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Right, but those don't exist in a vacuum. There are people who funded that research and think that they should own the fruits of the labor as per the contracts

Right, but those don't exist in a vacuum. There are people who funded that research and think that they should own the fruits of the labor as per the contracts that they executed with the people they paid to perform the work. If you want to do away with various kinds of property rights that's a valid argument to make. But you don't get to pretend that it isn't a new, different way. Ultimately you're going to take some things from some people in order to give it to other people. Maybe that's smart, maybe it's not. But no matter how you slice it, it's not manna from heaven.

afterburner 11y ago
It's called taxes, and it doesn't "do away with various kinds of property rights"
- msandford 11y ago
  The amount of taxes and the laser-like focus of said taxation required to make basic income both workable and meaningful for the population at large won't really feel like taxes. 60% of all income above $X per year versus the 40% now is a tax, sure. But the original comment was "The money for basic income will come from automation driven productivity improvements." So you're going to make a new tax of 500% on sales of automation equipment? Or 50% of the money saved per year by your installation of automation equipment? And then hire several million auditors to go inspect every facility in the country every year to ensure that people aren't installing unregistered automation equipment? There are already a bunch of tax laws on the books that should make those automation drive increases in profitability get taxed and go into the government's coffers. But companies are very adept at finding loopholes, getting new loopholes, etc. Structuring their business so as to minimize their tax burden. I think it's pretty obvious that just "raising taxes" won't accomplish enough revenue to make basic income work. So that means you've got to do something new, and something that probably won't feel like any previous tax ever levied. While you might argue that if it's a tax it's a tax (and that's probably technically true) there's a huge difference between increasing existing tax rates and generating substantially new tax law.
cma 11y ago
>Ultimately you're going to take some things from some people in order to give it to other people. You're already doing that with capitalism with land. Take a private beach as an example, no one created it, the state just added property rights to it and gave it out at some point. Oftentimes in the US you can trace land ownership all the way back to the original grant of a King or Queen.

afterburner 11y ago

It's called taxes, and it doesn't "do away with various kinds of property rights"

msandford 11y ago
The amount of taxes and the laser-like focus of said taxation required to make basic income both workable and meaningful for the population at large won't really feel like taxes. 60% of all income above $X per year versus the 40% now is a tax, sure. But the original comment was "The money for basic income will come from automation driven productivity improvements." So you're going to make a new tax of 500% on sales of automation equipment? Or 50% of the money saved per year by your installation of automation equipment? And then hire several million auditors to go inspect every facility in the country every year to ensure that people aren't installing unregistered automation equipment? There are already a bunch of tax laws on the books that should make those automation drive increases in profitability get taxed and go into the government's coffers. But companies are very adept at finding loopholes, getting new loopholes, etc. Structuring their business so as to minimize their tax burden. I think it's pretty obvious that just "raising taxes" won't accomplish enough revenue to make basic income work. So that means you've got to do something new, and something that probably won't feel like any previous tax ever levied. While you might argue that if it's a tax it's a tax (and that's probably technically true) there's a huge difference between increasing existing tax rates and generating substantially new tax law.

cma 11y ago

>Ultimately you're going to take some things from some people in order to give it to other people. You're already doing that with capitalism with land. Take a private beach as an example, no one created it, the state just added property rights to it and gave it out at some point. Oftentimes in the US you can trace land ownership all the way back to the original grant of a King or Queen.