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The Death of the Middle-Class Musician

(thewalrus.ca)
300 points pseudolus | 1 comments | 28 Jun 25 22:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.205s | source
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BrenBarn ◴[29 Jun 25 06:43 UTC] No.44410806[source]▶
> 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.

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1. osigurdson ◴[29 Jun 25 21:45 UTC] No.44416737[source]▶
Perhaps instead of UBI we should be doing UBE (Universal Basic Expense). Most governments run deficits today so maybe we start with ending those. Here is how it could work:

At the end of ever taxation year, the government calculates its deficit for the year. Divide this by all income earners at their marginal tax rate. Then, at tax time, the tax payer can choose to either pay this or allow it to accumulate at the same rate that the government charges itself. Maybe once we can cover deficits we can start thinking about UBI.