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RE: Benjamin Franklin A Wise Founding Father Said ...
This argument is just silly. What do you think money is? Can markets function without money? What happens as automation replaces workers in the labor market, reducing both the ability to find employment, and for that employment to pay sufficient income? What happens when customers don't exist to purchase what machines are making? And why do we let banks create our money supply out of debt?
No one is calling for the seizure and redistribution of all wealth. We are talking about the implementation of an income floor sufficient for basic needs as a replacement of the welfare state and the simplication of the tax code. It's about doing what we're already doing, but in a way that shrinks government and increases liberty.
You are clearly a Andrew Yang advocate. I admit I am new to this whole notion of free money, and as of yet I haven't read your post, but I did see it earlier and will find time to look it over. However I fail to see how were going to pay for it. Yang admits that the debt will continue to grow if we institute his idea that includes extra taxes on businesses in the form of VAT which of course will increase the cost of everything.
If the government is handing out free money and forcing business to pay for it how is that less government exactly? Also the facts speak for themselves the more we print fake money the more it devalues. You can compare the devaluation of the dollar from 1900 to 1910 and then compare it from 1913 to 1923 and you will see the difference the Fed has made. I only see this program exacerbating the situation, but then again I have a bit to learn about it. As for the labor market, it should evolve if the right systems are put in place. I am sure the horse and buggy industry made the same argument.
Another thing I wanted to mention before I finish reading the book you posted. There was a time in this country when a foreign visitor would visit and they could ask someone about law and they thought they were a lawyer. They could ask them about medicine and they would think they were a doctor. Americans used to be well educated, not only by our institutions, but also by self-education.
You are hard pressed to find people that read anymore and our education systems were redesigned to accommodate the industrial revolution. We churned out laborers instead of free thinkers who learned to build a life for themselves. My question is can't we just tune our education system for the age of automation? I can see ephemeralization eventually having it's day, but I don't think we are their yet.
In the mean time I would like to see where a new education system would take us and then address the UBI question. More testing needs to be done in different classes of society to get a better gauge of the real effect it will have.