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.

> [...] a larger problem, namely that overall economic inequality is way too high.

What economic inequality would you deem small enough?

And why do you care about inequality, and not eg the absolute livings standards of the least well off? We can 'solve' inequality by just destroying everything the rich have, but that won't make anyone better off.

Btw, the absolute living standards of all members of society, including the least well off, have never been better. And that's true for almost any society you care to look at on our globe. (Removing eg those currently at war, that weren't at war earlier.)

> What economic inequality would you deem small enough?

I'd like the one small enough that I won't die from my (treatable) first major medical event due to being unable to fund 100% of treatment costs.

I'd also like one small enough that me and the kids didn't spend most of the 2010s in hunger-level poverty.

That'd be a start.

Nothing of what you said has anything to do with equality at all. It's about the absolute level of prosperity of yourself (and presumably everyone else).

So if everyone got 10x richer overnight, but the top 1% got 1000x richer, that would increase inequality by any reasonable metric, but it would help with the benchmarks you mentioned.

No it wouldn't. Inflation would skyrocket and baseline prices would be at least 10x higher. And that's not how UBI works, no one is some multiplier richer because it exists.

The top 1% getting 1000x richer is a problem, because trickle down economics is bullshit. Money that exists as part of a pile of gold in a dragon's den does not move the economy.

I was not making a statement about UBI. I was purely talking about inequality.

The price level is driven by what the central bank does with the money printer. UBI wouldn't raise prices, if the central bank does their job even halfway competently. (Even the mediocre real world performance of the Fed or ECB would suffice to _not_ have prices raise by 10x in eg a year of UBI.)

> And that's not how UBI works, no one is some multiplier richer because it exists.

I was not meaning to imply that UBI would make people richer on average. My comment was purely about inequality being a bad measure.

UBI plus the taxes that finance it are a redistribution scheme. It doesn't make people richer on average. At best you can hope that the tax is very efficient and has low or no deadweight losses (like land value taxes), so that on average UBI doesn't make your society worse off.

> The top 1% getting 1000x richer is a problem, because trickle down economics is bullshit. Money that exists as part of a pile of gold in a dragon's den does not move the economy.

Huh? If what you said were true, the top 1% getting 1000x richer would merely not do anything, but it wouldn't be a problem per se.

Btw, it's not a problem if someone just hoard some money: the central bank will notice that inflation is below target, and print more. (Later, when you spend from your hoard, the central bank will notice that, and correspondingly shrink the money supply.) Sticking money in a hoard is equivalent to giving an interest free loan to the central bank, because they can temporarily emit more money, while yours is out of circulation.

However, rich people don't tend to keep cash in a vault. Most of them own companies or land etc.