4 ms·

The obvious difference is that the collected taxes aren't just gone when putting them into a souvereign wealth fund. Over the years you'll have significantly mo

The obvious difference is that the collected taxes aren't just gone when putting them into a souvereign wealth fund. Over the years you'll have significantly more money to put into UBI, because of the compounded interest.

makomk 9y ago
Compound interest is not, in fact, magic - the money has to come from somewhere. The safest investment is government bonds, in which case it literally comes out of future tax payments. Alternatively, you can invest in corporate bonds and stocks, in which case - in the current economic climate at least - you're providing economic stimulus that pumps the bubble a little higher and drives down long-term returns for everyone else who's looking to retire in the future.
mseebach 9y ago
For compound interest to make a difference, you need to leave the money alone for quite a bit of time. That does not seem to be be plan here. Sovereign wealth funds are generally endowed with some kind of income stream, typically the revenue from natural resources, which it then invests and spends the proceeds from. The UK doesn't have such revenue streams lying around, that aren't already paying into the treasury, thus any such funding will deprive the treasury of the same amount, and so the wealth fund won't really do anything, as least on the short term. And that's without considering the fact that the government runs at a deficit and continously borrows money. Taking a loan to boost your savings is an interesting strategy. There are all sorts of paths the UK could take to transfer things around and build up a sovereign wealth fund over time, but getting it to a stage where it would be able to pay out billions a year would take decades in the absolute best case scenario (that excludes any of the 99.9% of scenarios where the government "temporarily" taps the fund for some very important political goal that absolutely coincidentally have to be met in an election year).

makomk 9y ago

Compound interest is not, in fact, magic - the money has to come from somewhere. The safest investment is government bonds, in which case it literally comes out of future tax payments. Alternatively, you can invest in corporate bonds and stocks, in which case - in the current economic climate at least - you're providing economic stimulus that pumps the bubble a little higher and drives down long-term returns for everyone else who's looking to retire in the future.

mseebach 9y ago

For compound interest to make a difference, you need to leave the money alone for quite a bit of time. That does not seem to be be plan here. Sovereign wealth funds are generally endowed with some kind of income stream, typically the revenue from natural resources, which it then invests and spends the proceeds from. The UK doesn't have such revenue streams lying around, that aren't already paying into the treasury, thus any such funding will deprive the treasury of the same amount, and so the wealth fund won't really do anything, as least on the short term. And that's without considering the fact that the government runs at a deficit and continously borrows money. Taking a loan to boost your savings is an interesting strategy. There are all sorts of paths the UK could take to transfer things around and build up a sovereign wealth fund over time, but getting it to a stage where it would be able to pay out billions a year would take decades in the absolute best case scenario (that excludes any of the 99.9% of scenarios where the government "temporarily" taps the fund for some very important political goal that absolutely coincidentally have to be met in an election year).