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Thomas Paine's Argument for Basic Income Explained

123 points by micaeloliveira 11y ago

nwah1 11y ago
As many classical liberals noted, when you take the Law of Equal Liberty to its natural conclusion, it necessarily entails equal rights to the use of the Earth. However, since exclusive access rights to locations are a practical necessity, all those who are excluded must be given restitution.
- djschnei 11y ago
  I disagree. Rights to locations are a practical necessity to classical liberalism itself, and are not at all at odds with its logic. The basic foundation of liberty is the ability to own private property. I think most (if not all) classic liberal thinkers would object to the assertion that my ownership of private property requires restitution to be given to anyone.
  - AstralStorm 11y ago
    If the right if restricted to very rich or other highly exclusive group, then you could say people are functionally deprived of basic liberty. This is exactly what happens in current form of capitalism due to high cost of entry into most markets. Including property markets.
    - djschnei 11y ago
      I'm going to assume (and I do apologize if I am incorrect) that you're in the Bernie camp? I agree with the lions share of what you just said. But the collusion between big government and big business is entirely culpable for the "rigged system". Always find it amusing/perplexing that so many people's solution to this rigged system is to give even more power to the coercive half of the equation... Our current form of capitalism (crony) is in direct opposition to free-market capitalism. The prior can not be used as a functional con of the latter. Suggesting so is entirely illogical.
  - RodericDay 11y ago
    If a limited good, such as land, is diced and divided between people based on merit, and later these people have offspring, how do you handle the ensuing dispute over ownership of those goods? Within a "classical liberal" framework, I mean.
  - danharaj 11y ago
    > The basic foundation of liberty is the ability to own private property. I think you're perfectly allowed to define liberty that way, but there are plenty of people who wouldn't call that liberty.
    - knieveltech 11y ago
      Indeed. Freedom to seek rents or horde resources isn't what I'd define as liberty. More like the foundation of exploitation.
      - vixen99 11y ago
        So don't let's have any enterprise which depends on 'hoarded' resources! Life is, exploitation - eventually bugs and other life forms will make use of everyone's personal resources. This is not to say that exploitation can't be nuanced. People who throw the word 'exploitation' around often mean they and their comrades want to do the forcible exploiting based on their personal moral preferences.
        danharaj 11y ago
        Exploitation has a narrower sense when people are talking about capitalism. It describes the relationship between those who do wage labor and those who extract profit from the product of wage labor. Your sense of the word 'exploitation' is much too broad to be useful, imo.
    - djschnei 11y ago
      Well... plenty of people are wrong. Have you seen the current election cycle? :)
  - bcheung 11y ago
    What do you consider rights to locations? The scenario being described requires people who want to use the land to purchase rights to the land. They can use the land but they don't own the land -- it's more like renting. Any improvements upon the land are theirs 100% though. Not sure if you read Paine's arguments but here are the important points. 1) Mankind inherited the earth and in the beginning wandered the earth as hunter and gathers. Nobody owned the land -- everyone had equal claim to it and could use it for their sustenance. 2) Governments formed and claimed monopolies on the land. They took "ownership" of the land without compensation to the original owners (everyone). This constitutes the use of force and violates the principle of non-aggression. 3) In order to make it fair, compensation must be given to the original owner. This makes it a fair transaction and is what Thomas Paine is proposing.
    - ctdonath 11y ago
      Sounds like property taxes: pay annual "fair value" for the lot you've claimed, and if you stop paying you get evicted.
      - djschnei 11y ago
        soooo the steps: 1) nobody owned the land 2) governments formed and took the land 3) now we need to rent our purchased land from the government?
        bcheung 11y ago
        And also 4) the rent proceeds go back to the people. The people are the real owners. The government is just the administrative agent acting on their behalf.
        djschnei 11y ago
        I mean this in the nicest way possible... It's cute that you think that. By that logic, assuming you are a tax payer, you are $159k+ in debt thanks to the government acting on your behalf. http://www.usdebtclock.org/ http://www.usdebtclock.org/
  - clavalle 11y ago
    > The basic foundation of liberty is the ability to own private property. The foundation of liberty is the freedom to make your own decisions and exercise your own will. If the ability to own private property was the base what happens when you are a person that does not own any property? What if, in the extreme case, a single person or entity owns all of the property and you must either serve them or starve? Is that liberty?
    - djschnei 11y ago
      "The basic foundation" might be the wrong way to word it. That would suggest it is the ONLY tenet, which is misleading. However, private property rights are absolutely a tenet of [classic] liberal thinking. > The foundation of liberty is the freedom to make your own decisions and exercise your own will. I think that is a common misconception. Liberty =/= Freedom. Absolute freedom, in fact, can be an obstruction to liberty (which I think is what your extreme example eludes to). However, let's work through your example; how did they acquire all the property? If they did it without violating other people's property rights (i.e. voluntary exchange) than I think that would answer your question. It's kind of a non question (and I don't mean that rudely) - It just wouldn't happen. Every other person would have to give him/her all the "property" for free.
      - my5thaccount 11y ago
        The land was given away to people, in the US, up to about 100 years ago, just for staking a claim on the land. Up to 40 acres per person. Many made illegal claims to more than one. Many of the wealthy quickly bought them up. You can learn more about it here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Acts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Acts
        djschnei 11y ago
        You're kind of preaching to the choir here...
      - clavalle 11y ago
        It is a bit of a non-question but it illustrates a point. So let's say that person acquires all of the property through voluntary exchange. Ok. Now, what about the next generation who now live under that person's (or their descendant's) control of that property? They can demand anything they like (in this case their time and service) in exchange for the non-property owner's survival. Are those voluntary transactions? While more than one person owns different parts of everything, this is essentially the situation a lot of people find themselves in...they must trade their time and service in exchange for their survival. That seems less than voluntary to me and a violation of liberty. Granted, as you pointed out, absolute freedom cannot exist...there is a trade-off when freedoms of different entities collide. This is as true in the realm of private property as anywhere else, perhaps more so since certain people start off with so much more control, therefore choices and freedom, when it comes to property, from birth. All men are certainly not created equal when it comes to those rights. So, the question is what has to give in the realm of private property rights in order to achieve maximum liberty (or at least approach that ideal)? Treating private property rights as sacrosanct leads to an obstruction of liberty as surely as treating any other exercise of control (IOW, freedom) would.
aaron-lebo 11y ago
Nation-states are too large to effectively test things like basic income. Those pushing basic income and expecting it to fix many problems aren't paying attention to the fact that that's how every policy got started, as a cure-all massive policy proposal. Over the years, like object-oriented programming, we realize that in practice it isn't as ideal as we thought, and indeed we've now abstracted and complicated our systems even more. We need a more scientific, incremental form of governance and policy-making, one that is evolutionary and takes natural organic approaches. Basic income is the exact opposite of that - a massive (the most massive) policy ever constructed which presupposes way too much. If you want to and can test it at the state level great. States should be the "laboratories of democracy". But we need some realism about it, because far too many discussions about it are not.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- mikeash 11y ago
  I don't see anything wrong with cure-all massive policy proposals. Some of them have worked in the past. For example, separating from the British Empire, freeing the slaves, and ending alcohol prohibition. (That last one has an obvious mirror in starting alcohol prohibition, but my point is just that they can work, not that they all do.) And yes, these all brought problems with them, but they were massive improvements. I also don't see how this is "how every policy got started." There are plenty of policies that are incremental, evolutionary, and all that. Obviously, big policy changes need to be approached very cautiously, since the potential for problems is huge. But that means you analyze and consider them carefully, not just say "nope, too big" and shut it down.
  - RodericDay 11y ago
    Jacobin had a somewhat interesting piece on Alexander Hamilton vs. Thomas Jefferson a while back (https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/08/reading-hamilton-from-the-left/ https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/08/reading-hamilton-from-the...), and the magnitude of policy proposals.
  - 11y ago
djschnei 11y ago
A negative income tax is, imho, the least morally reprehensible replacement for our current welfare state (which is extremely immoral).
- Inthenameofmine 11y ago
  Negative income tax + citizen dividend would be awesome. Also completely dynamic and self adjusting.
notahacker 11y ago
Paine's arguments, which have been widely expanded on by geolibertarians, are compelling but what he's specifically advocating here is most naturally interpreted as extremely limited compared with what developed world governments offer their populace instead. Fundamentally, he's arguing that people should be compensated to allow them to reach the same standard of living as would have been possible in the absence of civilization and proposing a subsidy in the region of £1000 per annum in today's sterling to compensate. That's far closer to the Alaska Permanent Fund in both ideological underpinnings and magnitude than it is to being an adequate welfare state replacement[1]. Of course, we could speculate that he'd advocate a much higher subsidy in today's land of relative plenty, but his 1797 argument is quite explicit in suggesting that people are owed no more than the value of the life they could have enjoyed in a Native American "state of nature" and the landed classes owe no more than that. Fortunately today we have new arguments for the economic benefits of universal education and necessity of unemployment insurance in an economy managed to ensure some level of involuntary unemployment persists. [1]£1k per year for Paine's average 30 year adult remaining lifespan plus £1.5k at 21 is less than my government's investment in my education...
- bcheung 11y ago
  As a Libertarian who believes in the Singularity and that the workplace will be displaced by AI I think basic income and the Geolibertarian, Agrarian Justice, Georgism style basic income is the only one that will work and that doesn't violate the principle of liberty and respect for personal property. With Internet based education, society has the potential to make education virtually free since the cost of distribution is essentially zero. It's only when people need access to special equipment or more hands on lab style education where facilities and mentors will be needed. There is still the problem of gentrification though as basic income will be the same everywhere but certain cities will be much more expensive than others. This will lead to skilled labor concentrating in geographic locations.
  - rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
    I think you're wrong about education. The difference between a decent and an amazing teacher can be phenominal, regardless of the syllabus. Plus, the best education is apprenticeship/on-the-job training, which makes humans even more necessary. The more we use technology, the greater the role people become. You can see any video on the Internet, but most of them are trash and a waste of time, so you look to the producers and curators you prefer. "Machines will make everything we want," people in your category tend to say. Yes, but who designs the clothing, and who markets it into your soul to make you feel incomplete without it? Who comes up with the recipes for your gourmet lunchtime subs? Whom do you trust to suggest one vacation locale over an other? Also, cynically put, this kind of societal transformation will require the dominant financial and political classes to willingly bestow the world with their riches, while giving away their power. When in history has that ever happened?
zeteo 11y ago
>To create a National Fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twentyone years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling [...] And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age This essay advocates a pension system, not basic income. The one-time payout at 21 is negligible in comparison with the annual payments after 50.
my5thaccount 11y ago
I've been looking through the GDP for a Living Stipend and this is what I have found thus far: Living Stipend tax/share 0.01 Population 320,000,000 NYSE 802,026,511,675 8,020,265,116.75 Forex 5,300,000,000,000 53,000,000,000.00 CBOE 1,274,776,218 12,747,762.18 Nasdaq 671,175,892,500 6,711,758,925.00 $67,744,771,803.93 TOTAL REVENUE OIL 6,970,000,000 10 69,700,000,000 FIN SERVICES 1,260,000,000,000 15% 189,000,000,000 TECH 606,000,000,000 15% 90,900,000,000 Entertainment 546,000,000,000 15% 81,900,000,000 PROFESSIONAL Services 1,500,000,000,000 15% 225,000,000,000 2,263.26 STIPEND PER PERSON PER YEAR I think we need more than this. There could be more if we stop asking the tax payers to subsidize the salaries of high level executives as well, but I haven't done that math yet. To explain the numbers above, $10/barrel for oil, a penny per share traded on the major stock exchanges. 15% tax on services, which aren't taxed. Why aren't we taxing lawyer fees for example or computer consulting services or massages? Of course we can take those numbers up a bit or down a bit in the appropriate areas, but we need about 10x that I think to really give people food and shelter security. I'm really shooting for $2,000 per month per household. I think there is a place somewhere in the country that any family could live on that amount of money and feed their families. Of course this would be adjusted based on family size and the numbers above are per person. An individual could survive on $1,000 per month I think and a family of 3 or 4 could survive on $2,000 per month if they do it right. If they don't they can get a job to supplement income. If they want to work more, they can do that too. Sorry for the formatting. I'm pasting from Excel.
- theseatoms 11y ago
  We do tax lawyer fees, computer consulting, and massages already. Right?
  - my5thaccount 11y ago
    No, not specifically at a federal level. Some states have business excise taxes but they are less than a percent for most businesses. I'm talking a tax on services like when you go buy food and the receipt has the tax added. The income tax on those professionals is the closest thing we have now, but blue collar workers pay that too and the products they make have a sales tax at the other end on top of their income tax.
emblem21 11y ago
In Paine's time, this theory of income was intended to stimulate expansion and conquest of virgin lands in the hopes of acquiring enough resources to offset and even contend against European powers to right certain ideological wrongs. Ironically, when this theory was practiced by America (via American-printed currency not bounded by metallic limitations) the credit expansion created a mechanism to conquer more and more virgin land to pay off the interest on the loan, which resulted in the elimination of Paine's ideal Native American strawman utopia.

123 points by micaeloliveira 11y ago

nwah1 11y ago

As many classical liberals noted, when you take the Law of Equal Liberty to its natural conclusion, it necessarily entails equal rights to the use of the Earth. However, since exclusive access rights to locations are a practical necessity, all those who are excluded must be given restitution.

djschnei 11y ago
I disagree. Rights to locations are a practical necessity to classical liberalism itself, and are not at all at odds with its logic. The basic foundation of liberty is the ability to own private property. I think most (if not all) classic liberal thinkers would object to the assertion that my ownership of private property requires restitution to be given to anyone.
- AstralStorm 11y ago
  If the right if restricted to very rich or other highly exclusive group, then you could say people are functionally deprived of basic liberty. This is exactly what happens in current form of capitalism due to high cost of entry into most markets. Including property markets.
  - djschnei 11y ago
    I'm going to assume (and I do apologize if I am incorrect) that you're in the Bernie camp? I agree with the lions share of what you just said. But the collusion between big government and big business is entirely culpable for the "rigged system". Always find it amusing/perplexing that so many people's solution to this rigged system is to give even more power to the coercive half of the equation... Our current form of capitalism (crony) is in direct opposition to free-market capitalism. The prior can not be used as a functional con of the latter. Suggesting so is entirely illogical.
- RodericDay 11y ago
  If a limited good, such as land, is diced and divided between people based on merit, and later these people have offspring, how do you handle the ensuing dispute over ownership of those goods? Within a "classical liberal" framework, I mean.
- danharaj 11y ago
  > The basic foundation of liberty is the ability to own private property. I think you're perfectly allowed to define liberty that way, but there are plenty of people who wouldn't call that liberty.
  - knieveltech 11y ago
    Indeed. Freedom to seek rents or horde resources isn't what I'd define as liberty. More like the foundation of exploitation.
    - vixen99 11y ago
      So don't let's have any enterprise which depends on 'hoarded' resources! Life is, exploitation - eventually bugs and other life forms will make use of everyone's personal resources. This is not to say that exploitation can't be nuanced. People who throw the word 'exploitation' around often mean they and their comrades want to do the forcible exploiting based on their personal moral preferences.
      - danharaj 11y ago
        Exploitation has a narrower sense when people are talking about capitalism. It describes the relationship between those who do wage labor and those who extract profit from the product of wage labor. Your sense of the word 'exploitation' is much too broad to be useful, imo.
  - djschnei 11y ago
    Well... plenty of people are wrong. Have you seen the current election cycle? :)
- bcheung 11y ago
  What do you consider rights to locations? The scenario being described requires people who want to use the land to purchase rights to the land. They can use the land but they don't own the land -- it's more like renting. Any improvements upon the land are theirs 100% though. Not sure if you read Paine's arguments but here are the important points. 1) Mankind inherited the earth and in the beginning wandered the earth as hunter and gathers. Nobody owned the land -- everyone had equal claim to it and could use it for their sustenance. 2) Governments formed and claimed monopolies on the land. They took "ownership" of the land without compensation to the original owners (everyone). This constitutes the use of force and violates the principle of non-aggression. 3) In order to make it fair, compensation must be given to the original owner. This makes it a fair transaction and is what Thomas Paine is proposing.
  - ctdonath 11y ago
    Sounds like property taxes: pay annual "fair value" for the lot you've claimed, and if you stop paying you get evicted.
    - djschnei 11y ago
      soooo the steps: 1) nobody owned the land 2) governments formed and took the land 3) now we need to rent our purchased land from the government?
      - bcheung 11y ago
        And also 4) the rent proceeds go back to the people. The people are the real owners. The government is just the administrative agent acting on their behalf.
        djschnei 11y ago
        I mean this in the nicest way possible... It's cute that you think that. By that logic, assuming you are a tax payer, you are $159k+ in debt thanks to the government acting on your behalf. http://www.usdebtclock.org/ http://www.usdebtclock.org/
- clavalle 11y ago
  > The basic foundation of liberty is the ability to own private property. The foundation of liberty is the freedom to make your own decisions and exercise your own will. If the ability to own private property was the base what happens when you are a person that does not own any property? What if, in the extreme case, a single person or entity owns all of the property and you must either serve them or starve? Is that liberty?
  - djschnei 11y ago
    "The basic foundation" might be the wrong way to word it. That would suggest it is the ONLY tenet, which is misleading. However, private property rights are absolutely a tenet of [classic] liberal thinking. > The foundation of liberty is the freedom to make your own decisions and exercise your own will. I think that is a common misconception. Liberty =/= Freedom. Absolute freedom, in fact, can be an obstruction to liberty (which I think is what your extreme example eludes to). However, let's work through your example; how did they acquire all the property? If they did it without violating other people's property rights (i.e. voluntary exchange) than I think that would answer your question. It's kind of a non question (and I don't mean that rudely) - It just wouldn't happen. Every other person would have to give him/her all the "property" for free.
    - my5thaccount 11y ago
      The land was given away to people, in the US, up to about 100 years ago, just for staking a claim on the land. Up to 40 acres per person. Many made illegal claims to more than one. Many of the wealthy quickly bought them up. You can learn more about it here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Acts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Acts
      - djschnei 11y ago
        You're kind of preaching to the choir here...
    - clavalle 11y ago
      It is a bit of a non-question but it illustrates a point. So let's say that person acquires all of the property through voluntary exchange. Ok. Now, what about the next generation who now live under that person's (or their descendant's) control of that property? They can demand anything they like (in this case their time and service) in exchange for the non-property owner's survival. Are those voluntary transactions? While more than one person owns different parts of everything, this is essentially the situation a lot of people find themselves in...they must trade their time and service in exchange for their survival. That seems less than voluntary to me and a violation of liberty. Granted, as you pointed out, absolute freedom cannot exist...there is a trade-off when freedoms of different entities collide. This is as true in the realm of private property as anywhere else, perhaps more so since certain people start off with so much more control, therefore choices and freedom, when it comes to property, from birth. All men are certainly not created equal when it comes to those rights. So, the question is what has to give in the realm of private property rights in order to achieve maximum liberty (or at least approach that ideal)? Treating private property rights as sacrosanct leads to an obstruction of liberty as surely as treating any other exercise of control (IOW, freedom) would.

aaron-lebo 11y ago

Nation-states are too large to effectively test things like basic income. Those pushing basic income and expecting it to fix many problems aren't paying attention to the fact that that's how every policy got started, as a cure-all massive policy proposal. Over the years, like object-oriented programming, we realize that in practice it isn't as ideal as we thought, and indeed we've now abstracted and complicated our systems even more. We need a more scientific, incremental form of governance and policy-making, one that is evolutionary and takes natural organic approaches. Basic income is the exact opposite of that - a massive (the most massive) policy ever constructed which presupposes way too much. If you want to and can test it at the state level great. States should be the "laboratories of democracy". But we need some realism about it, because far too many discussions about it are not.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
mikeash 11y ago
I don't see anything wrong with cure-all massive policy proposals. Some of them have worked in the past. For example, separating from the British Empire, freeing the slaves, and ending alcohol prohibition. (That last one has an obvious mirror in starting alcohol prohibition, but my point is just that they can work, not that they all do.) And yes, these all brought problems with them, but they were massive improvements. I also don't see how this is "how every policy got started." There are plenty of policies that are incremental, evolutionary, and all that. Obviously, big policy changes need to be approached very cautiously, since the potential for problems is huge. But that means you analyze and consider them carefully, not just say "nope, too big" and shut it down.
- RodericDay 11y ago
  Jacobin had a somewhat interesting piece on Alexander Hamilton vs. Thomas Jefferson a while back (https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/08/reading-hamilton-from-the-left/ https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/08/reading-hamilton-from-the...), and the magnitude of policy proposals.
- 11y ago

djschnei 11y ago

A negative income tax is, imho, the least morally reprehensible replacement for our current welfare state (which is extremely immoral).

Inthenameofmine 11y ago
Negative income tax + citizen dividend would be awesome. Also completely dynamic and self adjusting.

notahacker 11y ago

Paine's arguments, which have been widely expanded on by geolibertarians, are compelling but what he's specifically advocating here is most naturally interpreted as extremely limited compared with what developed world governments offer their populace instead. Fundamentally, he's arguing that people should be compensated to allow them to reach the same standard of living as would have been possible in the absence of civilization and proposing a subsidy in the region of £1000 per annum in today's sterling to compensate. That's far closer to the Alaska Permanent Fund in both ideological underpinnings and magnitude than it is to being an adequate welfare state replacement[1]. Of course, we could speculate that he'd advocate a much higher subsidy in today's land of relative plenty, but his 1797 argument is quite explicit in suggesting that people are owed no more than the value of the life they could have enjoyed in a Native American "state of nature" and the landed classes owe no more than that. Fortunately today we have new arguments for the economic benefits of universal education and necessity of unemployment insurance in an economy managed to ensure some level of involuntary unemployment persists. [1]£1k per year for Paine's average 30 year adult remaining lifespan plus £1.5k at 21 is less than my government's investment in my education...

bcheung 11y ago
As a Libertarian who believes in the Singularity and that the workplace will be displaced by AI I think basic income and the Geolibertarian, Agrarian Justice, Georgism style basic income is the only one that will work and that doesn't violate the principle of liberty and respect for personal property. With Internet based education, society has the potential to make education virtually free since the cost of distribution is essentially zero. It's only when people need access to special equipment or more hands on lab style education where facilities and mentors will be needed. There is still the problem of gentrification though as basic income will be the same everywhere but certain cities will be much more expensive than others. This will lead to skilled labor concentrating in geographic locations.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  I think you're wrong about education. The difference between a decent and an amazing teacher can be phenominal, regardless of the syllabus. Plus, the best education is apprenticeship/on-the-job training, which makes humans even more necessary. The more we use technology, the greater the role people become. You can see any video on the Internet, but most of them are trash and a waste of time, so you look to the producers and curators you prefer. "Machines will make everything we want," people in your category tend to say. Yes, but who designs the clothing, and who markets it into your soul to make you feel incomplete without it? Who comes up with the recipes for your gourmet lunchtime subs? Whom do you trust to suggest one vacation locale over an other? Also, cynically put, this kind of societal transformation will require the dominant financial and political classes to willingly bestow the world with their riches, while giving away their power. When in history has that ever happened?

zeteo 11y ago

>To create a National Fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twentyone years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling [...] And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age This essay advocates a pension system, not basic income. The one-time payout at 21 is negligible in comparison with the annual payments after 50.

my5thaccount 11y ago

I've been looking through the GDP for a Living Stipend and this is what I have found thus far: Living Stipend tax/share 0.01 Population 320,000,000 NYSE 802,026,511,675 8,020,265,116.75 Forex 5,300,000,000,000 53,000,000,000.00 CBOE 1,274,776,218 12,747,762.18 Nasdaq 671,175,892,500 6,711,758,925.00 $67,744,771,803.93 TOTAL REVENUE OIL 6,970,000,000 10 69,700,000,000 FIN SERVICES 1,260,000,000,000 15% 189,000,000,000 TECH 606,000,000,000 15% 90,900,000,000 Entertainment 546,000,000,000 15% 81,900,000,000 PROFESSIONAL Services 1,500,000,000,000 15% 225,000,000,000 2,263.26 STIPEND PER PERSON PER YEAR I think we need more than this. There could be more if we stop asking the tax payers to subsidize the salaries of high level executives as well, but I haven't done that math yet. To explain the numbers above, $10/barrel for oil, a penny per share traded on the major stock exchanges. 15% tax on services, which aren't taxed. Why aren't we taxing lawyer fees for example or computer consulting services or massages? Of course we can take those numbers up a bit or down a bit in the appropriate areas, but we need about 10x that I think to really give people food and shelter security. I'm really shooting for $2,000 per month per household. I think there is a place somewhere in the country that any family could live on that amount of money and feed their families. Of course this would be adjusted based on family size and the numbers above are per person. An individual could survive on $1,000 per month I think and a family of 3 or 4 could survive on $2,000 per month if they do it right. If they don't they can get a job to supplement income. If they want to work more, they can do that too. Sorry for the formatting. I'm pasting from Excel.

theseatoms 11y ago
We do tax lawyer fees, computer consulting, and massages already. Right?
- my5thaccount 11y ago
  No, not specifically at a federal level. Some states have business excise taxes but they are less than a percent for most businesses. I'm talking a tax on services like when you go buy food and the receipt has the tax added. The income tax on those professionals is the closest thing we have now, but blue collar workers pay that too and the products they make have a sales tax at the other end on top of their income tax.

emblem21 11y ago

In Paine's time, this theory of income was intended to stimulate expansion and conquest of virgin lands in the hopes of acquiring enough resources to offset and even contend against European powers to right certain ideological wrongs. Ironically, when this theory was practiced by America (via American-printed currency not bounded by metallic limitations) the credit expansion created a mechanism to conquer more and more virgin land to pay off the interest on the loan, which resulted in the elimination of Paine's ideal Native American strawman utopia.