[dontknowwhyihn]

I agree completely.

Also, the following statement is based on a false premise: “ Let's just recognize that Earth actually does belong to all of us, everyone in the present and future, and that those who own pieces of it, and who create things out of it, owe compensation to the rest of us for removing our access to what would otherwise have been common property.”

This implies that creation itself is some kind of theft. The actual theft is taking something from a creative, productive person and giving it to an idle one.

[anigbrowl]

This implies that creation itself is some kind of theft

No it doesn't. Helping yourself to resources and then asserting property rights thereon to prevent others from doing the same is a kind of theft.

[kodyo]

Private property is a civilized abstraction that alleviates the requirement to kill people who enter land you've claimed for your own, for as long as you can defend it.

It's how national borders work.

[anigbrowl]

A made-up requirement, in which the centralization of abundance is justified on the basis of scarcity. Even in the feudal period, aristocracy came with obligations, like common access to land for purposes of passage or forage. Basically, this is just an excuse for people to claim more than they are able to use in the present, by asserting the necessity of them being able to do so in the future.

It's how national borders work.

A distinct negative, as far as I am concerned. Passports only became a thing around World War 1. Artificial restrictions on movement by labor is a massive economic distortion that essentially treats labor as a captive resource by mutual agreement between states. Would-be economic migrants whose goal is to work are equated with marauding armies.

[kodyo]

That's also the time progressivism was peaking, and nation-states started creating centralized government welfare systems and engaging in Marxist revolutions.

Get rid of welfare states, and you can get rid of borders. But you can't maintain a welfare state with generous welfare subsidies and have open borders.

[anigbrowl]

This is wildly ahistorical, overtly fallacious, and thus a waste of my time. Bye.

[kodyo]

WW1 happened right after Roosevelt and Wilson got done debating who was going to be the best person to centralize state power in the national government in the mold of the social progressives. And just after Wilson outsourced American monetary policy to a banking cartel, which opened the way to unlimited war and an unlimited welfare state.

Thanks for your reply.

[analognoise]

"The actual theft is taking something from a creative, productive person and giving it to an idle one."

"Productive" - we have people making livings selling farts in jars, but we value a stay at home parent at $0. Clearly we're abusing the word "productive".

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

Speaking of this, why aren't taxes on dividends higher than taxes on income from a job?

[nradov]

We want to encourage people with capital to invest it in productive new ventures instead of just hoarding it. This increases economic growth and generally benefits society. Thus we incentivize those investments through the income tax code.

At least that's the economic theory. If we were to raise taxes on dividends, no one can really predict how much that would reduce the long-term economic growth rate.

[Dylan16807]

Wanting to encourage investment is more of an explanation for why the tax rate is lower than 100%. It's not an explanation for why it's lower than income tax.

[nradov]

The level of capital investment people are willing to make is proportional to the expected return, net of taxes. So, you are essentially arguing about the shape of the curve. Would society be better off if dividends were taxed at 10% or 20% or 80%? The reality is that no one really knows because it's impossible to conduct controlled experiments and the system is too complex to model accurately. We're left to make policy choices based on intuition, ideology, and low-quality macroeconomic "science". Anyone who claims that a certain large-scale change in the tax code would definitely produce positive results is simply ignorant or arguing in bad faith; the reality is that we lack the ability to accurately predict second-order effects.

For example, consider the 10% federal luxury tax imposed in 1991 to reduce the budget deficit. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it devastated several domestic manufacturing industries and destroyed many jobs. Whoops.

[robotresearcher]

Normal interest on savings accounts and short term investment gains are taxed as income. Long term investment income is taxed less than that, biasing in favor of investment.

[Dylan16807]

Savings accounts have poor returns and don't need the help.

Is short-term investment that much less useful than long-term? Especially when the stock market is so big and smooths out short-term investments so much? We're effectively paying a lot of money for that bias, and I'm not convinced that's better than a tiny bias or no bias.

[robotresearcher]

Savings accounts have poor returns, so investments don't need the help, right?

I could certainly be persuaded by that and maybe about short vs long term investment. Do we have data from other markets to compare?

Above I'm just explaining the reasoning behind the status quo. Reaction to that seems negative. I can't tell if I'm wrong about the reasoning, or people are signaling that the reasoning is wrong.

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

Aren't high taxes on income from work a disincentive for people to work? How does the same logic not apply? By looking at the tax incentive structure, it is telling people: sitting on your ass doing nothing and being paid dividends (derived from the work of others) is more important than working a job yourself.

[analognoise]

"We want to encourage people with capital to invest it in productive new ventures instead of just hoarding it."

At this point, I think the system has failed.

[Sevii]

The people with dividends were able to lobby to have their taxes lowered.

[robotresearcher]

Assuming this is not a rhetorical question, the answer is:

Buying stock is investing cash into a business. The investment has more risk of going down in value compared to cash in the bank. Government created a tax advantage to partially offset the risk, and thus encourage investment. This tends to move capital to places it can be used for creating new things, instead of sitting in a vault.

[qqqwerty]

There is value creation, and then there is rent seeking. The OP is proposing that the philosophical justifications of a UBI are based on the ever increasing amounts of rent seeking behavior that underpins our economy.

One example, intellectual property constraints are perpetually expanding due to an increasing number of patents, copyrights and trademarks. If you are a creative person, you are legally required to navigate this intellectual property minefield in order to make a living. Why shouldn't you get some sort of token compensation for the loss of creative rights?

Another example, I like to fish. But I am required by government regulation to pay for a permit and to limit my fishing activity to comply with regulations. The regulations are burdensome enough where it would be prohibitive to sustain my family solely on my fishing labor. This was not the case about a hundred years ago (roughly). One could sustain a family through fishing alone. I could try and go the commercial route, but that requires an investment of upwards of $100k and that industry is notoriously hostile to new entrants and extremely volatile (read up on snow crabs for example). So for all intents and purposes, this natural resource is no longer available to me to use as a primary source of sustenance. Why shouldn't I expect some sort of compensation for that?

And of course the big one, land rights. We give landowners perpetual rights to use a piece a land as long as they pay their taxes and comply with local zoning regulations. That land is not theirs. It existed long before they were born, and will continue to exist long after they are gone. But while they "own" that land, I am forbidden from using it. And there are fewer and fewer places in the world where land is free/cheap, and also somewhat economically useful. At some point in the future (if not already) we should expect that type of land to disappear entirely as capitalism continues gobble up all available opportunities. UBI feels like a natural way to compensate individuals for the loss of rights to this land.

Historically, citizens of modern well functioning democracies have considered the right to vote as sufficient "compensation" for the loss of certain natural rights. The right to vote is certainly a powerful and necessary right. But I think UBI is a more natural compensation for the increasing economic constraints that modern society imposes on its citizens. Fishing regulations help prevent fish stocks from collapsing, intellectual property rights allow creators to profit from their work, etc..., but these restrictions also narrow the legal space in which current and future citizens can make a living. Do we really need more and more people releasing shit coins and NFTs in order to squeak out a living? Do we really need more people optimizing facebook ad conversions? Maybe we just acknowledge that the vast majority of work being done in modern societies is not essential, and forcing more people to compete in that landscape is not making the world a better place. A small UBI isn't going to dramatically change peoples motivations. Freeloaders already find ways to skate by, UBI might make it a little easier. But maybe it is better if the freeloaders just take their UBI and chill rather than try their hand at another scammy NFT project. Even with UBI, the vast majority of people will continue to work as UBI would be too small to provide a comfortable middle class lifestyle. Maybe a few people might downshift a little bit and use UBI as an opportunity to focus on things that they consider important, i.e. family, hobbies, volunteer work, etc.. But is that really so bad?