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This essay doesn't address any of the key problems often raised when talking about AI and UBI. Here is Australia we are already seeing one the effects of very

This essay doesn't address any of the key problems often raised when talking about AI and UBI. Here is Australia we are already seeing one the effects of very cheap stuff. Skilled labor is significantly more expensive than buying things, so anything that has to have an Australian involved is ridiculously expensive. Calling the Plumber to fix a drain? That's a week of groceries or perhaps a new TV. At some point soon there is going to be a fairly significant upheaval, not just when AI takes some peoples jobs, but when it's just not worth it to pay somebody $200 an hour to do something for you. I think to some extent, peoples time is linked to the price of products you can buy. Eventually, Plumbers won't need $200 an hour to buy their own things, they can drop their rates. Wages everywhere might fall. Taxing land sounds fair enough, but I was under the impression we are already subsidizing a lot of farming anyhow, and since we are racing to the bottom on food pricing, there is not much profit to be made on food anyhow. Any aren't we supposed to be reclaiming land to turn back into national parks, planting trees, and capturing carbon.

neilparikh 6y ago
> Taxing land sounds fair enough, but I was under the impression we are already subsidizing a lot of farming anyhow I'm not sure what you're referring to here. Taxing land doesn't really have much connection to farming specifically. In fact, most high value land is urban areas and cities (NYC, SF, Silicon Valley, etc.), so farm land is mostly irrelevant when talking about a land value tax. > Any aren't we supposed to be reclaiming land to turn back into national parks, planting trees, and capturing carbon. To do so, we need to use more land more efficiently: less sprawl, and more building up/dense. And a land value tax incentivizes precisely that, since in high value areas, the tax would be high enough that it dense buildings would be the only real financially viable option. This increase in density in the core means we don't need to develop other land (and even reclaim some of it to parks as you suggest).
- jay_kyburz 6y ago
  Oh, here in Australia I'm already paying nearly 4K a year for my block of land in the suburbs. Do you not have similar in the US? I had assumed the OP was suggesting we tax the big primary producers who work the land for profit, not people who need somewhere to live.

neilparikh 6y ago

> Taxing land sounds fair enough, but I was under the impression we are already subsidizing a lot of farming anyhow I'm not sure what you're referring to here. Taxing land doesn't really have much connection to farming specifically. In fact, most high value land is urban areas and cities (NYC, SF, Silicon Valley, etc.), so farm land is mostly irrelevant when talking about a land value tax. > Any aren't we supposed to be reclaiming land to turn back into national parks, planting trees, and capturing carbon. To do so, we need to use more land more efficiently: less sprawl, and more building up/dense. And a land value tax incentivizes precisely that, since in high value areas, the tax would be high enough that it dense buildings would be the only real financially viable option. This increase in density in the core means we don't need to develop other land (and even reclaim some of it to parks as you suggest).

jay_kyburz 6y ago
Oh, here in Australia I'm already paying nearly 4K a year for my block of land in the suburbs. Do you not have similar in the US? I had assumed the OP was suggesting we tax the big primary producers who work the land for profit, not people who need somewhere to live.