Re: Guaranteed Income Ahead of Guaranteed Pensions

["Barry Brooks" <barrybrooks@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

John O'Donnell commented that...

  Anyone who thinks that the liabilities [i.e. --
  Payroll and income taxes.] of work don't contribute to
  negotiated wage increases and that wage subsidies wouldn't
  decrease wage rates is living in fantasy land.

Guaranteed Income could be varied to stabilize wages, instead of using tight
money.

Guaranteed Income will allow policy makers to forget the goal of full
employment which will make resource conservation possible, because a GI will
end the "need" for economic growth to make up for jobs lost to
automation/productivity.  A GI can stop hyperactivity.

As for the money, since 95% of "investment" is really the buying of existing
assets all that money could be taxed with no loss to the economy.  Such
speculation bids up the price of existing assets without
adding any productive capacity.  This might not provide enough revenue if
low interest rates had dropped return on investment to such low levels that
the investing class's surplus income only covered the 5% of investment
representing real asset building.

Without sufficient surplus income of owners the workers would have to be
taxed too.  Why not tax where it doesn't hurt, the income above what one can
spend or invest is the place to look.

Try this thought experiment:
if increased productivity had reduced the human labor to one worker and
if the concentration of wealth reduced ownership to one person then
if income was split between capital and labor at 99:1 still those two guys
would have to be taxed for all the money they can't spend if demand
deficiency is to be avoided. Their tax rates would have to be just short of
100%.

Barry Brooks
http://home.earthlink.net/~durable/