Behind the Wall Street Protest

If the resources don't exist, they can't be used, and people fall into a more survival-focused mindset. The only way out is to find a new way to obtain necessary resources, or otherwise change the system (that is, the environment rather than the nature of markets) so that more effort flows where it's needed for a person to survive.

I agree with this. But change the system to WHAT? Do we tax the 1% and give everyone a subsistence-level allowance, a human dividend? But doesn't that just devalue our currency which has already lost substantial value since it became a fiat dollar in 1971?

And what does it do to human dignity to be GIVEN the basic goods of human life?

And what does it do to immigration if one society offers this and the others don't?

And what does it do to our balance of trade when the other countries get sick of loaning us money to live so much better than them?

And what does it do to the richest 1% if you seize their money?

These are real issues and I'm not sure we've got a plan that can work. Any ideas on how to avoid a race to the bottom?

Another person in another thread suggested tariffs. I'm a bit dubious, but still listening.

Free social services won't necessarily devalue the dollar, or lead to an imbalance in trade -- not if the whole point is that you need to do it because all the work is being done by robots now.

The taxes needed for it probably aren't excessive, if the level of support you're offering is minimal. And by 'not excessive' I mean 'we had them in the past and it worked out okay'.

Human dignity and immigration are real concerns, though. Especially since the first turns into crime pretty easily.

OTOH telling people to go fuck themselves in the hopes that they'll get desperate and come up with some new worthwhile thing to do (which is the default option if you *don't* provide services, and is what has actually been working pretty well until recently, and I think it's a bit early to go all gloom and doom on its prospects) also leads to crime.

Anyway -- the optimistic viewpoint would be, if people didn't need money to live, they might be willing to work for lower wages. The pessimistic viewpoint is that if people don't need money to live NO ONE is going to do certain jobs which are just that unpleasant. x.x

Maybe those are jobs for robots?

I think the first thing we can do is to codify in law that corporations are not persons. Every person has the right to support causes that are important to them; this does not mean that every person has equal resources to devote to that support. For-profit corporations in particular have no obligation to humans aside from the ones that run them (that is, sit on their boards and operate at their highest levels). Everything a for-profit corporation does is about profit, and whether they can get away with something.

Even not-for-profit corporations end up suspect in this.

One good thing we could do would be to reduce the impact the wealthy have on elections, by reforming election funding and adjusting our electoral system to a form of proportional representation (instead of first-past-the-post). This would both give us one vote per person instead of one vote per dollar, and provide us with a greater variety of views instead of two increasingly polarized factions moving in the same general direction.

Okay, let's even out the distribution of wealth. First, let's put the estate tax back in. We have to index it to inflation or it will fall apart again like the last one did. But that's a pretty easy fix with political will behind it.

Next I'd tax dividends and long-term capital gains without regard to how high (or low) the income tax payer's income is. It's a little-understood thing that WEALTH and INCOME are different. You have a high income when you withdraw your entire retirement to buy into an assisted living center. But if you're WEALTHY you just WITHDRAW it from your savings account and pay no tax at all. Wealthy people typically make incomes of under $100K because they are wealthy and DON'T NEED TO WORK.

The next thing I'd do is take health insurance and payroll taxes out of payrolls and put them into general obligations and tax them in the graduated tax rates.

Changing the top income tax rate is small change compared to any of these other changes. I think it's odd that it's even being discussed, a "millionaire's tax". It's a joke. There are only 500 CEOs of Fortune 500 companies in the United States. All I an assume is that it's supposed to placate the masses.

Remember, the wealthy do not pay INCOME taxes because they do not have INCOME because they are WEALTHY and don't have to WORK!

----------

2. Break up megacorporations? Here's a bit of a problem. I think what you're aiming at is to stop them from having undo influence in government, right? That's the point? Because mega-corporations are actually pretty good for a lot of reasons. I'm not going to get into why they're good until I figure out why you think they need to be broken up. It sounds to me like you're naming the solution and the unintended consequences aren't being considered. What is this supposed to SOLVE? Because every time I hear "break up the corporations and give us good jobs" I get a head-ache.
-----------

3. Staff up the human services? That's a nice alternative jobs program to "send soldiers to Afghanistan." It's fine with me. I assume this is paid for with Federal money, right? We already have several versions of this, including Americorps and VISTA. We also have a range of job training programs. None of these pay over minimum wage, though, so they don't really get "middle class" jobs back. But they certainly help put people on a rung out of poverty.

4. Barter? Uh... no. Really, no. I have a small business with a bunch of self-employed clients. I frequently use my own client's services. But here's what happens: I have three pieces of art from one of my clients. He's a wonderful artist. But I don't need any more art, thanks. The other issue that comes up is that we make different rates of pay based on our various skillsets and capital overhead. For example, I tried to barter for cleaning services once. I did an hour of work and she had to do 8 hours of cleaning. It was really icky. But the fact is, I make 8x what a cleaning lady makes. I have more clients than I need - way more - and I'm not interested in working for a lower rate of pay.

There is one client with whom barter works very well: a farmer. We run a tab: he delivers meat, I credit his bill. I do accounting, I debit his bill. Once a year or so I write him a check for the difference because I buy more meat than he does accounting services. That works pretty well, mostly because I would have bought meat whether or not he used my services.

Same issue with the roofer: we work it out in trade and settle up at the end of the year. That's okay.

But the vast majority of my income goes to pay for things like taxes and insurance and software licenses and heat and electric bills and mortgage payment and real estate taxes. The amount of my income that is spent on things that could be bartered is a tiny fraction.

My favorite thing to say about lack is, "We could feed the planet right now. The primary cause of famine is poor distribution of resources."