The existing taxes, in most countries, nowadays, are a very significant part of the GNP. Check:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenu...
and this covers only the taxes from the central state, there are also local taxes, and social security. In France, that makes it over 67% from only 44% of national taxes.
The point of such a citizen basic income, is that it would eliminate the need for plethoric armies of "civil servants", at all levels. Instead of paying them to bother and harass the public, we pay they to do nothing, and the money that was wasted on their useless activity (beside their salaries converted into citizen basic income), is used to pay this citizen basic income to the other citizen.
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/519241/report-suggests-...
In other words, YOU are already paying for it!
As for the free ham sandwiches, what is required for that to work is:
- material resources: the universe is big. Even the Earth is big! (but we need energy to dig deep down).
- energetic resources: the sun is big too! And there's uranium, thorium, and perhaps soon hydrogen fusion.
- to put this energy to work moving mater into a ham sandwich, what else is needed is information, the command and control systems, which any programmer will be delighted to implement, if you give him the chance to do it.
Robots and 3D printers are already doing a lot of work, we just need to automatize more. Why aren't google cars already driving on the roads everywhere?
Why are we still making buildings with man power, when the can be made in automatic factories or by big 3D printers?
Also once you stop forcing people to do useless jobs just because it's considered good these days to "protect jobs" and just give them money (preferably enough to survive/look around for a bit but not too much to kill all the incentive to work) maybe they will start doing something actually useful like trying to meet all the increased demand for basic services/items created by shifting more wealth to the poor.
i agree. I imagine it works like this - a brick layer might have "hidden" knowledge about the building process that could mean improvement to efficiency. And yet, he would not be able to put it into practice, because the investigation/research will take resources that he does not have, and his employer is not going to pay for this because they don't believe in him (ala, he is a "labourer").
If there was a basic income, he could become someone who could advise how to build better, and thus make use of a higher order knowledge process where as labouring is done by automated means. The end result is a house gets build faster, and cheaper.
About free ham sandwiches, in USA actually the underlying industry is already heavy subsidized, thus - paid by pretty much everyone. The sandwich to be free (as available for free, not necessarily produced on negligible cost) is not dependent on technology here.
The point of such a citizen basic income, is that it would eliminate the need for plethoric armies of "civil servants", at all levels. Instead of paying them to bother and harass the public, we pay they to do nothing, and the money that was wasted on their useless activity (beside their salaries converted into citizen basic income), is used to pay this citizen basic income to the other citizen. http://www.technologyreview.com/view/519241/report-suggests-...
In other words, YOU are already paying for it!
As for the free ham sandwiches, what is required for that to work is:
- material resources: the universe is big. Even the Earth is big! (but we need energy to dig deep down).
- energetic resources: the sun is big too! And there's uranium, thorium, and perhaps soon hydrogen fusion.
- to put this energy to work moving mater into a ham sandwich, what else is needed is information, the command and control systems, which any programmer will be delighted to implement, if you give him the chance to do it.
Robots and 3D printers are already doing a lot of work, we just need to automatize more. Why aren't google cars already driving on the roads everywhere? Why are we still making buildings with man power, when the can be made in automatic factories or by big 3D printers?