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Monday, December 11, 2023

To Tax or Not to Tax

 I supported Andrew Yang for president in now what seems decades ago, because he was the only candidate who recognized a fundamental economic problem we face: a declining rate of workers coupled with an increasing number of aged. His solution, outlined in the NYT in an Op-Ed is worth rereading: 

 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/14/opinion/andrew-yang-jobs.html

As with any important social issue, there are competing views and ways to interpret data. I have links to several of them below. Note that another component of Yang's plan was a guaranteed annual income, a solution first proposed by the darling of Libertarians, Friederich Hayek, who argued it would give workers more freedom as they would no longer be tied to job and location. 

https://www.niskanencenter.org/hayek-republican-freedom-and-the-universal-basic-income/

Some additional reading:

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/tax-not-the-robots/

https://hai.stanford.edu/news/radical-proposal-universal-basic-income-offset-job-losses-due-automation

https://www.futureofworkhub.info/comment/2019/12/4/robot-tax-the-pros-and-cons-of-taxing-robotic-technology-in-the-workplace