No it doesn't. Helping yourself to resources and then asserting property rights thereon to prevent others from doing the same is a kind of theft.
It's how national borders work.
It's how national borders work.
A distinct negative, as far as I am concerned. Passports only became a thing around World War 1. Artificial restrictions on movement by labor is a massive economic distortion that essentially treats labor as a captive resource by mutual agreement between states. Would-be economic migrants whose goal is to work are equated with marauding armies.
Get rid of welfare states, and you can get rid of borders. But you can't maintain a welfare state with generous welfare subsidies and have open borders.
Thanks for your reply.
At least that's the economic theory. If we were to raise taxes on dividends, no one can really predict how much that would reduce the long-term economic growth rate.
For example, consider the 10% federal luxury tax imposed in 1991 to reduce the budget deficit. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it devastated several domestic manufacturing industries and destroyed many jobs. Whoops.
Is short-term investment that much less useful than long-term? Especially when the stock market is so big and smooths out short-term investments so much? We're effectively paying a lot of money for that bias, and I'm not convinced that's better than a tiny bias or no bias.
I could certainly be persuaded by that and maybe about short vs long term investment. Do we have data from other markets to compare?
Above I'm just explaining the reasoning behind the status quo. Reaction to that seems negative. I can't tell if I'm wrong about the reasoning, or people are signaling that the reasoning is wrong.
At this point, I think the system has failed.
Buying stock is investing cash into a business. The investment has more risk of going down in value compared to cash in the bank. Government created a tax advantage to partially offset the risk, and thus encourage investment. This tends to move capital to places it can be used for creating new things, instead of sitting in a vault.
"Productive" - we have people making livings selling farts in jars, but we value a stay at home parent at $0. Clearly we're abusing the word "productive".
One example, intellectual property constraints are perpetually expanding due to an increasing number of patents, copyrights and trademarks. If you are a creative person, you are legally required to navigate this intellectual property minefield in order to make a living. Why shouldn't you get some sort of token compensation for the loss of creative rights?
Another example, I like to fish. But I am required by government regulation to pay for a permit and to limit my fishing activity to comply with regulations. The regulations are burdensome enough where it would be prohibitive to sustain my family solely on my fishing labor. This was not the case about a hundred years ago (roughly). One could sustain a family through fishing alone. I could try and go the commercial route, but that requires an investment of upwards of $100k and that industry is notoriously hostile to new entrants and extremely volatile (read up on snow crabs for example). So for all intents and purposes, this natural resource is no longer available to me to use as a primary source of sustenance. Why shouldn't I expect some sort of compensation for that?
And of course the big one, land rights. We give landowners perpetual rights to use a piece a land as long as they pay their taxes and comply with local zoning regulations. That land is not theirs. It existed long before they were born, and will continue to exist long after they are gone. But while they "own" that land, I am forbidden from using it. And there are fewer and fewer places in the world where land is free/cheap, and also somewhat economically useful. At some point in the future (if not already) we should expect that type of land to disappear entirely as capitalism continues gobble up all available opportunities. UBI feels like a natural way to compensate individuals for the loss of rights to this land.
Historically, citizens of modern well functioning democracies have considered the right to vote as sufficient "compensation" for the loss of certain natural rights. The right to vote is certainly a powerful and necessary right. But I think UBI is a more natural compensation for the increasing economic constraints that modern society imposes on its citizens. Fishing regulations help prevent fish stocks from collapsing, intellectual property rights allow creators to profit from their work, etc..., but these restrictions also narrow the legal space in which current and future citizens can make a living. Do we really need more and more people releasing shit coins and NFTs in order to squeak out a living? Do we really need more people optimizing facebook ad conversions? Maybe we just acknowledge that the vast majority of work being done in modern societies is not essential, and forcing more people to compete in that landscape is not making the world a better place. A small UBI isn't going to dramatically change peoples motivations. Freeloaders already find ways to skate by, UBI might make it a little easier. But maybe it is better if the freeloaders just take their UBI and chill rather than try their hand at another scammy NFT project. Even with UBI, the vast majority of people will continue to work as UBI would be too small to provide a comfortable middle class lifestyle. Maybe a few people might downshift a little bit and use UBI as an opportunity to focus on things that they consider important, i.e. family, hobbies, volunteer work, etc.. But is that really so bad?
Also, the following statement is based on a false premise: “ Let's just recognize that Earth actually does belong to all of us, everyone in the present and future, and that those who own pieces of it, and who create things out of it, owe compensation to the rest of us for removing our access to what would otherwise have been common property.”
This implies that creation itself is some kind of theft. The actual theft is taking something from a creative, productive person and giving it to an idle one.