I’m mixing it on ideological grounds. Tax comes from the state, a violent actor with arbitrary rights to tax an distribute (although in democratic societies, ostensibly controlled by majority rule)
For me land rent isn’t a tax, and it does not belong to the state in any shape or form. It’s about the commons and fundamental inalienable rights. Things I expect to see in the UNs declarations of human rights rather than in the tax-policy of the local government
My point is that there are couple of problems/unknowns with UBI:
1. Where do we get the money from?
2. What will be the long term effects of UBI and does it constitute progress compared to the current system.
I have no idea whether the math with Geolib checks out but even if it does, it only answers the first question. I just find it very amusing that UBI is aimed at fixing the inequality, yet its proponents are somehow oblivious to the obvious - UBI by design is increasing the inequality. UBI means the top 10% by income/wealth will receive exactly the same distributions as the bottom 10%. Jeff Bezos will be getting the same UBI as the bum on the street. How is that progress?
Whatever your ideology is, I don't think Jeff Bezos should have any fundamental inalienable right to land rent/tax.
I happen to think he should. Not sure about the other income or wealth though, and I think it’s well within scope of the discussion to consider how he could be deprived of most of those while at the same time getting a fair deal.
I do think capitalists can perform a useful service by calculating risks an moving resources around to productive use. I do not think, however, that such work automatically should reward people with the right to extract rent from those resources for private gain. So I’ll happily grant Bezos an UBI as long as any rent extract from resources under his control is payed back to the commons.
Edit: Btw it’s not just about fixing inequality. For me it’s also the realization that markets are exceptionally bad at allocating resources to intrinsically motivated labor, biasing the whole economy toward optimizing for greed. An UBI could alleviate this problem somewhat by allowing more amateur work to flourish.
For me land rent isn’t a tax, and it does not belong to the state in any shape or form. It’s about the commons and fundamental inalienable rights. Things I expect to see in the UNs declarations of human rights rather than in the tax-policy of the local government