Thanks. I need to read this when I have the time -- my initial reaction (from skimming) is that it keeps insisting that increasing money supply does not cause inflation because of the Fed pumping money into the economy, and giving it to investors who are not spending it.
Giving it to the poor, who have a higher marginal utility for their dollars, should cause more inflation than giving it to the rich. Again, from skimming, they seem to mention the idea of it being more useful for the poor, but dance around actually addressing it directly.
Inflation doesn't necessarily follow. If everyone was given a 10% raise then you would get inflation, but a fixed distribution results in a very different effect. One possibility is that people would purchase roughly the same amount with the lower classes having free time to educate themselves rather than working minimum wage jobs. I mean, I can't imagine somebody throwing their lives away just to buy another loaf of bread or bottle of milk every week.
What incentive do they have to educate themselves? After all they currently had an incentive to educate themselves during their period of compulsory education yet still ended up working in a minimum wage job they value so little they'd quit if they were given a minimum wage.
You don't see masses of low waged workers in countries with maximum working hours (and thus some leisure time) educating themselves.
The modern economy is hit driven. 1 J. K. Rowling pays for a lot of not J.K. Rowlings.
Individual's fortunes look a whole lot like a random walk. Some people, get over their crack addiction and become writers for the new york times, some people get over their wall street addiction and become crack smokers. It's tough to say where a particular person will be in 20 years. Before you start listing off titans of silicon valley, i'd like to point at all the super rich Vanderbilts running around.
It's up to us as a civilization to decide how low to make the floor. any benefit will have fraud. Straight up anarchy, you keep what you kill sounds rough. If that's your plan, i'm going to get together with my friends and stop you. Nobody works ever, also sounds dumb. I'm going to get together with some other friends and stop that too.
So, we pick a spot somewhere between the two extremes. Historically, value was created by people. More and more, value is created by machines. Cab drivers, sports writers and port masters are all on the way out.
I'm not at all sure how civilization works when only the top 10% or 1% of people are actually capable of being useful to the economy, regardless of level of training.
Very wonderfully put, this is the basic premise in which I see no other way than a form of basic income for developed nations in the future. The interesting question is one of timeframe and methods.
Free education via internet + age/experience + potential for income at a level significantly about basic income.
I don't think comparing how a 15 year old treated mandatory education and how a 25 might treat the opportunity to educate themselves to better their lives is very fair.
I'd assume the maximum working hours in those countries are above 0. When you have to take an hour long bus each way from an exhausting minimum wage job there's not a lot of time to make significant progress in education.
You seem to assume that every school gives an equally good education and accommodates all students' individual strengths and difficulties perfectly.
In some parts of the world, like the US, better school districts are correlated to areas with higher property tax revenue.
