The Death of the Middle-Class Musician

> I heard one answer more than any other: the government should introduce universal basic income. This would indeed afford artists the security to create art, but it’s also extremely fanciful.

Until we start viewing "fanciful" ideas as realistic, our problems will persist. This article is another in the long series of observations of seemingly distinct problems which are actually facets of a larger problem, namely that overall economic inequality is way too high. It's not just that musicians, or actors, or grocery store baggers, or taxi drivers, or whatever, can't make a living, it's that the set of things you can do to make a living is narrowing more and more. Broad-based solutions like basic income, wealth taxes, breaking up large market players, etc., will do far more for us than attempting piecemeal tweaks to this or that industry.

Except that socialism has failed already.

Universal basic income is impossible to justify morally.

> Universal basic income is impossible to justify morally.

It's pretty easy to justify morally. I mean at least as easy as any other welfare.

The net payments for UBI plus (income) taxes don't have to look to different from what many countries already do today. It's just the accounting that looks a bit different.

UBI means giving money to people, which means that money has velocity because it would be promptly spent.

We did this during Covid as furlough payments, and the result was high inflation. Wages didn’t significantly increase to match, so in my country anyway people feel that the cost if living is significantly worse post-Covid.

Anywhere that implemented UBI would also have to implement rent controls, otherwise Landlords would just see it as money on the table. But you couldn’t have controls for all prices, so inflation would still result.

This is what most people miss when they criticise UBI - for most people, it will be immediately spent, taxed, and put back into the economy. As long as the velocity is there, it's not an entirely bad idea as long as inflation can be kept under control.

> as long as inflation can be kept under control.

Nice trick if you can pull it off.

So for the 1GBP you print, you recoup up to 20p in VAT, or less for foodstuffs.

And more money chasing the same goods and services means…?

Are you suggesting that UBI should be paid out of freshly printed money?

I don't think that's how people commonly understand how UBI should be financed.

I can only speak for the UK. But given the fiscal headroom for the foreseeable, I don’t see where else it would come from? If they don’t have it, they either borrow or print it?

For any meaningful scheme, you would be talking about hundreds of billions.

That's were things such as wealth tax kicks in.

The money that just sits untaxed on the vaults of the extremely wealthy should be taxed to finance this.

This is trickle down economics done right. Remove money from the wealthy and redistribute it to benefit society.

> The money that just sits untaxed on the vaults of the extremely wealthy should be taxed to finance this.

Approximately no one has vaults of gold like Scrooge McDuck. The richest people largely hold their wealth in company shares.

So you are suggesting to raise the cost of capital for companies?

> Approximately no one has vaults of gold like Scrooge McDuck

Yeah, I also like to be pedantically literal when I don't have good counter arguments. I feel your pain, brother.

You can replace my "vaults of gold" analogy for propety, yachts, real estate, company shares, etc. Whatever someone holds in their own name that constitutes wealth above a certain threshold should be taxed.

> So you are suggesting to raise the cost of capital for companies?

Corporations also should contribute to society, as they also benefit from the common infrastructure.

There's this pervasive idea that "if we tax the rich they will stop investing in companies and us filthy peasants will be out of jobs" which is the bullshit of the ages. If there is demand for goods and services, there will be those that supply them.