Comment Why the focus on taxes as a means to pay for UBI? (Score 1) 354
I see a lot of people posting that the rich will subsidise this via increased tiers of taxes. We've seen how well that works. We need the government to be able to fund this without tampering with (although fixing the tax system would be nice) taxes. And without printing more money. It needs to increase wealth.
So, get the government focused in on automation. If they have an automated farm growing lettuce, then take the profits from that, (after budgeting for repairs etc), split part off to fund the next automation project, and split the leftovers up amongst the population. It could be building cars. It could be cell phone towers. It could be dogwalking drones. It could be cheap ubiquitous wifi. It could be mortar style delivery launchers.
Would these compete with normal businesses? Of course they would. But the other businesses could have invested in the same style of automation.
Too many people say that government isn't supposed to make money. Why not? We certainly spend enough money on useless projects, why not do so on things that are going to make life better?