Gyroscopic Investing

I'm heading out on vacation for a few days (HB recommends it periodically!), and don't plan on participating in this thread all that much. However, I was curious as to what the anti-government folks thought of a "Citizens Dividend" with little or no additional government spending.

Here's how wikipedia defines a Citizens Dividend (as inspired by Thomas Paine):

Wikipedia.org wrote:Citizen's dividend

Citizen's dividend or social dividend is a proposed state policy based upon the principle that the natural world is the common property of all persons (see Georgism). It is proposed that all citizens receive regular payments (dividends) from revenue raised by the state through leasing or selling natural resources for private use. In the United States, the idea can be traced back to Thomas Paine's essay, Agrarian Justice, which is also considered one of the earliest proposals for a social security system in the United States. Thomas Paine summarized his view by stating that "Men did not make the earth. It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds."

This concept is a form of basic income guarantee, where the Citizen's Dividend depends upon the value of natural resources or what could be titled as "common goods" like location values, seignorage, the electro-magnetic spectrum, the industrial use of air (CO production), etc.

The State of Alaska dispenses a form of citizen's dividend in its Permanent Fund Dividend, which holds investments initially seeded by the state's revenue from mineral resources, particularly petroleum. In 2005, every eligible Alaskan resident (including children) received a check for $845.76. Over the 24-year history of the fund, it has paid out a total of $24,775.45 to every resident.

[...]

Naturalfinance.net proposes the funding source for social dividends to be the surplus of all state revenue over all state program expenses. In this way, citizens are deeply interested to the alternative of any government spending: increasing their cash dividend, and all spending decisions affect every citizen equally.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen's_dividend

In other words, for those who fear an expansionary government, how would you feel about little or no government spending, little to no taxes (mainly used to pay for the tiny government and control inflation), and everyone getting an equal share of the state or nation's revenue to spend on whatever they want?

Just an idea. I'm not advocating it, but just curious if there's any form of teeny, tiny government that would be acceptable.

Sounds great to me.

I'm a libertarian, and I also approve this message.

We'd have to figure out how to i.e. maintain the roads without spending, though.  I think there are many solutions to the road problem, some public and some private.  With modern technology, it should even be possible to charge road tolls proportional to the actual usage of those roads by each citizen.  This would be a good thing, IMHO.

First off, I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of the Libertarian Party, although I am in sympathy with many of their ideas, especially those relating to foreign affairs (which I've noticed tends to rile some folks here). The only time I ever registered as a member of a political party was as a Republican so I could vote for Ron Paul in a primary. I quickly changed it back to independent afterward and now regret having blemished my perfect record of independence.

Having said that, the Citizens Dividend is an interesting idea that sounds good in principle but I suspect the devil would be in the details. What would the constitution look like and would the government be democratically elected? If the latter is true, then I suspect we'd eventually end up much the same as we are now.

Where does the money come from again?

Kshartle wrote: Where does the money come from again?

I think it could either be taxed, or printed.  I would prefer printing it into existence, personally.

As stated in the OP:

Gumby wrote: It is proposed that all citizens receive regular payments (dividends) from revenue raised by the state through leasing or selling natural resources for private use...the Citizen's Dividend depends upon the value of natural resources or what could be titled as "common goods" like location values, seignorage, the electro-magnetic spectrum, the industrial use of air (CO production), etc.

So the government controls the natural resources and we have to buy their use with our money, they keep a potion for themselves and then send out a portion as checks?

How is this supposed to make anything better, cheaper, more productive?

This sounds like a mafia sitting on top of all the natural resources, extorting everyone for their use. It will just drive up costs.

Maybe I don't understand.

Kshartle wrote: So the government controls the natural resources and we have to buy their use with our money, they keep a potion for themselves and then send out a portion as checks?

How is this supposed to make anything better, cheaper, more productive?

This sounds like a mafia sitting on top of all the natural resources, extorting everyone for their use. It will just drive up costs.

Maybe I don't understand.

I think you understand very well.

Libertarian666 wrote:

Kshartle wrote: So the government controls the natural resources and we have to buy their use with our money, they keep a potion for themselves and then send out a portion as checks?

How is this supposed to make anything better, cheaper, more productive?

This sounds like a mafia sitting on top of all the natural resources, extorting everyone for their use. It will just drive up costs.

Maybe I don't understand.

I think you understand very well.

I thought so but since it only took 10 seconds to figure I figured I missed something.

This sounds like a welfare scam. Some people purchase resources, put them to use in the form of goods and services and others just sit around and collect. The government will execute it for a fee of course and gain the willingness of the voters who ask for bigger and bigger checks which require the prices of the resources to go up. Heck maybe the government can even borrow against the revenue streams.

TennPaGa wrote: Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult

And this one is interesting too:

A separate proposal to limit monthly executive pay to no more than what the company's lowest-paid staff earn in a year, the so-called 1:12 initiative, faces a popular vote on November 24.

I was watching a TED Talk today about jobs is the future...

Andrew McAfee: What will future jobs look like?

...and in the talk McAfee talks about a lot of the things we've been talking about here in terms of how the future will likely have less jobs for laborers — as robots replace their jobs. Truck drivers, construction workers, miners, call center operators, warehouse stockers, cashiers, etc., all replaced by robots in the not too distant future.

How will all these jobless laborers feed themselves and their families in a world that renders most of them unemployed? McAfee believes the following may have to be an option...

Andrew McAfee wrote:But over the longer term, if we are moving into an economy that's heavy on technology and light on labor, and we are, then we have to consider some more radical interventions, for example, something like a guaranteed minimum income. Now, that's probably making some folk in this room uncomfortable, because that idea is associated with the extreme left wing and with fairly radical schemes for redistributing wealth. I did a little bit of research on this notion, and it might calm some folk down to know that the idea of a net guaranteed minimum income has been championed by those frothing-at-the-mouth socialists Friedrich Hayek, Richard Nixon and Milton Friedman. And if you find yourself worried that something like a guaranteed income is going to stifle our drive to succeed and make us kind of complacent, you might be interested to know that social mobility, one of the things we really pride ourselves on in the United States, is now lower than it is in the northern European countries that have these very generous social safety nets. So the economic playbook is actually pretty straightforward.

Source: Andrew McAfee: What will future jobs look like?

While it's obviously advocated by socialists, interestingly, if you look up "Basic Income" — a form of Citizens Dividend used to combat poverty — on Wikipedia, it turns out that, as McAfee suggests, some Libertarians have supported the idea...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income

Wikipedia.org wrote:Basic income has been promoted by people associated with political views that are generally opposed to the public provision of welfare services, such as libertarianism, economic liberalism, and anarcho-capitalism. These people support basic income as a strategy to reduce the amount of bureaucratic administration that is prevalent in many contemporary welfare systems, as well as acting as a form of compensation for fiat currency inflation. Notable libertarian-capitalist proponents of basic income include Milton Friedman (in the form of negative income tax), Robert Anton Wilson, Gary Johnson (In the form of the fair tax "prebate") and Charles Murray.

It is clear, however, that Friedrich Hayek did not advocate that any modern nation act to implement a minimum income. This was a concept that he attributed to his "Great Society," which was his Utopian liberal society, in the classical sense. Hayek emphasized a minimum income in the far future, and stated clearly that no wealthy countries such as the United States should guarantee any income not available to all around the world, as it would attract mass immigration and overwhelm the procedure:

Friedrich Hayek wrote:"It is obvious that for a long time to come it will be wholly impossible to secure an adequate and uniform minimum standard for all human beings everywhere, or at least that the wealthier countries would not be content to secure for their citizens no higher standards than can be secured for all men. But to confine to the citizens of particular countries provisions for a minimum standard higher than that universally applied makes it a privilege and necessitates certain limitations on the free movement of men across frontiers... we must face the fact that we here encounter a limit to the universal application of those liberal principles of policy which the existing facts of the present world make unavoidable."

Many of the people mentioned above have united in the Basic Income Earth Network, which recognizes numerous national advocacy groups. Here is a breakdown of all partisans of basic income, listed by region or country.

Geolibertarians seek to synthesize propertarian libertarianism and a geoist (or Georgist) philosophy of land as commonly and equally owned by all people, citing the classical distinction between unimproved land and private property. The rental value of land is produced by the labors of the community and, as such, rightly belongs to the community at large and not solely to the landholder. A land value tax (LVT) is levied as an annual fee for exclusive access to a section of earth, which is collected and redistributed to the community either through public goods, such as public security or a court system, or in the form of a basic guaranteed income called a citizen's dividend. Geolibertarians view the LVT as a single tax to replace all other methods of taxation, which are deemed unjust violations of the non-aggression principle.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_inco ... bertarians

Interesting stuff.