesn’t that act the same as inflation, and the prices are just bid up for the goods?”
No, the redistribution of EXISTING income does NOT create inflation (it just changes the make up of what is produced). Inflation happens when you increase the money supply more than the amount of stuff available to buy.
Edit: I think I may have misread your question. If you are asking whether this could cause a price bubble, then the answer is yes. If everyone got a $50k increase in income overnight, certainly that would cause people to buy more stuff than what is available. So that would cause prices to spike. The prudent thing would be a more gradual implementation of this plan so that our productive capacity has time to adjust.
mwalsh said: “Isn’t that what a job market is for? To try and get everyone into a job they feel adequately compensated for, and like what they are doing?”
Not without any intervention. Otherwise we would not have any cashiers and we would have little income disparity. People dont become cashiers because they love ringing up sales. And people dont get low paying jobs because they want to live a simple life.
You will never have an economy that eliminates the need for people to work jobs (activities people dont wanna do) and where 100% are wealthy without intervention.
mwalsh said: “Isn’t that what you have now? The freedom, maybe not the liberty, to quit your job and [not work at all to volunteer or raise a family, etc…]?”
No! You do not have that liberty unless you are rich, you don’t have the freedom to not work at all. How is anyone able to survive without an income??
mwalsh said: “Okay so we tax people to give it back, why not just not tax to begin with if we are giving dividends?”
The purpose is to redistribute total income to reduce the income disparity and make it so everyone is wealthy at a minimum. Everyone who makes under $400,000 per year will get an increase in income. And the purpose is to also give people the option to do things other than working a job.
You cannot accomplish any of that by eliminating taxes.
mwalsh said: “So I can, if I feel $20k is enough to live on, quit, lose no income, and have 168hrs of free time a week? And if I made more than $40k a year, there is no incentive to work more, as I begin to lose more than a receive- at $40k, I pay $20k in tax, receive $20k, at $50k, pay $25k, get $20k back, net of $45k, at $100k, pay $50k, get $20k back, net $70k, so why should I work harder?”
Yes, you can stop working and live off of the $20k if you choose.
But your calculations are off. The dividend is NOT welfare. The $20k dividend gets paid to every adult no matter whether you work or not or are rich or poor. So the income you earn from working will be in ADDITION to the $20k.
mwalsh said: “Okay, now all you did was raise the ceiling that people would work towards. Its now $100k, not $40k And $30k is an “upper-class income”?”
The same goes for the $30k worker bonus. It gets paid to every worker. So if you work, you will get paid a $20k divided, a $30k dividend, plus whatever your salary is. You are getting paid a total dividend of $50k on top of whatever you make at your job.
If your job pays $25k per year, your total income will be $75k. If your job pays $80k, your total income will be $130k.
In other words, every single worker gets a $50k pay increase, which is enough to give the avg worker an upper class income.
Unlike welfare or minimum wage, this does not interfere with the pricing of labor.
“But don’t you eliminate retail jobs? Each of which are mini-sales pitches, guess you must eliminate this manifesto….[which says it wants to sell you on the idea in the manifesto]”
The goal is to eliminate the need for people to work retail sales jobs using automation. There is no retail salesperson hired to sell this manifesto! The sales of this manifesto are done using automation. It is called the internet (you know, the series of connected tubes).
And just like the internet can automate the sales of this manifesto without the need for anyone to work a retail job, the internet can do the same for every other product being sold.
“Soviet Union? The taxes went back to pay the workers, and that worked great!”
Right, using taxes to pay everyone a dividend (which was advocated by Rothbard, Hayek and Milton Friedman) will turn the USA into the soviet union!!!
So you think the problem with the soviet union was that it had taxes? It wasnt because it was the violent takeover of some poor destitute third world country, who hasnt even entered the age of industrialization yet, by a tyrannical gangster, hell bent on ruling the world, who then strips the entire population of their decency and rights, so he can enlist them in his conquest of the world?
“Everyone Earns An Upper-Class Income”
mwalsh said: "I thought upper-class was a relative term, like “top 20%,”
It means it gives you an income that will give you the standard of living equivalent to someone who is currently in the upper-class.
“Okay, so robots can repair robots, and robots can spot check robots, and robots can drive cars without hitting pedestrians… right.”
Yes, robots can do all of those things. Get better informed. According to their study, we already have the automation capabilities to eliminate 55% of all jobs.
“Show me a robot who can replace Warren Buffet or A robot that can replace an engineer or architect.”
I cant, that is why the manifesto says that it can eliminate 80% of jobs, not 100% of jobs. Some jobs we cannot automate like engineering. But they only make up 20% of the jobs we do. However, in the future robots will be able to anything a human can.
“I’d say today’s capitalism work, even hobbled by the gov’t would awe the pharaohs or kings or the past, lets see- anti-malaria meds, air conditioning, airplanes, electricity, cruise ships, cranes…..”
I agree.
“Work for your robot overlords! Work to produce them so they can feed you to produce them.”
You are missing the point. The robots work for us. Humans only do the creative, intellectual work, the kind of work we like to do in our free time, even if we werent getting paid. The robots do all the labor.
“Eh.. somewhat right, yes, automation helps, but also the knowledge and capital that went into in, not the automation itself, but this “eliminating” of jobs is false, it allows jobs to be reallocated, expanding the economy.”
As explained in the manifesto, increased production comes from increasing material or labor or know how. Automation enables us to increase our labor, making us more productive and more wealthy.
And according to the luddite fallacy, yes automation eliminates old jobs and creates new ones. However, since automation can now eliminate nearly any low skilled job, the only new jobs being created are very high skill jobs that not everyone is capable of doing. Not everyone can be a doctor, engineer or entrepreneur.
Without intervention, automation will just create more structural unemployment and greater income disparity.
manifesto said: “The only work anyone should do is the kind of work they would do if they didn’t have a job to go to.”
“mwalsh said: Definition: then it isn’t work…”
Not true. Raising a family requires a lot of work and you don’t get paid for it. Work is anything productive, regardless of whether you get paid for it.
The goal of the economy is to get all our work from leisure activities (work we like to do) instead of jobs (work we dont like to do).
“Okay, so the people whose jobs can’t be replaced will work and be exempt from this “utopian” society?”
Every adult gets paid a $20k dividend. Every worker gets paid an additional $30k. Whatever you get paid at your job you make on top of the $50k in dividends.
There will also be volunteer work available to everyone who wants to volunteer that will qualify you for the $30k dividend.
And the $30k dividend is also paid to every post-secondary student.
So if you dont work at all u make $20k. If you cant find a job but are willing to volunteer, you will make $50k. If you get a paid job, you make $50k plus whatever your salary is.
“We have real problems that need to be worked on like curing disease, developing the next generation of energy, and figuring out why we exist in this universe and how it all works.”
“Real” problems are subjective, are they not? Some people know why we exist, it’s called religion, and each explains it in its own way.
No, problems are not only subjective. It is an objective fact that we have a disease problem and an energy problem. I would concede that knowing how the universe works is a subjective problem.
“Okay, so we are to guarantee college like Spain? A BS or BA degree is nothing there, like the guaranteed HS diploma is nothing here in America.”
An education is not nothing! We need educated people in order to progress.
“Where did you say this [dividend] was based on GDP?”
The dividends are funded by taxes which are a percentage of total national income which is based on GDP.
“In our current system, 94% of all the workers in this country will never earn a six-figure, upper-class income. But with the $50,000 tax bonus, we have just raised the average worker earnings to a six-figure, upper-class income. And we are just getting started.”
No you didn’t… unless they are already earning $100k, there is no improvement to 6 figures…
If you earn $45k under this plan, you will take home $72.5 after taxes which is about what you will take home if you earned $100k under our current system.
“Making every citizen wealthy, instead of making the government wealthy, is a far better, a far more efficient, and a far more humane use of tax money.”
Yeah! We are humane now, we steal from people to give it back to them!
Steal!?! It will be done with everyone’s permission. Taxes is not theft. Few things in life are free. If you want to live in the USA, you have to pay a fee which is collected through taxes. If you don’t like that fee, you could shop elsewhere.
“All power comes from income. End of story.”
So guns don’t give people power over people?
The rifle you can buy with your $10k income is not going to overpower someone with $1 billion in income who has tanks, nukes, drones and stealth fighter planes.
“How will 1 $1500 computer, which means at best a 2.5Ghz processor handle all these transactions [of the entire banking system]!?”
It is a literary technique called hyperbole. It is not meant to be taken literally. It will obviously require server farms. But it can be run entirely with FED servers with a fraction of the FED’s current budget.
The point is that you can eliminate the trillions in costs and millions in commercial banking jobs. You can eliminate the entire commercial banking industry.
