from Hacker News

Ask HN: Tax transistors? Funding basic income in post-work world?

by dy on 2/17/17, 11:34 PM with 2 comments

Had a thought that taxing transistors would be the fairest way to fund transistors in a world where automation was destroying jobs at a rapid clip. I acknowledge that taxation around any single metric would incentivize non-optimal work arounds but this seems like a fair enough proxy for "work done" that would be hard to word-around.

I'm interested from the UBI proponents how we would fund this kind of social program in a capitalist system where profits are still accruing to companies that controlled "intelligence."

  • by MrTonyD on 2/17/17, 11:59 PM

    I'm convinced that we are taxing completely wrong. Money is earned using the shared resources of our society -- education, roads, communication, military, fire, police -- all paid for by taxes. On top of that, we need to recognize that Congress also spends money through tax deductions and things not taxed. So we need to move away from taxes -- into taxing business that profits from those shared public resources so we can return profit to the public.

  • by danjoc on 2/18/17, 12:50 AM

    Don't we already have UBI? That's what the social security program looks like to me. It seems to me that if you want to expand UBI, you would be working to lower the retirement age. That's exactly the opposite of what is currently happening. The retirement age is rising, and the payments are shrinking. It doesn't seem like throwing taxation at the problem will address it.